My Travels

Music is one of the great transporters of me and mine.

Everywhere I go, I take music with me. It used to be cassette tapes. Back in the early 80s when I first joined the Navy it was a tape player, more than one Walkman I had that I accidentally dropped and broke. Glad I was employed full time then.

Then years later CDs started to come out and I started changing from the one format to another. Then just last year I finally got my first MP3 player. Still I am taking my music with me where I go. On my MP3 player to listen to at work, while I walk, wandering around the local bookstore, I can have music with me all the time.

Just found this awesome music group Nouvelle Vague. Just random hit off of a twitter, someone followed there. What a catch, wander here and listen, http://www.nouvellesvagues.com/english/music.html
what a catch.

Coffee…One of the things I judge a new place, a new restaurant, a new location on. Coffee, book stores, comic book shops, gaming stores, and more coffee. It all boils down to what your interests are, those encompass all of the things I like to buy. Honestly, coffee, books, gaming (tabletop and occasional PC) materials and music, besides that I am pretty loath to spend money on it, certainly not for just myself. Last thing I like to spend money on is shoes, of any sort.

So anytime I go somewhere, new place especially, I look for local coffee shops or bookstores. Even places we go to frequently, I am always wanting to stop in each and every one of them that I am aware of. Sure I won’t spend money in each store. I might though, and it is all I want really as well.

So those are what I look for in a new place to visit. Add in used book stores, and antique stores as well to round out places to browse a lot in.

Double Cappuccino an Extra shot is the drink of choice, a little dry if possible, as the acid test. Otherwise it is Black Coffee.

Nice quiet day today. End of the day as I write this. One of the best travel oriented, exploration, songs is on VH1 Classics, David Bowie, Major Thom. From the Ziggy Stardust album.

One of the groundbreaking breakthrough sets of music. All about transformation, the search for self, the wonderment of what life is supposed to be like. At least from my point of view that is what it is about. From Changes to Ziggy Stardust to Major Thom it is about changes and evolution. One of the main themes of my life is the quest, the search for self. Fuels so much of my writing over the years.

So you can ascribe what you wish to in his songs and writing. They call those out to me, the search, the quest for self. Which is a journey.

So we went no where today. Did a few errands the other day. Walked about half way home on Friday, we got off work early and my car is down and in the shop. I thought it would be done on Friday, no such luck. So I walked a few miles till my ride, the wife, got off work and met me. Time to think to myself which is nice.

Looked at car, the trash on the side of the road, the heat and the other travellers going who knows where all too fast.

We all need to slow down just a little. I still want a bicycle to ride to and from work.

Tonight we went to get our son’s truck from the body shop where some work had been done to it to repair some damage from an accident he had a few weeks ago. So we go to leave, not the usual part of town we drive around in to be honest. I give directions, I thought they were clear. Well not so clear, we end up digging for change for the local toll road and a few more almost wrong turns hit a road we know and head back towards our destination.

That was a little less than fun, but it tends to happen to the best of us. I do admit to having a tendency to just keep driving until I think I can find my way around. We spent several hours once lost on the Baltimore Freeway system. I got quite turned around, heading in the incorrect direction, and then the guy part of me kicked in and I had to make sure I got us back on track. It did not succeed so very well.

Unexpected detours and wrong turns taking you to unintended places and locations. Once we got back on track we were not in unexpected waters anymore. But sometimes I do like to just drive around.

This could be a great parable for life. To not worry so much while getting from one location to another. Instead just read the signs, take time, not to get upset, get more gas when necessary, and just enjoy the Moon up in the sky as well.

Slight drift off topic, but this is deep down a series of writings about movement, travel, going places, being a nomad, etc. So no reason, tonight, to restrict it to only the physical elements.

So reading a ton of different books here lately. Non-fiction. Covering topics from non-profits, marketing, internet marketing, lifestyle changing, building communities, and MS Access to state the most recent. All a large departure from my usual SF & F that is my normal reading fare. Still all of these are sparking ideas and causing shifts in my thinking and perceptions. All are moving me in some fashion.

I have been looking into starting my own business, think I will come 2009 at some point during the year.

I want to start a non-profit. That is some insane amount of work. Not sure if I will be able to accomplish it or not.  So instead I will start a DBA (Doing Business As) as a sole entrepeneur. Focus on writing, some self-publishing to start off with. Which would help to fund a vagabonding lifestyle.

So these are the new directions.

Also

Only The Positive

Over the course of my life I have wandered lots of places. I have long had a wonder about Gypsies, traveling circuses, hoboes, all those that move from place to place. The older I get the more the want to travel, to move like a ship pushed by the wind and waves moving as the whim takes me.

This is one of the motivations for the craving to travel, to move from work to work. To uproot my family and take them along with me as we see and view the world as travellers. To be the nomads of the modern age.

I have seen a few specials on those micro trailers. Of course as I write I forget what they are called. Of course my wife is a claustophobe so it will not be a reality.

On the missing of people:

When I was younger, my father was a traveling salesman. He would leave for days or weeks at a time. Then be back for a few days. I never missed him. When he was gone he was not in my mind or thoughts. When he was back I noticed him. When he was gone I did not notice his absence. We also moved at least every year,  on an average, which also assisted me in my nomadic tendencies.

Then I went and joined the military. Went to Japan for 2 years, then Norfolk VA, then a month in Mobile AL, then back to Iowa. Then a few years later went back into the Navy, back to Norfolk, back onto my 3rd ship, always on the move in my work since then as well. Changing jobs all too often for the modern sensibility.

Trees

Stop for awhile and listen to the rustling of the trees in the wind and write what they tell you. Well go on! Tune out and just listen. Now! I mean right now!

Trees speak of age and observation. Once I read a short story, sf, postulating that we are standing still and the trees are the ones rushing along. The protagonist tried as best it could but could not dodge the frozen metal thing that smashed into it and destroyed it. A car is what it was. Wish I remembered more from the story. Read it over 20 years ago, that is all I remember of it.

Trees speak of life. The primary producers of O2 and primary users of CO2 so they become the sustainers of life.

With my love of reading and books trees have figured prominent in my life as a source of entertainment and attainment since the 5th grade, growing in importance each passing year.

6^th grade we lived in North Adams Massachusetts. The school was a few blocks from the library. I really started reading that year. Assessment tests placed my comprehension at about 2^nd year College Level by the time I was done with that grade. I had several friends that year.

I partially recall 1 friend’s name. Vicent Carellie or Careddi. It is something close to that. He had a large basement and a ping-pong table and was a fellow Star Trek fan. We fixed up the pool table and basement into the best set we could and did several Video Camera Star Trek films. I have not seen him since the 7^th grade, making it about 1975 or so. When we went back to Massachusetts for a cousins wedding that actually took place in new Hampshire. I forget how I got it finagled to stop over. In 1999 or so my family, wife and kids, we all drove back to visit up there and drove through parts of North Adams. Did not get to all the places I could remember up to that point.

I remember watching my friends do the shuffle around the girls. I recall several fights I was during that time. The time someone went to punch me and I was inside the basement door and I shut it and their hand went through the glass. The time I was in a fight with someone I think from school. Was in several tussles that year. Forget the who or why. Running up the long hill that our house sat at the top of. How some older friends or brothers of the person I had the fight with started chasing up. My sister and I ducking into the corner store a few blocks from the house to escape the older, bigger kids.

I recall going over to another friends house. Forget his name. There are memories of helping to rake leaves in the fall and running and jumping in them after we did that over at his house. It was smaller than ours and I think it was white. Cannot picture the inside of it.

I know when I was in 5^th grade we lived in Center Barnstead NH. That is where my youngest brother, Bill, was born at. We lived in a chalet like house on the lake. Walked in the woods around the place. Again my sister was my main playmate still. I recall winter there and walking in the snow to the bus stop about 3/4ths a mile away or so. The snow plow that almost ran us both over in the dark as we walked along in the snow and dark on the curving dirt road. I recall the insects in spring so bad they were clouds we tried to keep out of our noses. I remember playing under my bed along with my sister. We had lots of stuffed animals between the two of us and so role play sorts of games with them were common to us. I recall the one and only time we went fishing, down the way from the house, with our father. I would not touch the worm to bait it. I remember I would not touch the fish I caught either so got the poor thing off using a tree and ripping the hook out of its mouth that way. Swinging it so to speak.