We (mom, dad, brother and I) are nearly packed up and ready to head out to LAX. A three hour drive, a couple hours at the airport and then a fourteen hour flight to Sydney. Whew.

We “miss” New Years because of time zones, but maybe they’ll do something on the plane. Hopefully they’ll just let us sleep. This is the first new year I haven’t been working all by myself in a studio somewhere so I actually like the idea of skipping it all together. Next year I will do something interesting and count that as my first new year’s evening not working.

I’ve been so busy with traveling in a car that until now I hadn’t really thought much about this month in Australia. This last week though I’ve finally had a chance. It’s going to be very different from the traveling I’ve just finished doing and what I’ll be doing again when I get back.

Traveling with three other people will probably be a bit of an adjustment. I think for the first week or so I will enjoy not having to make the decisions about where to go or what to do next, but then I’m going to start wanting to do my own stuff even when that’s really a lack of anything. One of my favorite things to do when I was in Italy was walking around the cities. I loved sitting around on benches or church/museum steps and tatting. Tatting, as I’ve said before, is an excellent way to strike up a conversation since people want to know what you’re doing. Tricky in Italy since I speak very little Italian, but slowing down and showing them step by step is still works to connect.

Being on a more structured trip will take some adjusting too, we’ll have about the same amount of time in various cities as I’d been spending on my trip, but the very fact that I could have stayed longer than originally planned if I wanted (and as I did in Albuquerque), made it a different experience. In the van, the length of time I stayed in one place was based on what I wanted to do, in Australia and New Zealand what we do will be (somewhat) based on how long we have.

This is really just a small section of the much larger topic of various types of travel. When planning for taking my year off I was surprised with how many people wanted to know why I was traveling around the US and not going over seas. It’s a very different type of travel. I’ll write more about this later. Right now we’ve got to leave in about a hour and I still have to pick out some tatting to take along. I’m only taking a little (love traveling light) so need to decide what color of thread I want to look at for the next month.

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I’m sitting in the Arizona tourist information center in Lake Havasu, about 30 yards from the London Bridge.  Yesterday was the Festival of Lights.  

 I should back up.

I started out from San Diego and head out first to Anza-Borrego about a week ago.  I made it as far as Julian before it got dark, .  Had there been space for it, the eleventh commandment would have been “Thou Shalt Not Pass Through Julian, California Without Purchasing An Apple-Pastry Product.”

 So I got an Apple turnover and headed on to Anza-Borrego in the dark. 

 Anza-Borrego is the largest state park in California and I believe the largest in the continental states.  

 Turns out the desert is hot.  Even in mid November.  And it’s even hotter when you’re pushing your bike back to the visitor center because you’ve gotten a flat less than 2 miles out on the first bike ride of your big trip. 

 Alas.  At least I hadn’t gotten very far.  I had a repair kit with me, but since I was so close just headed back to the car, and reflected on what it would have been like to cross this area with Jaun Bautista de Anza in the 1700s, and the solitude of the desert, (in between turning down offers of help). 

 That night I fixed the flat, promptly pinched the tube and flattened it again and decided I would until I made it to a bike shop for a new tube and a new set of tire levers since the plastic ones I had tended to bend more than actually pry.  As it turned out I needed a new tire as well.  All that was finally accomplished here in Lake Havasu yesterday. 

 Not having a bike has put a bit of a damper on the first couple towns of my trip, but now that it’s up and running, (with hopefully no more flats for a while), I’m looking forward to seeing how my back reacts to a biking. 

 My back continues to hurt, alternating between extreme pain and general annoyance.  I’ve found that if I sleep on my back it seems to help, as does walking around for a while, but those first 20 yards are a very slow shuffle.  At some points I’m almost afraid to sit down for fear that I won’t be able to stand back up. 

 I discovered yesterday that Advil helps.  I always forget about things like that.  Still I’d rather figure out what caused it to start in the first place.  It’s been over two weeks now and I’d like to be back to normal. 

After Anza-Borrego I spent a day at the Southern end of the Salton Sea.  Both are places I’ll probably go back and explore a bit more, but the heat, (and lack of a bike) spurred me on.  Also I hadn’t quite gotten used to the fact that this is not a normal road trip.  hadn’t quite figured out how to slow down yet, (actually, I’m still working on this).  Spending my third night at a proper campground next to the Salton Sea helped with this.  (One of the great things about Anza-Borrego is that the entire park is open for boondocking.)  If I’m going to pay $17 for a campground I’m going to take advantage of it.  So I enjoyed the minor luxury of having a little plot of land all to myself and spent the evening and next morning reading and relaxing.  

The next two nights were spend outside of Quartzsite, AZ, the winter mecca of snowbirds.  In January and February it swells to nearly a million RVs in town and on the BLM lands around town.  It is a ghost of that now, but fun to wander around for a bit.  I’ll also probably be going back there at some point, but on Thursday, (Thanksgiving), I was going a bit stir crazy because nothing was happening and nothing was open.  Damn holiday!  So I headed north and ended up here in Lake Havasu. 

There is more, of course, but this is a public computer and I’ve monopolized it for long enough.  I’m going to attempt to stand up and hobble down to the London town shops to walk around for a bit and loosen my back before getting back in the car and heading out to Kingman.

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…a year and a half of planning, and three years of thinking about it, I am now only a few days away from actually getting started. It’s only just started to sink in that I’m finally this close to leaving. Lately my life has been busy enough that I haven’t had time to think about the “future” even when the future was only a couple days away.

All throughout October I was focused on the KJAZZ pledge drive and really had no time for anything else. As soon as that ended it was off to Chicago for the 3rd Coast festival, and I could barely wrap my head around plans for that. (In fact, I shoveled most of the planning off to my dear, sweet friend Connie who I badgered until I convinced her to go and then proceeded to let her take charge of booking the plane tickets, the hotel room and figuring out how to get from one place to the next once in Chicago. Thanks Connie!)

Once that was done all I could think about was finishing off KJAZZ stuff so I could head down to San Diego as quickly as possible and focus on packing for my trip. And now I’m here and almost so focused on the packing that I’m forgetting what I’m packing for.

It still hasn’t sunk in that I don’t need to rush, and that if I leave a day later than I originally planned it’s perfectly fine. Suddenly I have no deadlines, no plans, and no need to be anywhere in particular.

Which is nice because I have to-do list a full page long and two columns. Even after a full year on the road I doubt I’ll be able to shake my addiction to making to do lists. I may not follow through with them once made, but I think I’ll enjoy it when the things on the list are:

1. bike around
2. sample regional foods
3. meet people interview someone cool
4. hike someplace beautiful
5. take tons of pictures
6. check out museums
7. sit quietly and tat up some new piece of lace
8. read a book or two
9. write in journal
10. drive somewhere new and repeat 1-9

Maybe I should change it from a “to do list” to a “could do list.”

There was a glimmer of this new reality sinking in as I approached my parents house on Tuesday night. I was listening to an interview with “The Hungry Cyclist.” He mentioned a book that had inspired him to take his bike trip around North and South America. I made a mental note to check out that book when I’m on my trip and had time. Only then did I realized that time was less than a week away. But I still don’t think it will really sink in until I’m actually on the road.

For the last two years I have been putting aside books I want to read and things I want to do, waiting for this trip and now suddenly it’s nearly upon me. I have an absurd number of books to savor, an pile of crafting supplies, hours of interesting radio shows and podcasts to listen to, and a huge continent with nearly half a billion people, many of whom, I suspect, are interesting.

And now, finally, there’s nothing between me and the road more complicated than figuring out how many books I can fit in the van.

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Last week I had 3 (three!!) days off so I headed up to Santa Barbara for a little sight-seeing.

It was great, I toured the Santa Barbara and Santa Ynez missions, talked with strangers, hung out on the pier, watched dolphin and seals in the ocean, tatted, read Jorge Luis Borges, did some writing, almost went on a glider flight over the valley (too overcast), and ate excellent blackberry pie with an awesome crust at a place that also had very beautiful baked potatoes. It even rained one night for about 20 minutes which was very nice. I can’t wait to be out in the (parked) van in a proper rain storm, preferably somewhere with a nice view.

It was also a nice experiment in going to a new place and finding (free) places to sleep. This involved some driving around, but wasn’t too hard, except for getting crazy lost one night in Goleta and ending up on a dirt road somewhere near the UC Santa Barbara campus. It was nice to know that I could show up in a new town and find places, though Santa Barbara is pretty friendly to homes on wheels.

The state parks up there are $25 a night. Seeing that just makes me like the grocery store parking lots more. You can eat quite well on $25. And I did. Spent too much money on food that week, but it was well worth it.

Yesterday, I spent the holiday morning at work taking advantage of the fact that there was no around and I could actually get a editing booth, and then spent the afternoon hiking. Except for the heat (which was actually not as bad as the weekend) it was quite a pleasant day. Though I did kill my battery running the fan and the radio in the evening. Got a jump from the vandweller parked next to me and was on my way.

Categories: Locations, Travel
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