Texas by Morning

I’m in Oklahoma, it's hot and muggy and these teeny tiny bugs have infiltrated my van. I think I killed at least 100 last night, maybe more. I stood there in the kitchen/dining/entertaining/dressing room with a balled up paper towel killing bugs. It was very unBuddhist of me, hence being a part time Buddhist. The drive through Kansas was fast and tough, not a lot going on there for me. Farmland, lots of farmland. And dry, really dry it seemed, compared to Nebraska and further north. Guess that makes sense, more rain up in those parts, although Montana had lots of rivers but dry dead grasslands. I don’t know, I’m not a grassologist or anything like that, who knows what color it’s supposed to be. Oklahoma, Kansas and some of Nebraska have all blended together so far. I’m sure the people of these states would disagree and tell me of all the pretty things of these parts that I’m passing by. Just as I could tell them of all the pretty things in California that they wouldn’t imagine possible. California has a bad rap and for good reason, yet it’s not all bad, kinda like the people in NA.

I stopped in at a gas station somewhere in Kansas, received an interesting looks from a couple both times I walked into the store. There were some hotdog joint style benches inside the gas station/eatery/convenience store. About 2 sets of people were chowing down on fried food of some sort, it didn’t look too appetizing. Not like I haven’t gone to Creager’s and got myself a fried burrito or chicken strips from Valley Liquor, so no judgment. But it was like something out of a Quinton Tarantino movie. Small one light town in the middle of Kansas, gas station filled with locals eating a heart clogging lunch and I walk in with my flip flops and California style dripping off me, Tarantino would of then turned it into a blood bath – awesome right. They could tell I was not from around there; I was way to something that’s for sure. No one spoke to me or smiled in my direction.

I stopped in at Dodge City, thinking it would be kinda decked out or something, you know, being it is an historic city of the late 1800’s. It was not decked out, that was 2 hours I’ll never get back. It actually made me sad, the streets were kinda dirty and most shops along their main boulevard were empty or shut down. That could be from the pandemic or the lack of money in town. The Boot Hill Museum was $18 for the cheap tour and $60 for the high-end tour, I passed on both. I was in the gift shop for 5 minutes, picked up a key chain for my daughter and a sticker for myself. I walked around what one would consider their downtown area, that is where the museum is located. In all of the 10 minutes it took, I didn’t see much worth seeing, nothing historic. Maybe all the historic stuff was somewhere else. I stopped at the park near the middle of town, it had a waterslide, seemed like most of the town’s kids were there. In the park there was a small zoo with very few animals. One of the exhibits had racoons in it, like that was the exhibit, racoons. Maybe racoons are exotic to the people of Kansas? I hit the local supermarket, grabbed some water and apples and split.

I need to say that getting through those 3 paragraphs has been tough, I’m almost wondering why I am even writing about it, it was all uninspiring to me. I’d hate to put a tainted taste in your mouth about Kansas but really, it was a tough state to drive through. Some of the no light towns I passed through had some cool old brick buildings, brick streets, neat old signs and… Yeah, no, that’s it. Oklahoma might be the same for all I know, I’m not that deep into it yet. This morning I’m headed to Oklahoma City for no other reason but to see the memorial and it’s the fastest route to my sister’s house. It’s an 8-hour drive from where I’m at and you know I care not to spend that many hours behind the wheel, so I’m hoping to end up somewhere interesting in Texas and staying the night there. Either way I’ll be in Austin tonight or tomorrow.

I’ve mixed feelings about going there, not that I don’t want to see my sister and her family by any means, it’s one of the only two reasons why I left. I spent many months, 18 of them building the van and I haven’t been to Austin in 2 and a half years. There’s some more that I’ve yet to write about, I’ve been trying to understand how I feel about it all, mulling it over in my mind. Is it a big deal or small deal? I’m not sure. Some things in life just happen and how we see them dictates the course of how we are going to take them in emotionally, which in turn affects us physically. Maybe I haven’t written about it cause I don’t want to face it, that’s always a possibility. Sometimes it’s easier to avoid it till we are ready to deal with it and sometimes we get lucky and find out how we saw it wasn’t really how it was and it’s a lot easier than we thought it was. I know, speaking in riddles, deal with it.

I woke in the morning to some house battery charging issues and left the campsite fairly quickly, not really settling into the morning and getting my bearings. Only one cup of coffee, but I was already basically awake without it cause it was 73 when I woke at 6:30 and I wasn’t really sleeping through the night anyways. It was 81 at 4am and god only knows what the temp was in the van. I made it to an auto parts store, repaired the cable attached to the house battery that was coming from the isolator which was hooked to the van battery. There’s lots of cables in the van, lots of cables, lots of wires. After that the morning was off so I just started driving, choosing the shortest route to my sisters place. If you’ve ever driven through Texas you would understand why I chose the shortest route.

We get into these routines in our lives, how we do our mornings, our nights, our weekends. I don’t know if we really realized how programed we are cuz we get on that autopilot and just go through life. Looking up at times and saying, ‘when did they build that building?’ We are rarely present in the moment, but our routine makes us feel present in our lives. We taste the coffee, smell the soap, feel the couch cushions, hear the music. But are we really present? Are we connected to anything we are doing? It took at least a week to get connected to living in the van, to the movement of my life and the daily choices. The choices are not the same, each day they are a little different if I’m connected to them and not just on autopilot. That morning leaving the campsite in Oklahoma, I was not connected to anything but fear of electrical issues and wanting to get out of the humidity and heat. So I skipped Oklahoma city, missed out on a couple other things I wanted to see and headed south, all cuz I wasn’t connected to the moment.

500 miles and 12 hours later I arrived at my sisters, sweaty and tired and relived. The timeline also got to me, we can’t forget to add that into the equation. I had to be here by a certain date to spend a good amount of time here before I to leave for Florida. Timeline’s suck but we have them for reasons, after Florida I will have no timeline if I choose not to have one. I’m told regularly that I might never have this opportunity again to do this so I might as well make the most of it. Me making the most of it is flying home, giving up my apartment, moving my stuff into storage, grabbing winter clothes and moving into the van fulltime. I mean wouldn’t that be just the craziest idea ever, move into my van fulltime, indefinity. Talk about life changing, talk about no security, talk about being alone, drifting, wandering. It all sounds pretty dreamy to me.

I guess time will tell, maybe I do it, maybe I don’t. All I know is I really need to practice living in today and not getting ahead of my life. I’ve no idea what might happen and planning for the unknown is pointless. I never knew I would ever get to live like this, this free, and it all started with not using one day at a time. Had anyone ever told me I would be here now, traveling the US, living out of a van I built, living off my savings – I mean I have a savings account! That’s amazing all on its own, do you know how fortunate I am?! Through staying clean, working hard, living below my means and taking a spiritual approach to life, I get to live this life. I’ve a few more days here and then I’m off again, I’m excited and nervous and beyond grateful.