Across the country again

In 1998, I graduated from Virginia Tech with an engineering degree. I had no idea what I wanted to do with my life. I only knew that I didn't want to be an engineer. I was thinking, at the time, along the lines of mechanic, or environmental educator. The mechanic thing didn't work out, though I still find myself under the occasional shade tree from time to time.

I spent the summer after graduation partying hard and working a night shift job at a construction site on campus pulling wires for a construction company, making more money than I had ever made in my life. For $6.25/hr I was hanging out with my good friends, falling for a girl, working, getting paid, and hitting the bar at 12:30 am to start a night of partying. Sleeping until after noon, going to work. Repeat. It wasn't too bad of a life. I was always happy hanging out in Blacksburg, partying, doing a radio show, drinking cheap beers at the Cellar, falling for beautiful hippie girls. But one fateful day I was sitting downtown on a bench. Probably smoking, probably people watching. I happened to run into Nathan and Lorena, and they were discussing an upcoming move to San Francisco. On a whim, I asked if maybe I could come along. I figured San Francisco would be a good place to start off the next phase of my life, the "after college" phase. Nathan said yes. This was to be the first of a series of cross country trips. This first one was accomplished in a 24 ft Ryder truck and a early 90s Nissan Sentra sedan, with two dogs and four people. The two dogs consumed a lot of dramamine, the four people many a cigarette. We managed to clip the side of a shed with the truck while leaving Kent St. on the east coast. On our arrival in San Francisco, we managed to bend the drive shaft of the truck pulling into the parking lot of our new home.

In 2001 I found myself, suddenly, without a job, and therefore without a place to live, and without the money to pay rent in the San Francisco area. I had left my well paid job as an Engineering Technician to continue pursuing that environmental education dream. I was living in an amazing house in an amazing park just north of San Francisco. But I hadn't really thought too far ahead when I accepted the 6 month position, and when August rolled around, I realized I did not have prospects for work in the Bay Area, and the when the job ended the housing it provided ended too. So I sold the motorcycle, and packed up the Civic for a trip back to the east coast, where I had landed a job in the White Mountains of New Hampshire on short notice. This was to be a great break from my California life, a great place to teach, a great place to finally experience some real wintertime, a place where I found myself immersed in an amazing community of great people. Along the way I managed to sleep in a couple of rest stops, traverse the Badlands and an equivalent confusing alien terrain of emotions, listen to a BBC performance of the Lord of the Rings trilogy (not recommended for road trips, get the books on tape instead) rather than James Earl Jones reading the Bible (it was a hard choice), and almost die getting myself stupidly lost amongst cows and long long roads in the Black Hills of South Dakota.

A few years later, I found myself doing the edumacation thing in Acadia, ME. An amazing place. Beautiful. Mountains meet the ocean. Epic. Also, crowded. My friend and I had both spent some time in San Francisco, and we met there in Acadia. We had a few conversations about how, well, yeah, Acadia is beautiful, ME is beautiful, but really, well, the Northern California coast is comparatively more beautiful and much less crowded. We both ended up in California again before too long. I spent the winter in MD at my parents house working in a homebrew supply store, and then at Sunday River Ski Resort in ME, paying cheap rent, living with great friends and my first baby buddy (Simon, who was 6 months at the time, and loved it when I played the Beatles on guitar for him), and learning to snowboard. In March I drove across the country. Of this trip, I recall that I crashed late in a campground in western TN, then woke up early to dodge the fee. I drove, I believe, from TN to New Mexico, not being able to cope with the midwest at the time. You might recall that this was the advent of the stupid war in Iraq. When I hit Flagstaff, AZ, I found a hostel, and met a very cute girl who was feeling equally compelled to go for a drink and some food. We went out and talked a blue streak. Turns out she was a southern baptist who believed we were finally fighting the jihad we good christians should be fighting against the heathen muslims. No, she wasn't from Flagstaff. Luckily, there were many other great people at the hostel to balance my impression.

On arrival in CA, I started work at a place that was to change my life, the Mendocino Woodlands. I became a naturalist deep in the redwoods. My edges softened, my cynicism started to fade, I learned a greater appreciation for reggae music.

It is now 6 years and 2.5 months later. I am running late on my cycle of moving across the country. But tomorrow I do it again. This time, a return to the homeland. I will be driving towards MD, the long way through NV, Grand Tetons, Yellowstone, the Badlands, across the Mississippi, through Ohio, and home through the Cumberland Gap. I have a job waiting in MD, taking water quality samples for the state. Who knows what comes afterwards. I look forwards to thunderstorms, muggy summer nights, lightning bugs, family, old friends, new babies, Charm City, sailing?, paddling some east coast marshes, and hurting my knees on icy slopes this winter. I intend to teach myself to take nothing for granted.

Happy trails, CA. It's been, well, utopic.