Katie offered to help him take his spare bags to the car when I stopped her.
“He’s gonna have to learn how to do it.”
They were headed to OAK airport and late. In two hours Marty was flying out of Oakland, down to LAX for a connecting flight to New Zealand tonight. From there, he and his traveling companion Skittles would be crisscrossing, couchsurfing, panhandling, and hiking their way out to Japan and somehow ending up in Russia by March-ish before flying back and, possibly, couchsurfing at our place while he resumes ordinary life.
Yesterday, he spent six hours at REI here in Dublin [San Francisco East Bay], trying on the right hiking pants and working out which backpack to take. He went back this morning to buy a backpack that had padding.
It wasn’t until late last night that I learned he was trying set up his blog site to chronicle the adventure.
We finished his site together.
Sure, you can set up a WordPress blog in minutes, as with any other blogging platform. To make it work for you takes about a day’s worth of plugins and registrations and design.
Three hours ago, I finished the last of his website tweaks. Once he gets content, we’ll start to fill in the shell.
Two hours before he headed to OAK, Marty returned from SFO where he had to do his international interview. It was scheduled for 4 hours before the flight. Luckily, their appointments times are more like guidelines and they snuck him in.
He never made it back out to Best Buy to try and buy a Pixel at retail, and convert it to Google Project Fi for the trip. He was going to have to try and swap sim cards as he went – or get really, really lucky in New Zealand. That’s if he figures out a way to pay for it. I have a feeling he’ll be hitting up Bruer about how to use BitWallet™ on the fly.
We made it to the car.
It was the first time I saw his CamelBak® straw peeking out of his bag.
It was the first time Marty was trying out all his new gear to see how hard it would be to travel with it.
I could tell you I was lying about that, but I’d be lying.
For as incredible as my wife is at packing gear, not everything made the bag. I already ate the Honey & Oats granola bar. There are some flexi Band-Aids here for anyone who needs them. He accidentally took Katie’s water bottle instead of his. Tradesies. Sorry, the padding-less backpack he originally was going to take is sitting behind me by the front door and we’re keeping it. We’re turning it into our go-bags in case the big one hits.
“We already have our Camelbaks in it.” – Katie
I can’t believe he left his signature black beanie behind.
I can’t believe he’s getting on that plane. Or the next one.
As for courage, he took it with him.
This isn’t the same Marty I met five years ago when he came with Katie down to Duneland for the first time. It’s still the same Marty that fell in love with Blackbird Café, but that’s because that kind of love is timeless.
This Marty has seen a thing or two. This Marty isn’t, to paraphrase my wife paraphrasing Seth Godin paraphrasing Voltaire, so obsessed with making perfect choices that it’s keeping him from making good decisions. This Marty isn’t worried that he hasn’t yet mapped anything out or that he’s going to come back with an extra zero or two in his bank account.
The old Marty was incredible. This Marty kicked ass, even though his first flight’s now delayed. Even though, as I post this, he’s calling my wife to tell us that the Southwest desk in LAX sent him from Terminal 2 to the International Terminal only to have the International Terminal send him back to Terminal 2 – and the flight’s about to take off.
He’ll be blogging about his travels. Once he’s done he’ll have literally traveled west around the world, hiking a great deal of it.
You can follow his adventures on his world-traveling & hiking website. He’ll have social media accounts once he’s doing perfectly sorting out which ones he’ll be associating with his trip.
Good on you, mate.
I’ll be honored to have you use our couch when you get back – or spare room bed. I’ll be even more honored to hear the stories you didn’t get time to blog about.
Be safe, but not too safe. Have a little fun.
First, Bruer travels about. Now Marty. H’mmm. Maybe the universe is saying something to us.
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