What I Do.

"I should not talk so much about myself if there was anybody else whom I knew as well." Walden - Henry David Thoreau

I've been on the road for 108 days. Three and a half times longer than any previous road trip. I have over 250,000 miles on my 1992 Honda Accord. It has a laundry list of faults, but the engine turns when I put in the key and the wheels spin - so it's all good. On this trip I've driven less than 500 miles on any major interstate. I enjoy roads which lay straight to the horizon with no cars in sight. This trip becomes less of a "trip" everyday - I'm just living - L-I-V-I-N. Take Tuesday, November 2nd for instance. I was camping with Scott in the Sante Fe National Forest. While you were working, voting, and watching 24 hour news to find out what new idiots will be working in our government, I was waking up with the sun, reading my book until I felt like wrestling out of my sleeping bag. For the remainder of the day I watched wood turn to flame and ash, watched ravens and crows talk to each other, ate food when I felt like it, peed in the grass when I had to and watched the sun dip down to fill the night sky with a billion stars and a creamy milky way - a great day. Every day is a great day. These past three and half months have been the greatest of my life. I don't mean to boast or brag - I really try to keep my pride in check - but then I'd be proud of doing that - so there's little point in trying to hide it. I mean, shit, this is so awesome. I have no one to answer to, nothing to worry about, everyday I'm outside 90% of the time. There's no stress in what I'm doing. A "bad" day on the road is better than any good day I may have as an employee. If I have to blow my nose I do so on my hand. I use Newton's 1st law to get the snot off. Any remaining goop on my hand? I wipe it on my jeans. If I need water and I'm at a gas station I use the bathroom tap. If I need water and I'm outside I use a stream. I shower when I can, but have no problem going as long as necessary. Between showers I bathe in a stream or a bathroom to wash the essential areas. There are days when I don't touch my cell phone or log into Facebook, but I still do both far more often then should ever be necessary. I wear a watch. I like to know the time. I drive with one hand on the wheel. Sometimes I drive with two, always ten and two. I'll rip open a can of sardines and eat it. I don't care what's going on in the news, but I'll read a paper every few days or so. My goals on a daily basis are to read as much as possible, eat, and find a safe place to sleep. I try to stretch and do pushups every day, but don't always. I think about what I'm doing and where I'm going and most days I don't really know. Yes, one day this will all be over and I'll be back in the "real" world, but right now I'm not sure why I would ever do that. I'm not sure why so many people are doing that. I don't understand a lot - I know this, but I'm trying. I don't know where my future leads and I don't care. I'm living for the moment - today - right now. A year from now doesn't matter - it will come - I'll probably teach again - hopefully I'll find a good girl and have a family some day, but that doesn't matter right now. This is it - this is everything.

Scott and I spent a total of nine days in Utah, three in Colorado, and are now cruising around New Mexico for a while. Everything is great. I hope all is great with you. Thanks for reading - I really do appreciate it and it's nice to know someone cares to know what I'm doing. I'm doing just fine. Happy November.

Walden Quotes I was feeling...

"Most men, even in this comparatively free country, through mere ignorance and mistake, are so occupied with the factitious cares and superfluously coarse labors of life that its finer fruits cannot be plucked by them."

"The head monkey in Paris puts on a traveler's cap, and all the monkey's in America do the same."

"And when the farmer has got his house, he may not be the richer but the poorer for it, and it may be the house that got him."

"How could youths better learn to live than by at once trying the experiment of living?"

"I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived."

"And I'm sure that I never read any memorable news in a newspaper. If we read of one man robbed, or murdered, or killed by accident, or one house burned, or one vessel wrecked, or one steamboat blown up, or one cow run over on the Western Railroad, or one mad dog killed, or one lot of grasshoppers in the winter, - we never need read of another."

"Not till we are lost, in other words not till we have lost the world, do we begin to find ourselves, and realize where we are and the infinite extent of out relations."

"The greatest gains and values are furthest from being appreciated. We easily come to doubt if they exist. We soon forget them. They are the highest reality."

"While I enjoy the friendship of the seasons I trust that nothing can make life a burden to me."