Waiting

This time of night two weeks from today I will be on an airplane over the Atlantic Ocean; it's hard to say what this means for my next nine months. Very soon life will be nothing like it is today, and that is progression, and that is a good thing. I take comfort in intuition, knowing this is the next step -- like the day I woke up and realized my heart was no longer in hockey, and the day I woke up middle of the night at that girls house off the tollway and drove a car four hours down to Austin. This is all very simple really, and quite enough for me.

These days are defined by peculiar transitions leaving you not entirely here or there, moving between households, putting life in boxes, having no set place as yours. Here you say goodbye to some forever and others just for a little while. You pick up strange habits: popular sitcoms that continue season after season come to mind (damn you, How I Met Your Mother). You take time away from work and put it into reading the newspaper and writing out a few thoughts over coffee and drinking an occasional scotch. Life is good in transition indeed, away from a world of routines.

I confess, my upcoming travels feel somewhat like an escape, a fresh start, which happens sometimes when people radically shift their geography. Austin will always be Austin for me, a place I love and a place I will return, but it is also a place littered with memories, some of them not so nice. The great thing about new people is that you are who you are that day, a compilation of everything that happened before, and when you shuffle around the world every person is a new person. That instills a feeling of freedom, of opportunity, and even (to be biblical) one of resurrection. One day, with regards to Austin, I am sure it will all matter less, but at this moment there is tunnel vision, and the prospect of getting out after years of nonsense makes me feel like some things can be laid to rest.

I sat down last night to dinner with a fantastic group of people -- some of the closest people in my life -- who made Austin, Texas all it was. We looked great as we ate steaks and drank wine and toasted to a period of our lives quickly coming to an end. We told absurd and offensive jokes like we always have, the girls smiling in a way that showed great restraint and toleration. We moved later to the Intercontinental Hotel, that outside bar overlooking Congress Avenue and the capital, 18 year old scotch in hand. I once sat out there with Joe feeling like the whole world was caving in for reasons I still do not understand, and this time, sitting down in the same place could not have felt more different. When I crawled into bed that night, I felt very full and saw altogether one of my best evenings in Austin. I will think back on that while basking in the Mediterranean sun with a good book.

For now my room is empty with bare walls and uncluttered floors. The television sits awkwardly by a box at the foot of my bed. I'll close my eyes tonight, like most nights, and picture a few of the mysterious things that have not happened yet. I'll think of a few things that have happened too, but I'll try not to dwell on all that. In the words of the great street-artist, Banksy: "when the time comes to leave, just walk away quietly and don't make any fuss."

Louisville, Kentucky

Kentucky is a strange place. It's one of those states, like North Dakota, Oklahoma and Arkansas, that are hardly known to anyone outside the US; in reality, they are hardly known to those within. The image of this country can sometimes be of a lot of rednecks in the middle, bordered by the intellectuals, and if this image is true, Kentucky by definition contains many of these said rednecks. Every place has its own charming secrets however, there is a lot that makes Kentucky nice.

Four years ago I had no connection to this part of the world. It was one of the many places in the world that simply exist, and that I would probably never go. Then my dad married a lovely woman from there -- herself with two children -- and four years later I spend Christmas here with a new family. Step families are an interesting concept, usually forced regardless of level of connection, and there are plenty of horror stories when this goes terribly wrong. For whatever reason, I got lucky, and coming to Louisville for Christmas could be a lot worse.

I really got to know this city a year and a half ago, when I strategically choose my first Ironman. It was not the easiest race on the circuit, but from day one it felt right. On a lovely day in August, I swam in the Ohio, biked through the rolling Kentucky hills, and ran the marathon past Churchill Downs before a spectacular downtown finish.



It was a different city then than it is now, because no city is real during an Ironman. 1,500 of the healthiest families on Earth pour into the hotels and short-stay apartments, devour meals at the local restaurants, creating a mirage of fitness where the natives once sat. As anyone will say who has spent time around these races, it is all a very emotional experience. It was a lucid day, every one of those 140.6 miles, and Louisville will always be special to me.

Between the Bars

Last night, as a cold drizzle pattered the windows and roofs of Rainey Street, I clocked out and walked out of a bar for what I hope to be the last time. No need to speak in absolutes; emergencies happen, and pouring drinks and standing at doorways will always be there. To the best of my knowledge however, it's now time to start doing what I am supposed to be doing. That is not pouring drinks and standing in doorways.

Bars really are sad places. I initially landed there because I was young and in college and bars are great places to be young and in-charge and interested in the opposite sex while making good money, but all that goes away very quickly and you are eventually left with a lonely place built for some very sad specimens. Taverns have drawn this kind of person for centuries and have ruined a lot of things. There is something about human beings -- some deeply embedded weakness I suppose -- that make them want taverns and pubs and bars and cantinas in their life more than a few times a week. I was a part of this for a time, feeding the sloppy messes, and now it is a very good thing to be done.

I walked out last night, after a few goodbyes, thinking about that time a drunk guy told me to get a real job. All jobs are real, and all jobs teach you something, so I suppose there is a takeaway here too. Plenty of artists picked fruit, and drove buses, and this led them to some real human experience or at least a good story, but you come across a lot of people stuck in a cyclical trap, adding on years and reasons why they are still there and have not gone somewhere else. My time between the bars is done -- the cycle for now has been broken -- and I really don't want to ever look back. 

Beginnings and Ends

"Why has man rooted himself thus firmly in the earth, but that he may rise in the same proportion into the heavens above?"
- Henry David Thoreau


I often find myself, when looking back at wide sections of life, doing as Steve Jobs says and connecting the dots. You see so clearly how bad things led to good things and you understand better the fact that you could not have organized any of the mess. It is all very exciting, and it always gets me thinking that if I could see these things in advance -- one cosmic moment of foresight -- I probably would want to; how neat would it be to walk into a bar and get a flash of yourself kissing some beautiful stranger now on a bar stool, two weeks down the road on a park bench? When I say this I know it's best we don't get those sneak peaks, because the mystery and the uncertainty is as much a part of life as anything in the world and you can't mess with things so important.

When I think of those cosmic moments, perhaps the greatest one took place four years ago in a car, middle of the night on the way to Austin. I didn't know anyone there and had not been around those parts in a decade. I can to this day remember driving in wonder, exploring and envisioning myself in all the places I did not know yet and interacting with the people I had not met yet; these are exactly the sort of thoughts one should have embarking alone into the world of college.

And before I knew it, four years were over in one great whirlwind of transient memories. I took tests and got grades and finished races long and short and sweat pounds and pounds of sweat alongside remarkable people. I fell in and out of something I would not call love but would not call just sex either, deciphering those grey realities that always seem to exist when young people show feelings for other young people. I travelled across such a big ocean and drank beers with people on the other side of the world which, as I found, is a great life investment. And the books I read; that meant so much. What we decide to read says so much about who we are.





And so, while it would be easy to stand complacent, basking in the glow of all that and a great city, I think it is time to go again. I did not set off one day four years ago to stay forever, and, with Steve Jobs in mind, I see that now. My tenure in Austin is done, and there is just so much more to do. That will begin in Spain and end somewhere else, and that is all I really know.

I spend my days now creating lifelike images: kissing a girl in Paris or Stockholm on a bridge in the cold; reading a book in a hammock on some Greek Island referenced in The Odyssey; walking the beaches in Normandy, where they say a leaf does not drop without someone picking it up; drinking a beer in some small corner of the globe with the guy now typing away across the hall of our South Congress abode. It is a bittersweet feeling, these new beginnings desirable, these unavoidable ends bearable; somewhere in the middle lies 5103 miles.

Male Mating Tactics

I am in my twenties, have gone to college, spent time at house parties, worked in bars, travelled, had girlfriends, and been single. Therefore, I am in a position to say I know very little about the female psyche and how it works; in my defense, I think most men are in little position to say what girls want. After a lot of observation and conversation however, there is at least one thing worth saying about my gender: it's horrific.

We really are terrible. From grocery stores to bars, coffee shops to parks, the methods men use to attract a mate in this age I find very disturbing. I feel I have seen and heard it all, and have probably only heard a small percentage of the minor disasters plaguing our city streets each day. To combat this growing epidemic in confused techniques, I have devised a list of simple changes, moving us forward as a gender into the next century.

1. Dont stare. If you have indeed decided to enter a bar alone, keep your eyes on the game. Pretend to text someone important on your iPhone. Play Angry Birds. Shoot the shit with the bartender if he's not busy. If a pretty girl does happen to pass, look for a period of time that makes sense which, as a ballpark estimate, lets say is three seconds. As she streamlines her way from the bathroom back to her group of friends who are all most certainly in two year relationships, fixating your eyes on her body does help help along your cause in any country of the world. Everyone can see it, everyone notices, and you look like a cavemen. No one wants to talk to the caveman who, with that creepy twinkle in their eye, cant look away from the hunk of meat it just cooked for tonight's dinner.

2. Body Language. It is not Mandarin Chinese. Use a bit of intuition and realize that in the first five words a girl says to you, you know if she is up for a chat. If all signs point south, get the hell out of there and cut your losses. You did not miss something. You aren't that attractive. You aren't wooing her with your modern day Shakespeare Sonnets. This is not something learned, but it shouldn't it be innate instinct? Haven't millions of years of evolution given us some level of inter-species understanding? If a pigeon can shake and dance in the park and attract a mate through those bizarre behaviors, how dense are we?

3. Get a Life. This is He's Just Not That in to You, for males. If she didn't text back then no, its not because your text message didn't get through. No call back? It is not some momentary lapse by your service provider. She is probably out living her life, doing normal activities that make her happy. You should find a few activities that make you happy, like running or scrapbooking, or reading about real men like William Clark and Simon Bolivar and T.E. Lawrence. Watch 300 and then lookup the workout to see what bodies like theirs require. Do you things. It doesn't matter what. To me, there is nothing more attractive than a girl who does this, and it is one of those rare things, unlike color preferences and baby names, that go both ways. I promise she'll appreciate it.

5. Dressing up. Good heavens this should not be that hard, but guys can get it so terribly wrong. A decently fitting black shirt and jeans should do the trick. Save the two year old running shoes with uncomfortably high khaki shorts. Same for the gem in the closet that says, "I'm not as dumb as you look," as original as that is. The only exception to this rule, to my knowledge, is the sorority/fraternity college connection. They have been genetically engineered, to my continual astonishment, to be attracted to someone who looks as if they just fell into a few cans of neon paint. You know the look: the one where it's hot to look like you just got out of bed and threw on your older brothers clothes, or walked out of a Walker Texas Ranger episode. Don't worry about them.

6. Ask, Don't tell. It is a cardinal rule that people like to talk about themselves. People like to talk about how Jenny hit on Johnny at a party, and she dated Johnny two years ago, and what this means for Jill who kissed Johnny last weekend, etc. What they don't care about your job, your income, your car, and the lack of a ring in your finger, unless of course, they ask. Let them ask; until then, listen. If you don't want to listen, then you really are taking the wrong girl out for beers and that is a real issue worth thinking about.

7. You're old. What's worse than any of the above offenses? Committing any of the above offenses on someone who was in diapers when you were in college. Have a concept of your own age, and accept that you had your time. It is really depressing as a young guy, seeing older guys try so hard in bars. If I end up there, I have done something terribly wrong.

In the end, men, these are great problems to have because they are all fixable. Annual human trafficking today is 10-times the amount during the height of the Trans-Atlantic Slave trade. That's a real problem, with a difficult solution, also caused by our gender. Shape up guys; be genuine and real. You are making us all look creepy.

The Ambulance

Last night at work, as I stood alone in front of the bar, an ambulance came from off in the distance. I don't know where it was going or for what purpose. It was quiet at first, slowly growing louder until within sight. Everyone stopped what they were doing, putting their conversations on hold as it sped by with a penetrating screech, and as soon as it arrived it was gone. Everyone continued amongst themselves.

Sometimes - most of the time - you don't see the flickering lights. You hear it echoing through the passageways and dark corners of a city, but your paths do not cross. Occasionally you are where it stops, perhaps the frantic aftermath of a scene or the simple curiosity of what is going on next door. I suspect if we look deeper we find a fair amount of inconvenience: an ambulance that slows traffic and blocks lanes; the cars that slow and stop in both directions; the piercing blow of the sirens designed to create a path.

I also suspect those who have been personally affected by an ambulance think about things differently. It comes when someone's life, for that day, month, or forever, has been permanently changed. While it certainly does not bring about these changes, it is the vessel, the symbol that encapsulates it.

I have gone back many times to my mother, riding in an ambulance after her significant other had suffered an aortic aneurism and was slowly slipping away. I cannot imagine what chaotic emotion must have been bottled behind those thick metal doors, visible only through a small window in the back. I think about the ambulance speeding toward the hospital where eventually this person would leave a lifeless body, and the fact that this happens everyday somewhere in the world. I think then about the paradox between those little tragedies and the cars nearby that have no idea what is going on. I have been lucky in my life to have avoided ambulances, but surely there will be a time it will come for me or someone I know. The longer we hold off on this, the better we are, but we do not have to look far to appreciate its absence in our lives.

What Australia Is

One winter day in Australia, sitting over a lunch of kangaroo and vegetables at the Melbourne club, I received some of the best advice I can remember. One very experienced companion asked an even more experienced parliament member what he would say to a young, bright, motivated person starting off in his career. "Write down feelings and emotions as they happen," he said. "Four decades later, you will remember all the places you went, but you tend to forget the things you were thinking at the time." So here is born this blog, and what comes next I dare not say.

This piece of writing -- the first introductory piece -- is much overdue. I wrote for a long time on a train from the Southern Coast of Australia in Adelaide to the Northern Coast in Darwin about what the country, and my first international move, meant to me. That piece was always incomplete. There is this overwhelming feeling as writers that we have to nail everything and be perfect, but this is of course unrealistic. Some things take time to settle in, and an attempt, or leap of faith, is always worth the risk.

Travel is full of buzz words and I do attempt to avoid them. People say they change and grow, and while this is probably true, no one really knows how or to what extent. Best then to just cover my thoughts and memories on a quiet day back in the states to see what stuck.

The Southern Cross

While today is has evolved into a rather overdone tattoo on a stereotypical Aussie, the Southern Cross in its constellational form was one of the biggest symbols to me of the distance I covered and the radically different life I led. I will never forget the dark cold runs I had in the early mornings, looking up through winter clouds, catching a glimpse of those five stars you cannot see in the northern hemisphere. On a 16 hour plane ride you have no concept of distance but through a small airplane window. When the entire orientation of the stars change, you cant help but feel connected and mesmerized by how large our planet is.

Marsupials

These creatures seem to symbolize the entire continent for me, from the intentional encounters to those unexpected. I will always remember that baby kangaroo, scared by the noise of a nearby bird, who scrambled into his mothers pouch for safety. Forging that connection with our animal roots is a delightful way to encounter a new place.

The 12 Apostles

There is something magical about this that speaks for itself. The wear and tear of thousands of years of ocean cutting away at coastline gives you these peculiar rock formations, which someday in the near future will no longer exist. Until then we can still marvel at its beauty.

Fitzroy Island

Fitzroy Island lies about 45 minutes off the coast of Australia, en route to the Great Barrier Reef. During my day there, I hiked barefoot through a rainy mist to the summit of the island. Looking back, you see mainland Australia. Looking out, through the rain and low lying clouds, you see one of the seven wonders of the natural world. As a bonus, I saw two humpback whales making a thousand mile migration. I could not help but feel the connection.

The Great Barrier Reef

90 minutes off the coast of Cairns, you see this hovering just below the waves. They had to remind all the divers not to swim too close as the current would take you right into the coral. One did not listen well, and ended up red with blood and layered in bandages. You can see why it was a complete hazard to ships 200 years ago with only stars for navigation. The entire feral pig population in Australia is due to one such wreck, as another example of humankind's generation gifts to the natural world.

Otway Ranges

Not what most would envision as Australian landscape: lush farmland for cattle; dormant volcanoes with crater lakes; small mountains layered in mist. While only a small portion of the climate relative to the rest of the country, it is one worth remembering.

Outback

The start of a more than 3000 km journey through the heart of the country. One of the biggest sunrises I have ever seen in a sea of red. The Aborigines -- the ultimate survivalists in their time -- were among the only people on Earth who could virtually live without water.

Melbourne

Memories of cafes, bars, suburbs, trams, trains, footy, runs, adventures, etc., will always be associated with home. Something still gets me about that skyline; it is so big and bright and full of life. I would see it from all angles and directions before I left, but none better than the 88th floor of the Eureka Tower.

Though what is a place without its people. The generosity shown across the spectrum will be forever remembered, from those who helped get me there to those who provided shelter, a beer, an income, and an experience. All showed up unexpected along the way. Someday I hope to repay these gifts, but mostly I hope to continue growing and changing in every way travel is supposed to grow you and change you by the time you arrive back where it all began. 

"Yet we think that if railfences are pulled down, and stone-walls piled up on our farms, bounds are henceforth set and our fates decided... the universe is wider than our views of it."
-Thoreau