The Year in Review
It’s been a pretty crazy year. Well, 14 months to be exact. Got to include all of the interesting stuff I suppose. I wish that I could say something impressive sounding like: “If you had asked me a year ago what the next year would bring, I never could have guessed this.” Well, obviously. There’s been lots of good stuff and lots of bad stuff. And while I can’t say that I knew that this year would turn out the way it has, I had hoped that I would get a lot done, and I’d say that, so far at least, I have.
Spring of 2005 I was busy thinking about how much my life sucked. I had nothing, I was going nowhere, my life was coming to a dead end. I had managed to hold it off by a full year by finishing school and buying the bike, but it was only delaying the inevitable. Indiana was devouring my soul and my desire to live and there wasn’t a thing I could do about it. People don’t realize just how literally I express myself when I tell them that, had I not gotten out of there, I would likely be dead by now.
But that’s not what’s important. What’s important is that I did get out of there. Right after I got back from Jamaica last year, I was fed up with where I was and I was hell-bent on doing something about it. A couple of my so-called friends were quick to mock me, to say that it was all well and fine to talk about doing something, but nobody actually did anything. Sure, they wanted to leave too, but why leave? Indiana isn’t all that bad, right? That’s where your friends are, so therefore, that’s where your life should be as well. But that just wasn’t good enough…
So I decided to throw caution into the wind and just do the things I wanted to do. I had nothing to really look forward to, so I really had nothing to lose. That’s where the bike-turned-Caddy trip started. JP and I were out at dinner one day and I mentioned that I was miserable with where I was, and I was going to quit my job and take my bike around the country. Seemed like a crazy idea, but it was something at least. And, surprisingly enough, he was actually in favor of it. He was thinking about getting a bike at that point and it just sounded like a great thing to do. And I was fed up with my shit-hole dead-end job paying me less than I’d be making managing a McDonald’s. So the wheels started turning.
We started making some half-assed plans for what exactly we were going to do and when. Granted, very few things worked out as we planned, but it was a step in the right direction. In the process of laying the initial groundwork, I also decided that yes, I was quitting my job. I had toughed it out longer than any other job I’d ever had but it just wasn’t worth it. It was destroying me inside. So to be fair since it was a small company and there were parts of the business that only I did, I gave them a full month notice.
At this point JP and I were planning the trip in earnest and coming up with all sorts of crazy ideas including cameras and sponsors. The cameras ended up being a camera, and the sponsors didn’t… But we were still on track. We started getting the bikes in order. Getting all necessary work done, getting new tires, etc.
Come the beginning of June I was free at last. I had left my job and I was thrilled. A week later, our great journey was to begin. A week and a half… two weeks later, and still nothing. The bikes still weren’t done and all we were getting were a series of lame excuses. So, finally, on a Tuesday morning around 9 we decided that it was time to go, one way or another. We were taking the Cadillac. Sure, it wasn’t a bike, but, in this case at least, the trip was about the trip, not about the transportation. (Something that most definitely has not been true for the majority of my bike trips.)
So we went out, bought a radar detector and a few other knick-knacks, and off we went. The trip would take us through 22 states and 9,000 miles in 3 weeks. From NW Indiana to Nashville, to New Orleans and then Atlanta. To Chattanooga, through New Orleans again and onwards to Houston and Galveston. Out to Austin, through Roswell, and into Albuquerque. Onwards into Las Vegas, then back to Flagstaff and the Grand Canyon, looping back through Utah and the Extra Terrestrial Highway into Nevada and through to San Francisco. Up to Portland, onwards to Seattle, a brief stop in Coeur D’Alene and down to Billings. Leaving Billings and heading to Kearney, then onto Des Moines and finally back through Chicago and then “home”. What a trip!
But that was only the beginning! Coming back I realized that there was no way I could stay in Indiana. As unimaginable as it might have been before it was now no longer in the realm of reality. And, having had a great sample of what various places in the country had to offer, I settled on Portland. I mentioned it to Eric, and given that Chicago didn’t have all that much appeal for him at the time, he said it sounded like a good idea. So a month later we’re in Portland looking at apartments. Another month after that, and I was living here!
Then the great wait… September came and went. I got lots of PC gaming done, but nothing productive. October came and went. More games, more debt, no job. November came and still nothing. Finally, by the time Todd came to visit I… well… still didn’t have a job. And then, amazingly enough, a week later I’m making plans to go out to lunch with a friend in town and I get a phone call from the temp agency I had signed up with asking me when I can start at a new job. An hour later I was at TRM. And so went the rest of November, December, and January.
Towards the end of January I spoke with JP briefly and he mentioned wanting to see the coast. So he made plans to come out and visit. He arrived in early February. We went out for dinner, talked like we always did, played PS2 and just had fun in anticipation of the weekend when I wouldn’t have to work and we’d be able to go out exploring. He was going to take a day-trip out to the coast on Friday while I was at work and then we’d go out Friday night and he’d see the city over the weekend. That was the last time I ever saw him.
It was as though the universe had been trying to teach me something for years, and I wasn’t quite getting it. I had gotten glimpses of it, and brief periods of understanding through the years, leading me to do some of the great things in the previous year, but with JP’s death the full realization of it all came crashing down onto me. You only live once, and you never know what any given moment will bring. Every day you wake up could be your last and you’ll never know it. The only choice is to live every day like it was your last, because I can’t imagine a more painful way to die than with regrets.
Shortly thereafter I flew home to visit my family and realized that I was already completely detached from that place. After 6 months, Portland was more my home than Indiana had ever been in 17 years.
A couple of months later, I went out to Martinique with my brother and had yet another reminder of why life was so great. Scuba diving, laying on the beach, reading, eating excellent food, and spending time in the company of friends. That was what life was all about. That’s what all of my work was for, for moments like those.
Coming back I was ready for more. I wanted more in life, I wanted to see more, to do more. After a brief wait I got an opportunity. A bike trip through Oregon, Washington and British Columbia. 1,300 miles in 4 days. When I finally made it back it felt like I was coming back to some strange foreign planet. So back to work I went…
And then, my current obsession. I finally got back to finishing up my skydiving certification. I had started it in Chicago last year but didn’t get a chance to finish. So I went out to Skydive Oregon, signed up, and signed over my soul, or some equivalent thereof, to take all of the classes and do all of the jumps.
After my ground school, coming to the door of the plane at 13,000 feet, I remember thinking briefly to myself, “What the hell am I thinking? I must be crazy!” But I wasn’t crazy. I was very sane. I was living life! I wasn’t about to let it pass me by, only to have it ripped away from me on a gloomy Friday afternoon! So out I went! And again, and again, and again. And now, 24 jumps later, I can’t imagine life any other way. It’s why I live. It’s why I work, and why I get up in the morning… to fly! To soar through the air, to be completely free. To let loose, be alive, and feel one with the world around me.
I don’t know God, I haven’t seen him, nor has he spoken to me. But I have been in his home, and it is glorious. It’s where I want to spend all of my time. Up in the sky, in the infinite expanse of blue. Over the beauty of the rivers, through the pure wind, looking over the expanses of wondrous mountains, and downward through the land all around. That’s where God lives, that’s where I spend my time, that’s where I belong.
And that is where I stand now. After all this time, this is my life. I have not yet fulfilled my obligation to the bet that I made with myself that evening in Indianapolis. I have not yet done something truly great. But I’m well on my way. And for once, I’m not a whopping 26 years old. I am truly and wonderfully only 26. I have made great leaps and strides in life. And if I can do this in one year, just think what I can do by the time I’m 30, 40, or older. How wonderful, this gift of life!
