Monday Morning Musings
Posted on January 12, 2015 under Monday Morning Musings with no comments yet
Farewell to the Pacific Ocean
The last leg of the transcontinental odyssey begins later today with a red eye flight across Canada. I plan on getting a start on a full length story about the trip. I have posted quite a bit already but I would like to put the entire trip into one piece. My guess is that I aggravated the hell out of some people with all the posts and pictures on Facebook. My goal was to share my journey…. and not create envy. I wanted to keep telling stories during my time away from home and this travelogue was simply a substitute for my usual stories.
I got a lot of great story ideas from the trip. One of my favorites happened with the breakdown of our car right at the Texas border. You have to roll with the punches when adversity strikes. It’s not like you have a lot of choice in the matter. As long as a person doesn’t suffer any personal harm, car problems have to be dealt with. Luckily ours was minor. I might be singing a far different tune if the engine had blown while crossing hundreds of miles of the bayou in Louisiana.
The heart of the story, “Zen and Now,” centers around the hour I spent at the auto repair shop. “Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance” meets the Maury Povich show. I have never been in a situation where there was such a disconnect between my reality and that of the other customers waiting to get their cars fixed.
The other story I’m working on is about the episode about running low on gas in Bakersfield, Texas. Picture yourself in Podunk, Nowhere in the middle of the desert along with a dozen other travellers, lined up at a gas station, that doesn’t have any gas. Once again, perspective and circumstance is everything. If I was a parent traveling with a few small children, this situation would feel much different. We were just two lowly Maritimers on a trip with no fixed plans, lots of food and water, and four cold beer. If we had had to wait until noon the following day until the station received a fresh supply of gas, it wouldn’t have been a great hardship. I’ll tell you one thing, that would have made one hell of a story. I have this image of Peter and I wailing away on our guitars under the desert stars. I may do a story about what might have happened. Coming up, “No Fuelling Around. “
Just one little sidebar. Through the power of Facebook ( again! ) I found out that two people from my past were both going to be in the Victoria area. One was a friend from St.F.X who I hadn’t seen in 32 years. The other was a lady who was a student of mine 35 years ago in Northern Alberta. I was principal of her school when she was in grade 2. It is wonderful to meet up with people from your past and find out how life has unfolded for them.
As I will be in transit for the next day, I won’t be publishing my regular Tuesday story. Yeah, I know, I’m a slacker but I don’t think they have wireless internet on my overnight flight.
Have a great week.
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