...with no where to go. I'm hitting the trail for a week, then I have a job interview in New Hampshire, and that's as far as my plans go.
I've been packing all morning, refining my necessities in the process. Things I didn't use will go into storage, and I'll pull out some winter clothing. Packing up all my stuff takes about an hour. I want to get it down to about half an hour.
Everyone sleeps, and usually the hardest part about traveling is finding a good place to do it. Housing is expensive, and comfort is important. This series of posts shares some of my solutions to finding a cozy place to spend the night:
-Many people have spent nights in travel hubs. They're not the most comfortable nights, and usually sleeping on an airport seat happens by accident. For me, an airport or train station is a haven for sleeping. I just take out my sleeping pad, fresh from the trail, and lay it down next to all the seats, and I'm the envy of all the cramped travelers huddled onto the chairs. Those little plastic arms really are the hated enemy of comfortable rest. Luckily, on most models, you can slide your torso underneath the armrest, bend your knees over the next one, and rest your head on the adjoining armrest, to span 3 seats and get horizontal. That is, if you don't have your own self-inflating air mattress that you haul around with you (ok, I only have mine when going to/from the trail). I've styled my own sleeping arrangements in the airports of the US, the UK, Spain and Portugal.
-Lacking an enclosed traveler waiting area, which can be found at most airports or train stations, other accommodations must be found. In many train stations in Italy, the passenger waiting area was previously engaged. Many Rom families would move into the enclosed area at night, and turn it into an exclusive hostel. Not wanting to get mixed up in that, I politely found a place to sleep elsewhere. As I say, I really don't want to get into a turf war with gypsies. I'd find a quiet corner (no sense looking for a clean corner, it's Italy after all), and unroll my trusty sleeping pad. I found that if I buried myself in my sleeping bag, and slept on my valuables, with my bag right beside me, no one would bother me. It was a light sleep, but it was pretty obvious that I was a poor tourist backpacking around Europe, and neither the night watch nor the commuters would disturb me. The morning rush would wake me and I'd move on, so I wouldn't be sleeping through too much traffic.
-One of my favorite places to sleep, especially in the late winter/early spring, as nights were unexpectedly frigid, is off-duty trains. There's plenty of uneasiness that comes with dozing off for a few hours in a train car. Where will you wake up? Will an angry conductor shake you awake, demanding your ticket or else he'll turn you over to the police? Will the security guard mistake you for a graffiti artist and unleash his attack dog upon you? Sometimes the trains get cleaned at night, so the cleaning crew may discover you (as it happened to me in Salermo). If they're nice, they point you to a train that they already cleaned, and excitedly help you open the heavy doors. Not all discovery is bad, but I tended to avoid people checking the trains, or walking around the station. I don't get deep sleep in train compartments, but it's much warmer than the station, usually, and it's padded, unlike the stone benches. Seats are less comfortable than places where one can recline, but it's all a tradeoff. Traveling, at least how I do it, is not about comfort. It's about the destination. And for a free night's sleep, a train station that never closes can provide a warm and secure sleeping space.
Everyone sleeps, and usually the hardest part about traveling is finding a good place to do it. Housing is expensive, and comfort is important. This series of posts shares some of my solutions to finding a cozy place to spend the night:
-As a recap of adventures detailed in other parts of my blog, I will reiterate some sleeping arrangements. I have slept in my car on multiple occasions. I have found that the best place to sleep in one's car is at a rest stop alongside a toll highway, since the bathroom is right there, breakfast is there, it's lit, it's populated and it's not accessible by random people walking up. Toll highway rest stops, however, are not my usual travel destination, and not always available along the route. Lacking a rest stop, I usually head to a hotel parking lot. Overnight parking, no one asks questions, sometimes security patrols the area, and it's lit. Bathrooms do tend to get a little hard to find, as most hotels don't have public restrooms. But luckily, there's usually a restaurant nearby. The worst place to sleep in one's car, I have found, is state parks. When the little signs says "closes at dusk," they might not mean right at dusk, but the park does close. Usually it's about 6 hours later, after midnight, when a police officer will knock on your window, very loudly, with a flashlight shining in your face. And most of the time, they'll make you move along. Then you find a hotel parking lot.
It's been one of those long days, across many miles. I find myself reviewing recent experiences, which have been crazy enough to become good stories, and realizing that these events happened today.
I woke up at 5am, Central Time, after 4 hours of sleep, to pack and catch a 5:30 shuttle to the airport. When I changed my pick up time, the shuttle company was very adamant about me taking responsibility for missing my flight; it wouldn't be their fault if I got to the airport too late. I got to the airport with plenty of time to do self-check-in and get my small backpack through security. Until I checked in at the wrong airline, then went to the correct airline only to find that my reservation had been voided. So I called the emergency travel assistance number that Princess had given me with my travel reservations, only to find that the number had been disconnected.
Deep breath.
Another occasion when I am grateful for internet access on my phone. Looked up the correct number, got my flight renewed, waited for a confirmation from California (it was 4am there... I wonder how that phone call went...) and finally checked in. To run into a big backup at a small security screening station.
But the line moved fast, I got my steel toed shoes through security without getting accused of smuggling bombs (I worried, a bit, what they would think when they saw that x-ray), and I got to the gate with a couple minutes to spare before boarding.
Then I didn't sleep on the flight, after getting jolted awake by the lack of flight reservations...
Smooth transfer in Charlotte, NC, to a bigger plane. A short delay, but I was a little bit delirious at that point, so couldn't comprehend the consequences of a delayed flight, or entertain the possibility of a canceled flight. I finally slept on the plane for a little while, then was jolted awake by the landing. Grabbed my backpack and made my way to the train in a haze.
I took public transport home (hadn't taken public transport yet all the way to the current place I'm living, so I just felt it out), stopping to check my mail (my PO box is across the city from where I currently live).
A brief rest, a brief sandwich thrown together, then off to work, to do electrics notes, then house manage one of the Live Arts Festival's busiest shows.
From Texas Hill Country to the streets of Philadelphia, this has been a long day.
And now I should go do laundry.
I have never been to Texas before, aside from many layovers in Dallas-Ft Worth airport (I'm starting to recognize locations of food courts--that's pretty familiar). I am now in Austin for a couple days, down at High End System's headquarters, learning to program the Whole Hog 3.
Princess Cruise Lines, which has recently hired me, is flying me down, putting me up in a hotel, and providing most of my meals, just so that I can learn a new programming language. Pretty sweet gig. And I don't even have a contract with them yet.
So all of my paperwork is in, and everything is in line, but still no start date. My life is still on hold as I await, with bated breath, the inevitable job offer. But I dislike my life being on hold. In fact, I'm recently coming off of a life-holding experience (college, anyone?), and wish to avoid it. Well, the cruise gig is worth waiting for, and I have confidence that I'll make the most of the hold.
Here at fixture training, I've met up with 3 other Princess employees, who are all terrific fun, and two have already completed contracts on boats. There are great stories being exchanged, as me and the other guy without cruise experience hungrily soak up all the details of ship life, and we all relate our past paths and future career trajectories. We're an international bunch, coming from Philly, Florida, New Zealand and the UK. I leave after console training, but there's fixture training next week, when more international hires arrive. They say that there won't be too many Americans on the boat. I'll probably be the only one in Production.
Awesome.
So I get a taste of my upcoming job, right in the middle of the Philly Fringe festival. Monday was a whirlwind day, starting with a work call at 9am in a theater in Philly and ending with a company-arranged van dropping me at a hotel in Austin. And I'll be back in Philly Thursday afternoon, just in time to resume house managing, and probably pick up more work calls.
Regular week.
My life is nicely organized, well-planned and stable. Until September 20th. After that, no plans.
That's the extreme version.
The real version is that I have a long list of things that I could do. And plenty of time to do it. I have some pretty exciting finalists, and a couple weeks to figure something out.
What I could be doing after September 20th, realistically:
1. Work on a cruise ship (I was hired by Princess Cruises as a lighting supervisor to travel with one of their ships)
2. Attend training for a troubled teen wilderness therapy program, to become one of their counselors (I'm currently in the hiring process)
3. Hit the trail (I have maps and plans for the Pennsylvania Mid State Trail, stretching from Maryland to New York)
4. Work at a dog sledding kennel in Alaska (I have a phone interview today to check out a position)
So while my life is in flux, and I have no sure future, I know that I will do something fun. I have confidence that I will end up not only doing something, but doing something interesting.
But while all of these paths are well-thought-out, not all of them will come to pass. If I almost worked at a dog sledding kennel in Alaska, that's not news. That's hype, not worth mentioning. Just talk. I like to follow through on things that I said I would do. So if I say it, I do it.
So until I know what I'm doing, I'm not saying anything.
Everyone sleeps, and usually the hardest part about traveling is finding a good place to do it. Housing is expensive, and comfort is important. This series of posts shares some of my solutions to finding a cozy place to spend the night:
-In a tent in the middle of a cow pasture right outside of a small town in Northern England. I'm sure the town had a name, but after over a week on the trail, they all ran together. I was hiking England's Coast To Coast, a path first tramped by the fellwalker Alfred Wainwright. It was my first multi-night backpacking trip, my first solo trip and my first self-planned trip. I would walk all day, then find a convenient campsite (read: minuscule patch of ground, moderately flat, near the trail) when it got dark. At the end of this day, I was just entering a small town, and couldn't get through it before dark. So instead of seeking lodgings in the town like a normal person (England is very expensive, especially with the exchange rate at the time), I plopped down in a nice field right across from a school. There was an abandoned barn on the fence line, but when I pushed in and looked around, I found needles littering the ground. Oops. Backpedal. So it was into the middle of the field with my white tent for me. I spent the night, woke up with the dawn, packed up, and was on my way through the town. No one bothered me.
