Well, ladies and gentlemen, after nine grinding months of mental fog and declining business due to a parathyroid tumor I've begun to recover a bit. I can point specifically to the kind words and advice of nyceve, Orangeclouds115, Greenhills, and One Pissed Off Liberal as having encouraged me to keep marching during those long, black months, and today the sun came out.
I made a diet change last week and a large portion of the symptoms I've been having are gone. I still need surgery, but this change coupled with a long overdue epidural in my neck has left me with a terrible case of itchy feet. A business associate deposited just short of a thousand for me last week and I am now packing in preparation for a run of one to two months that will involve seeing telecommunications and renewable energy business development customers as well as receiving some surgical attention on the tumor.
I'm not exactly sure what this trip will bring, but I'm a bit of a rubber tramp when time and circumstances allow, and I'm really hoping for more than just a business trip out of this run ...
Unlike the folks I continue to pick up by the side of the road, I stopped having interactions with rubber tramps when I stopped working at a homeless shelter, an event two decades in the past. I've personally had cause to just cut loose and go here and there, mostly for Grateful Dead, Widespread Panic, Phish, or other music events, but over the last two years I've done a good bit of roadside camping when I was living in Nebraska and working in new Mexico, Colorado, and Nevada. Oh, and if you didn't catch it by now, a rubber tramp is a plain ol' tramp with the luxury (and hassles) of a working automobile.
Tonight I'm packing and positively quivering with anticipation. Besides the telecom and renewable energy work I'm going to hang with Kossack farmerchuck for a while, absorbing his voluminous knowledge of greenhouse thermodynamics and helping him handle his herd of over eighty dairy goats. Like the recent project in Iowa which is certain to get funded I do believe Chuck has two similar things in his area and we're going to fully investigate them while I'm there, hopefully generating more grant applications and small scale seed investment from various interested Kossacks who've contacted me in the past.
When I'm on the road I just stop and sleep when it suits me. Sometimes I sleep in the car, usually if it's cold and/or noisy where I am, but if I find a nice, quiet spot, like rural New Mexico or Utah, I'll just throw down my ridge rest and sleeping bag so I can enjoy the stars. The knee boots will come in handy on the farm, I can't live without my yoga mat, the thing in the middle of the ridge rest is my Leki trekking pole, and the little gadget in front is the portable compressor for my bike tires. Yeah, it's huge; I used to have a slow leak on a previous vehicle and that is how this piece of equipment entered my collection.
I'm packing a little utility/treasure chest. My Beretta .25 pistol and ammo, my Garmin eTrex GPS, $200 or so in junk silver, a voice recorder, my battery charger, three cell phones (don't ask), my iPod, support equipment for my Olympus 720SW shock/waterproof camera, and some reading material. The silver can obviously be sold and the gun, too.
The reading material will make you smile. Jack Kerouac's Dharma Bums, Allan Ginsburg's Howl, Henry David Thoreau's Walden along with some short stories, and Geshe Kelsang Gyatso Rinpoche's second commentary on the Eight Verses of Training the Mind, a meditation practice in which I engage. I took the White Tara Empowerment from Kyabje Gehlek Rinpoche four years ago; Allan Ginsburg and I share the same spiritual teacher. I have some very funny feelings about setting out on the road with a dharma book packed alongside Kerouac's and an iPod stuffed full of lectures by Andrea Fella and Gil Fronsdahl. Am I being presumptuous here? They are giants, while I am a suitable teacher ... of the skills needed to be a lazy householder.
I will trouble you with neither a photo of my clothing nor the pharmaceutical/grooming bag that goes along. I don't mind being disheveled and dirty on any given day, but I must be able to clean up as needed and once I'm settle somewhere for a bit laundry is done, I can shower daily, and I look like everyone else. How little they know of my true nature :-)
If I can only give one piece of advice on the packing for such ventures it would be this: Sleep on it. Seriously, when you're going for more than a few days and cash is tight you will overload on some things and forget others, causing you delays and expenses while you're roaming. This is quite hard for me, because once I know I'm going I want to go now. The urge is almost overwhelming - I usually vent this "get out" impulse hiking and kayaking, but if the road is calling the first whispers build to a roar by the time I've begun laying out clothes so I can visualize what I'm taking with me.
CODA: In motion
The road has its own rhythm - two days have got by me since I first entered the title for this thing. My long suffering customers are piling work on me, paying promptly, and reimbursing hotel rooms so I've not yet slept anywhere other than a bed, but the weekend is coming and I've got two days to make my way to eastern Pennsylvania from southern Illinois. I feel some hills, forests, and a nice bit of outdoor time coming my way. I might even get all crazy and break out the bike, which has not seen any use yet this year.
I won friends and influenced people Thursday, covering about 420 miles of four lane road with my cruise control resolutely set to fifty five. Only three people tried to kill themselves and me in the process via tailgating. I managed a tasty thirty two miles to the gallon. That might be good overall from a U.S. fleet perspective, but I'm not terribly impressed; the little Versa normally gets twenty nine or thirty with the needle hanging just a tiny bit below eighty, but that number was the norm without the wind load on back. The next long run I do I'm going to drive like the typical American for a few hundred miles so I know how much I'm gaining by dusting off that 1970s speed limit.