rambling history of highway 1...

the gulls circling

5/20 9:05pm: well, here i am. and, fair warning, this post is history. i am in san simeon state park. i am sitting in the back of my truck, after watching the sun set over the pacific. it was beautiful. just before the sun made its final descent all the gulls starting circling overhead like they were swifts or something. silly birds.

i left from santa cruz with the intention of driving the 1 south, to relive/recreate the bike trip that steve and i took in 2001. my plan was to stop at two of the campgrounds that we stayed at on that trip and see what we missed.

see, when we did that bike trip i dont think we had any kind of plan. kind of like me now, our plan was just ride south, until we cant anymore or something changes. and i think when we were around here we knew things were changing, we were running out of money. (and this was well before we knew anything about dumpstering or obtaining food through means other than buying it...and generally buying it out to eat because we were hardcore vegan at the time and we werent shaking for anything.)

so around this time we were just riding our bikes and living off of lays potato chips and filberts. it was kind of the life. we were young and had nothing in front of us except the world. it was great. anyway, i am getting overrun my meta past and i am trying to make some points. just in case i miss them, one of them was that you cant change history, and the other was that we need to live for now and not for later.

the final descent

lets see if i can get it together. so, i wanted to go to the places we were at and do the things we didnt do, i wanted to see all of the things that we missed becasue we were naive or didnt care or whatever, i wanted to try to teach my self 8 years ago that you should do everything around you, and have some kind of purpose.

i think being in santa cruz and seeing bradley and driving around and doing things brought this on. when we were there, we just rode into town looking for food then quickly rode out. why couldnt we just see what was going on in town, why were we so secular?

so i was going to stay tonight in limekiln state park, one of the parks we stayed at before and i was going to go hiking in the forest and explore the area and nature and just appreciate my surroundings because i didnt do that at the time. but that park was closed. and i was angry about it. i fumed for a little bit as i was going on, but then i started thinking about what we did then and who we were, who i was, and consoled myself knowing that whatever i didnt do then, made me as much the person i am today as the things i did do.

so, there was no point in tryg to change what i did in the past, and no point in trying to change the things that have already happened, or try to make them better now by having different experiences. i need to get over that and see this as all new experience see it as a change to my life and, well, see it as a growth spurt.

and then! live for now. seriously. i am so much happier right now than i have been in years. a couple years ago emily got into birthingway, a midwifery college. around that time was when i started to just live life without any passion...and it is my own fault.

the school is hard to get into and we made a pact. if she got into school we would stay in portland for three years while she completed school and then we would move away and continue our lives. and if she didnt get into the school we would just leave then and start the continuation of our lives. i was and am happy that she got into school, happy for her but not happy for us or me.

i was ready and wanted to leave, i wanted to get busy with the rest of my life. and that impending period of stagnation i started looking as a bit dreadful. i didnt really want to be there and i was just going through the motions. i didnt see a way out. i was committed to emily and our partnership and felt that since we made a pact i would just have to grin and bear it.

that didnt turn out well for either of us. and i just sort of wrkinkled away. the friends that i did still have i just shyed away from, and i stopped be active. i just started to give up on life. and i didnt have to. i just couldnt convince myself that i could live a wonderful vibrant existence and still be in portland and everything could be the same. i worked myself into a corner and wasnt really even trying to get out of it.

and life just started to suck. i needed something different. and i just wasnt sure what that difference was, was it my relationship or my self confidence, was it me or the world around me?

anyway, this isnt where i intended this to go. but for some reason this explanation stuff just comes out.

i meant to talk about working and how the generations before me, like my dad and grandpa, the idea was that they work their entire life and then toward the twilight they get to do all the things that have built up as things they have always wanted to do. and then go do it. my dad is doing that right now. he got a mannequin, a boat, and bunch of trailers, and is starting to really do what he wanted to and live the life he wanted.

a fishing boat in monterey

i cant wait for that. there isnt a carrer or profession or pension or 401k that i have been working on. this is it. and it isnt like if i had any of those things it would make a bit of difference because all the money world has been collapsing for the last years.

i am kind of living the "live fast die young" ethos without trying to lie very fast or die very young. i am just trying to do all the things i want to when i want to, not store them up in a vault that may or may not eventually get unlocked. i am just taking advantage of the life and opportunities in front of me. they arent ideal, but things are working and i am living life right now and being happy. i am enjoying myself and my life.

i am also sitting in the back of a pick up truck in the middle of the california coast typing on a computer, in aplace where my cell phone doesnt even get service. so, i may have some things backwards. but i am living life, and i am happy. i dont want to change the past. i want to change the future.