I've been writing this forever. I've let it go too long. Life keeps piling up. Wrangling it all together proves difficult. Unruly size. Unwieldy dimensions.
-----
My 31st birthday fell on a weekday. Thusly, I took the day off work. I slept in. Bought a coffee. Packed a bag. Grabbed my boombox. Picked up a babe. Drove into the wilderness. Hiked a few miles. Swam in the river. Sunsoaked on the beach. Drank some whiskey from a flask. Listened to Michael Jackson. Kissed her. Drove back to the city. Rinsed the sand off. Shared a shower. Stayed naked. A few hours later, I'm eating a delicious hamburger, her treat.
-----
My 32nd birthday feel on a weekday. Thusly, I took the day off work. I slept in. Brewed some coffee. Packed a bag. Grabbed my boombox. Picked up my girlfriend. Drove to the coast. Hiked a few miles. Swam in the ocean. Sunsoaked on the beach. Drank some whiskey from a flask. Listened to Elton John. Kissed her. Drove back to the city. Rinsed off the sand. Shared a shower. Stayed naked. A few hours later, I'm eating a delicious homemade lasagna.
-----
She's spending the week housesitting for a friend, so she invites me over for dinner. It's an older house with a sizable back yard, which is good, since two giant huskies live here. We sit on their porch steps, drinking cider, watching the setting sun while the dogs run around. I play a guitar that only has three strings. We return to the house for a delicious meal (note: it was just okay). After I clean up these stranger's kitchen ("where does this go?"), we end up making out on their bed for awhile.
She takes a break to grab some water. Walking into the kitchen, she releases a horrifying scream. I'm at my feet in seconds. Entering the room, I see both huskies. Their white faces stained a deep red. Blood.
After a few minutes of panic, I discover a pile of shredded opossums on the back porch. A mother and her children. While we were asleep at the switch, the dogs were killing a sizable portion of an opossum family.
She's freaking out. Understandably so. It's a gruesome mess. I make a deal with her: she cleans the dogs, I'll clean up the gristle. She agrees. Snapping into action, I find a shoebox in the garage, some dishwashing gloves and proceed to scoop things up. I ceremoniously place the box in the trash can.
Fare the well, those opossums who hadn't a taste of life's finest fruits.
-----
I helped build an iOS app for a big museum in New York City. It's a big step for them, since they've been slow to adopt modern technology. They're making a big deal of it. To celebrate, they throw a gala. They invite my team and I to come party. I graciously accept.
We arrive a day before the event. After getting our lodging situated, I slip away from the group to meet up with one of my closest friends. She brings her (beautiful) friend with her. Bouncing around the (horribly humid) city, we take part in massive amounts sushi and sake and whiskey and laughter. Around 2am, I call it quits and hail a cab.
I reunite with the crew the next morning and head to the museum. I spend much of the day marveling at the exhibits. Even with a mild hangover: exceptional.
After a stop at the hotel for a wardrobe change, we return to the museum for the gala later that night. We're escorted to a giant room which contains a real-deal Egyptian temple, a horde of beautiful people and a giant stage. We drink wine while we watch a rock band that was really big in 2002.
Afterwards, we sneak up onto the roof and smoke a joint. Someone points out a building that was in Ghostbusters. The crowd goes wild.
-----
My friend turns 30 and rents an absurdly luxurious, mansion-sized cabin deep in the Oregon wilderness. A bit of research shows that the cabin was built in the 1970s by a hash trafficker, who eventually had his palace seized. We spend three days exploring the woods, sitting in the hot tub, sitting in the sauna, sitting in the sun and playing a real-deal 14 person game of hide-and-seek -- inside the house.
-----
My friend turns 28 and rents a whole section of a trailer park situated near a beach. It's a charming little campground that is furnished with old Airstream campers. We spend our days walking the beaches, we spend our nights tearing up a nearby dive bar. We befriend a few of the locals. They make us promise that we'll be back same time, next year to check in on them. We oblige.
EDIT: a year later, we did *not* go back and check in on them. I hope they're okay.
-----
I somehow ended up playing bass in a Misfits cover band, "Sweet Lovely Death." We were to play the company Halloween party. I was skeptical that it would actually happen, but it did, and it turned out pretty goddamned great.
We practiced a total of four times and managed to figure out a 15 song set. We got a stage and a decent PA donated for the event. We rented a fog machine and some purple lights. I edited together a bunch of old horror movie footage to be projected behind us.
The party itself turned out to be fierce. A big warehouse. 10 kegs of beer. A few crates of vodka. A few hundred people.
Around 11pm, we take the stage and rock it out -- the most fun than I've had in years. As a bonus, as a result of this scenario, I have a much greater appreciation / understanding of Mr. Danzig.
-----
I still play a lot of music by myself, but after having so much fun with that cover band, I realize I should be playing with people more often. In days following the show, I spend time on craigslist to familiarize myself with the community of 'musicians wanted.'
"Fuzz, Reverb & Weed" read the post. Opening it revealed a "list of bands we wish we were," which was mostly comprised of fuzzy bands from the mid to late 90s. The authors were two guys. They said they had a practice space lined up and were serious. I responded. We trade a few e-mails. They suggested we meet up.
Based on their musical tastes, I figured they'd probably be my age, maybe a little bit older. A bit shocking when they answered the door and are both 21 years old.
We've been playing for almost a year now. It's loud, noisy, gnarly stuff. I'm pleased with the music and with my bandmates, who I now consider to be friends. I've since invested in a very large, very powerful bass amp and some nice earplugs. There's something profound in being able to rattle an entire building with the pluck of a string.
-----
Levi got married this past summer. Most of the old Jumpfighter crew reunited in a rented beach house. We drank beers, built bonfires, smoked cigarettes, brandished knives, fired off bottle rockets and drank more beers.
It'd been years since we've all spent a serious chunk of time together. How quickly, despite the years and distance, we all manage to fall into the roles we held over 15 years ago, in one way or another, for better or worse. Odd.
-----
My friend wins a lavish, all-expenses paid trip to Belize and graciously offers to take me. Jumping at the opportunity, I hop on a plane to Chicago to meet up before jetting to Central America.
Arriving in the capital city mid-afternoon, the resort sends a van to retrieve us. Hopping in, we nearly traverse the entire country as we travel from the coast to the resort, a giant reserve located smack in the middle of a rainforest. A few eye-opening hours later, we're deep in the jungle, finding our bearings while drinking a cocktail made from local dragonfruit. This place has a certain level of luxury that makes me uncomfortable. Rich-old-white-person luxurious. Tired from traveling, we eat an amazing meal and retire to our cabin.
Waking in the morning, we sit on our porch, drink coffee and listen to the foreign sounds of the jungle. Eating another amazing meal, we head to the river that pours through the middle of the resort. We hop in a canoe and spend the next few hours paddling downstream, soaking in the scenery and the sun, getting a gnarly sunburn in the process.
Eventually, we arrive in the small town of San Ignacio. We tie up our canoe and explore on foot for a few hours. Perusing the shops and farmers market, we share a few beers on a plaza before catching a bus back towards the resort.
At this point, my friend starts feeling a bit under the weather. I'm convinced it's due to the prolonged exertion / exposure to the sun, but even after water and rest, she's not recouping. Come morning, she's still not feeling any better, but she's not going to let that stop her. Thusly, we embark on a long, hot, humid hike through the jungle. Upon returning, it's clear that the hike was a bad idea -- she's got a fever and zero energy. She retires to her bed.
Ultimately, she spends the rest of the trip in bed. Eventually, upon returning to the states, we'd find out that she had gnarly case of strep throat. Sidenote: Years ago, we travelled to SXSW together, where I caught strep throat and was confined to the hotel.
At the time, I have no idea how bad things are, so after ensuring that she's comfortable, I head to the pool to read some sci-fi. Lounging in the sun, the resort staff comes by to offer me some refreshments. I order a cocktail. Ten minutes later, a twenty-something server comes to drop it off. He makes a bit of small talk, commenting that he never sees younger people like myself at the resort. "This place is all old people and their kids," he says.
Making small talk about my sick friend, I see a little tattoo peeking out under his uniform sleeve. Asking about it, his eyes light up. He pulls up his sleeve to reveal a very poorly executed panther tattoo. He tells me that it was his first tattoo and that he's saving up money to get it touched up.
"I have this one, too..." he says as he pulls up the other sleeve, revealing a skull against the backdrop of a giant marijuana leaf. I tell him it's very cool. Leaning in, with a hushed voice, he asks if I ever get high. I say yes. He gets excited. He suggests that we should hang out some time. I agree.
Realizing that he should be getting back to work, he tells me "I'm done by 5. If you get bored, I like to fish by the dock after work. You should come by," before departing.
I spend the afternoon debating if I should go. After bringing some tea and toast to my friend, I decide that while it's kind of a sketchy, I don't really have anything else to do, so I start the trek down to the river.
Meeting my new friend on the dock, we hang out while he fishes for a bit, after which he suggests that we take a canoe upstream. I hop in and we both paddle for nearly an hour. After struggling with a more rapid section of the river, we come to a little lagoon connected to the side. Paddling in, we catch our breath. Wiping some sweat from his brow, he produces a bag of ratty-looking weed and a grape Swisher. The purple foil seems so out of place in this setting. In no time, he's rolled one of the most expert blunts that I've ever witnessed.
We end up getting high. Really high. We spend the next hour lazily drifting down the river we'd just paddled against. The sun is setting, casting a golden glow across the glass-smooth water. It's fucking magnificent. Birds start perching in the giant trees that line the river. He tells me their names. We talk about life, work, women, America and music. Despite our different lives, we find a shared love of Bone Thugs n Harmony, which we sing at the top of our lungs.
Arriving back at the dock, it's starting to get dark. I thank him, give him a hug and hike back to the cabin. Arriving as the stars start coming out, I lay in a hammock and drift off to the foreign sounds of the rainforest.
The next morning, my friend is still sick, so I fetch her some more tea and toast. Afterwards, I head off to breakfast. My new friend is working and before I can put in an order, he tells me that he's got me covered. A bit confused, I oblige. Eventually, he brings me a simple meal of eggs, beans, fresh tortillas and a freshly-made salsa.
"This is the meal that my grandmother would make for me when I was young. That's her special salsa." he says.
I devour the meal. It's delicious. I feel honored. As I get up to leave, he stops me. He tells me that he's off for the next few days, so I won't see him again before he returns. He hands me a folded up piece of paper. "It'll take most of the day, but you should do it." Again, a bit confused, I shake his hand and head back to the cabin. Peeking at the paper reveals some sort of hand-drawn map.
I decide to do it, telling my friend that I'm going for a sketchy day hike. Following the map, I find myself tracing fence lines, cutting across trails and following tree lines until I'm deep in the jungle. After a few hours of following a sparse trail, I eventually reach a large hill, as indicated on the map. Hiking towards the top, I'm sweaty and exhausted. As I approach the apex, I realize that the whole top of the hill has been removed -- it's unnaturally flat. Walking onto the overgrown plateau, I see three huge burial mounds arranged in a triangle. Climbing to the top of the largest one, I take a seat and catch my breath.
Eyes-closed, I hear a flutter of wings. Opening them, I see a glorious flock of toucans taking to the treetops that surround the mound, chirping and chatting all around me. Lying down, letting the breeze wash over me, I doze off to their conversation. Waking up some time later, I start the hike back, feeling refreshed and thankful to be alive in this moment.
-----
She's from Boston, but she's not going home for the holidays. Instead, her tradition is to spend two weeks driving and exploring the Southern Californian desert with her dog. I've known her for a few years through work and have a few undeniable romantic feelings bottled up, but at this point, she's just a friend, but I think she might be sweet on me.
We trade a few texts while I'm home, visiting my parents. Offhandedly, I make a joke about her needing a guide (me) on her desert spirit quest. She agrees and invites me, only half-jokingly. Not having anything better to do, I procure a one-way ticket to Palm Springs. Two days later, she's picking me up from the airport. She even has a cardboard sign with my name on it. With a heart on it -- I'm in.
For the next week, we're inseparable. We cover incredible ground together. Hours and hours and hours on the road. Circling the Salton Sea, we explore Slab City and Salvation Mountain before driving to LA for beaches, LACMA and fine dining. We end up crashing in a Motel 6 in Gilroy (the garlic capitol of America) on New Years eve, rising early to eat a shitty meal at a shitty diner. We cut up the coastline, exploring Santa Cruz, my mother's old stamping ground, before making a staggering nine hour voyage back to Oregon.
Completely fried from the highway, we stay over at my parent's house for a night before heading back to Portland. Sitting in a hot tub with my arm around her, staring at the kind of starry sky you can only get in the country, I feel happier than I've been in a long, long time.
-----
Thanks for a friend with an extra ticket, I finally caught to see Refused play a small venue, 15 years after the fact. It was better than my 16 year old self could ever have imagined.
-----
After five years of hustling, I finally hit eject on agency life. Over those five years, I poured myself into the work and the company. I was employee number 15 and by the time I quit, we'd grown to 115. We'd gone from small one-off projects to huge multi-million dollar campaigns. But throughout this growth, we never really changed our approach to how we work. What works for small teams doesn't scale to larger ones. The fallout from this is that I had to work much, much harder to deliver the same level of quality. Eventually, I found myself burnt-out, exhausted and jaded. I'd worked hard to grow a kick-ass team, only to watch the morale erode.
Despite years of stellar performance, I felt completely unheard by the company partners. Despite the stunning success of the company, there were many fractures that they just couldn't see and were far too proud to admit to, let alone address.
I felt painted into a corner. The stress wasn't worth the compensation. I felt it bleeding into my personal life. I've continually held a job since I was 16 and For the first time in my life, I found myself fantasizing about being unemployed. Realizing that with my fastidious saving tendencies, I had more than enough to not really work for awhile, a plan started taking shape -- I'd bail on this bullshit and take a few of months off. I'd travel. I'd shop for groceries during the day. I'd sit in the park and read a book. I'd go for a 10am run. I'd do whatever the fuck I wanted to do.
So I quit. And it felt great.
-----
We take a fifteen minute cab to the airport. Nine hours later, I'm bathing in an Icelandic hot spring in the pouring rain. We are to call this island home for the next 2.5 weeks. My head resting on volcanic rock, the rain on my face, I'm already in love with it.
-----
She handles the accommodations while I handle the transportation, so after landing, we take a shuttle to get our rental car. On her suggestion, I booked it through "SADCars." Per their website, they provide very cheap rentals by using older cars and not charging crazy rates when cars get dinged up. Based on my understanding of the Island's rough terrain and gravel roads, this makes perfect sense to me. However, when we're finally introduced to our car, it's absolutely thrashed. A mid-ninteties gold Toyota Yaris. Filthy. Rust patches. The entire car is a dent.
I tell the man behind the counter of our plans to circumnavigate the island. In a stern, stoic Icelandic voice, he assures me that while it doesn't look like much, it's mechanically sound. I believe him, sign my name and we depart.
Chatting as we make our way to the hot springs, we laugh at the car and it's horrible condition. She gives it the somewhat obvious moniker of "Goldie", but it fits, so it sticks. We decide that the car, in it's condition, will surely help us blend in with the locals. We hatch a plan to photograph Goldie in the most picturesque locations we can find, contrasting her against the beauty of this place. Eventually, through the mocking, it starts being endearing, in a little-engine-that-could sort of way. Eventually, Goldie becomes part of the team.
-----
We spend two days in Reykjavik, wandering around the adorable city, trying our best to break our jetlag with the country's horrible coffee. After getting our fill of city life, we head west in search of isolation.
The capitol at our backs, the fog breaks to reveal the gigantic mountains that surround us. We sit in silence, dumbfounded by the scale and beauty of this island. And we're only an hour out of the city. We make our way across the Snæfellsnes peninsula to Hellnar, a small fishing village with ~10 year-round residents. She's booked an adorable cottage for us, one with a view of the ocean and the tiny church. At 11pm, as the sun starts setting, we walk to the shore and perch ourselves beside the oceanside cliffs. We watch the birds fish offshore as the sky changes colors.
Later, lying in bed while eating weird Icelandic candy, we brainstorm an itinerary for tomorrow's adventure. It's our first real day to explore, so there's a lot on the list.
We wake up early, drink some shitty coffee, eat a small meal and start packing the car. It's only as we depart that we notice that we have a flat tire. Shit.
Thankfully Goldie comes equipped with a spare, but it's only barely inflated. I jack up the car to swap it out while she calls the rental company. They'll pay for a replacement, but we'll have to drive to another town to get it. Looking it up on a map, it looks like it's about 30km away. We plot a route and start off.
The route we'd chosen was the most direct, but unbeknownst to us, the most treacherous. The map indicated it as a major road, but in reality, it was little more than windy gravel road across across a mountain pass. This was our first taste of Icelandic roads. What we thought was going to be a 45 minute trip turned out taking nearly two hours.
White-knuckles the entire trip, we finally make it to town around noon and locate the small shop, which is closed for lunch. We sit in the grass and snack on the sandwhiches we'd made. Eventually, the shop owner appears and helps us out. A short while later, we're back on the road.
-----
It's 10pm but it's still light out. We're naked, dipping our toes into a hotspring located in the middle of an ancient lava flow. Not a soul for miles, I reflect on the stress and strife that, just a few weeks ago, was the worst thing in my life. Now, from here, it all seems so small and unimportant.
-----
-----
Our next stop, Akureyri, is about five hours away. Since I'd be driving, I plot our route the previous night. Starting early as to give ourselves enough time to explore, we pack our car and say goodbye to Hellnar. I salute the mighty Snæfellsjökull mountain as we pass along it's base. We make our way over the mountain pass that we'd crossed with a spare tire a few days earlier. This time, there's much less stress and more time to enjoy the scenery. We stop at a mountain lake. I try to teach her how to skip rocks.
We travel along one of the (seemingly) major roads, but just a few kilometers into it, it turns into a poorly maintained, pitted gravel road. After an hour, the road is still in terrible condition and we're way off the beaten path, but the scenery is magnificent, so we keep putting along.
She's driving, doing her best to avoid the potholes, but she's not doing very well. She hits a jarring hole. Suddenly, Goldie is pulling right, hard. My heart sinks as I exit the car. Worst fears confirmed: another flat tire.
For the second time in two days, I jack up the car and install the tiny spare tire. She calls the rental company and asks them where the closest shop is, which is about 70km away. Beyond that, just like everywhere else is Iceland, they close at 5pm. Looking at the clock, that gives us about two hours to make it. Surely the road will turn to pavement soon, right? Nope. 65 of those 70km was spent on that brutal gravel road.
Carefully balancing speed with caution, we find ourselves limping along in a race against the clock. Eventually, the road turns to pavement, which was a victory in itself. After hours of gravel roads, the blacktop felt like luxury.
We make it to the shop with 10 minutes to spare. The majority of Icelanders speak english, but we're well off the beaten path and the mechanic isn't versed. Thankfully, there's a secretary who helps us translate. The stern man clearly wants close shop for the night, but with a little pleading, he helps us out. While he replaces the tire, the secretary talks to us about the US, shows us some of her photography and teaches us how to correctly pronounce 'Snæfellsnes'.
-----
The traffic lights in the Reykjavik have an extra setting to them. Similar to how our lights show yellow before transitioning to red, their lights have another yellow, as red transitions to green. I quite enjoyed this, as it gave me a heads-up to start revving the shit out of the engine, since our car had the loosest clutch in the known universe.
-----
-----
We rise in the morning on a horse farm outside of Egilsstaðir. We make some coffee and step out into the brisk morning. Heading into the field, I whistle. Within seconds, we're surrounded by a pack of gorgeous icelandic horses. Having no natural predators on the island, they're extremely friendly. We pet them and marvel at their glorious manes. The sleep still in my eyes, the clouds break, revealing the a sprawling, snow-capped mountain range looming over the farm that we didn't even know was there.
-----
In some of the more remote areas, especially in the eastern fjords, you'll find long, claustrophobic tunnels upwards of 7km in length. Adding to the stress, some of them are single-lane, meaning that if you meet in the middle, you're in reverse for a km or two, until you can find a small pull-out and carefully squeeze by each other.
-----
Exploring the small town of Egilsstaðir, we find ourselves in the midst of Ormsteiti, a ten-day festival which celebrates the (possible) existence of a giant monster dwelling in Lagarfljót, the nearby lake. We watch a musical performed by children, drink hot chocolate, eat hot dogs, peruse a flea market, examine the vontage tractor contest and watch a demonstration by two skilled men in which they carve a tiny chair from a log with nothing more than chainsaws.
-----
We spend hours watching the glacier calve huge chunks of ice. We follow them as they float out of the lagoon, beckoned by the Atlantic.
-----
We ended our trip in Stokkseyri, spending two nights in a delightful little bed and breakfast owned by an adorable icelandic couple. This place marks the spot where, aeons ago, a huge lava flow met the ocean. A shelf of volcanic rock extends into the water. We spend hours hopping between rocks, poking at tidepools and hunting for shells.
-----
-----
A famous Icelandic architect purchased an old tackle shop in Stokkseyri. Intending to build, instead of tearing down the old building, he merely constructed a new structure around the existing shop. He did so without permits, or even the appropriate building materials. Eventually, a lawsuit is brought against him. He ends up fleeing the country.
Fifteen years later, the structure is still there, but it's vacant, falling apart. Broken windows, flaking paint and water damage, the locals have taken to calling the building "Misery".
-----
Icelanders take great pride in their automobiles. They even have a remarkable 4x4 culture that puts the US to shame in terms of scale. Gravedigger-esqe. We had thought that Goldie would help us blend in, but for the entire duration of the trip, we never once saw a car that was in worse condition. When hosts of the bed and breakfast commented on it, we laughed and told them about the cut-rate rental company, our misadventures and our subsequent appreciation of the vehicle.
Instead of laughing along, she just shakes her head.
"No. No. We do not like this."
-----
After quitting my job, I promised to give myself at least one solid month off before starting my hunt for another. Keeping to my word, after 30 days, I wrote an e-mail to the CEO of a wildly successful coffee company in town. I'd crossed paths with the company earlier in the year, when they hired the agency to do some work for them. I ended up building a whiz-bang commerce website for them. Some of my finest work to date. The project was a massive success, no thanks to them, as they didn't have a single technical person in their ranks.
In my e-mail, I explained my perspective to him. That while their product was amazing, the company lacked any sort of technical prowess, that if the company was serious about smart growth, he needed to hire me immediately.
He bit. Shortly thereafter, we talk in person. Shortly thereafter, I sign a job offer to be their Director of Technology. Low(er) stress, great perks, a fat raise and free reign to do what I want.
Life is sweet.
-----
I've been with her for a year now. It's my first long-ish relationship in quite some time. The high parts have been amazing, the low parts, terrible. She's a great, loyal friend and I love her, but I fear that some of the idiosyncrasies that attracted me are starting to irritate me. More news to come.
Miss you, old friend. Let's catch up.
Comments