Getting Prepared

To travel is to take a journey into yourself.  --Danny Kaye

The past several days I’ve been getting everything ready for my trip.  I leave in exactly 2 weeks from today.  It’s amazing the number of small details that come up when trying to plan for a no-plans lifestyle.  As I’ve told people about my upcoming adventure, there is a common theme amongst the responses:  “Man, I’ve wanted to do that for a long time—just be free for a while.”  That seems to be a common desire, to have no stress, no conflicts, and no responsibilities for a bit of time.  It’s funny though, how many small things are adding up that need to get done in order to live that way.  I’ve put together quite a long list of at least 50 things that I think I need to bring with me (thankfully I have Amazon Prime!!). It includes a diverse array of specialized things like solar panels, fuses, and a collapsible bucket, as well as the more mundane items like a can opener, dish soap and toilet paper.    I’ve been trying to imagine different situations that I might find myself in, and then figuring out what things would be useful to have.   At the same time, I have to fit it all in the confines of a 21 foot van that also contains a king size bed, a bathroom, a stove, a microwave, a TV, and a table.  All of this stuff has to have its place while leaving me room to move around a little bit.  At times it feels like a giant game of Tetris, trying to figure out how all the different little odds and ends are going to  fit together to give me the resources to live for a few months.    

I have to admit, setting out on a trip like this is a little bit intimidating at times.  Not only am I figuring out what I need to acquire or bring with me, but I’m also figuring out what I need to let go of.   The letting go of things is the harder part.  A roomy kitchen that I love to cook in, space to spread out my belongings, long showers, all of the little conveniences that get overlooked every day—I’ll have to let go of those and know that I can be prepared to live without them. 

As I’ve been going through these preparations, I’ve realized that it is the act of preparing that has given me courage to leap out onto this road.  I don’t know exactly what problems or situations I’ll encounter, but I’m confident that I am prepared enough to be able to maneuver my way through whatever challenges arrive. As I’ve thought about this, I also have come to recognize that this is not the only time in my life that I’ve had to go through mental preparations in order to gain the courage needed to make big decisions.  After 15 years of owning a home, it took planning and courage to sell and become a semi-vagabond renter.   I had 20 years of full work weeks and large paychecks before deciding to give it up for a dramatic change in lifestyle.  I spent many nights awake, envisioning days that weren't filled with creating Powerpoint slides and meetings, but at the same time were not filled with income as well.  I let go of many of the comforting benefits that I had available: health and dental insurance, contributions to retirement plans, extra money flowing into savings, and the ability to buy pretty much whatever I wanted whenever I wanted.  Within the last few years, I have pretty much sold, gave away, or donated almost everything I own:  scuba equipment, a couple of Corvettes, dishes and small kitchen appliances, tools, clothing, bedding—lots of things that I had accumulated and most which I hardly used.   When I started to take inventory of everything I had, I realized that most of it had very little impact on my day-to-day life.

So now I’m left mostly with the essentials: enough clothes to wear, a pot, a pan, a few pieces of silverware, one set of sheets, a blanket, a can opener, some solar panels, a collapsible bucket, and about 50 other items that fit in my van. 

And I think I’m just about ready to hit the road, see what turns it takes ahead, and have an adventure.

Hitting the Road

We shall not cease from exploration, and the end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we started and know the place for the first time. -- T.S. Eliot

I might have gone crazy.  At least that's what some people think.  In a few weeks, I'll be setting off on the road and living in this 21' long Roadtrek camper van.   Other than two or three particular locations across the country where friends live,  I don't have much of a plan of where I'm going.  Doing this is something that has been tugging at my soul for quite a long time.  I've always been drawn to stories of adventure, exploration, and self-discovery:  the classics like Walden, Siddhartha, Tom Sawyer, Huck Finn, Journey to the Center of the Earth and The Odyssey, as well as some more contemporary books like Memory of Running by Ron McLarty, Sea Change by Peter Nichols, and First You Have to Row a Little Boat by Richard Bode.    The words from those books and others have woven their way into the fabric of my being, and working like invisible sails, they have silently guided me to this spot in life.

I have to admit I'm really not much of a camper person.  I bought this van knowing absolutely nothing about how to use it.  I've never had an RV before, let alone been inside of one, and the vault of my camping experience contains not much more than knowing how to setup a tent and maybe light a fire.  But that is part of the attraction of this adventure: to take something that seems so familiar on the surface and to figure out how it really works and what I can do with it.    After all, isn't that what we are all really doing with our lives every single day? We steer through the world and eventually find ourselves going back-and-forth on the same road each day, one that is familiar, comfortable, or seemingly predictable.  Sometimes all it takes is a brief trip down a scant side road to give a different perspective, a different view, and we can be amazed at the discoveries we find.  Each day has the opportunity to be an adventure.  All it takes is a little looking.