waiting

(Extracted from the blog entry, Between Two Continents, posted June 13, 2015)

Waiting.

It's a bitch when you're as restless a person as I am. Drink too much coffee and look frantically for things to do…to get one's mind off of what's ahead. When waiting in a backpacker hostel you must also put up with horrible top-40 dance music, smelly feet, snoring, and the possibility of your shit getting stolen. Cold showers and paper-clogged toilets. Vacant stares from fellow travelers, road-weary like me, or looking to score weed or a piece of ass. But my bike is secure, and the bed is cheap...and in a few more days I'll be on another continent. Suck it up and wait I will.

This Saturday my motorcycle will be loaded onto a cargo plane destined for Bogotá, Colombia. I'll take a passenger plane and meet it there, hoping it doesn't get dropped, bashed or ripped off in some way. There are mystery hoops I'll have to jump through on both ends, "like all the borders you've already crossed... only more so," a fellow distance rider tells me, who's done this before. I see it as something to get through. There's not much adventure in it - no island hopping, snorkeling, sea sickness or negotiating with Kuna fishermen involved - just bureaucracy and lots of cash.

Sadly, one cannot drive or ride into South America from Central America. There is strip of jungle lovingly referred to as the Darién Gap, which creates a break in the Pan-American Highway around 55 miles long. There are canyons and trees and rivers and animals and smugglers and others with artillery and interesting intentions blocking the way. Which generally means transporting your vehicle by water or air.

For the moment, I'll rest (to the degree that's possible in a room with 11 other occupied beds). Sleep at 10:30, wake up at 7, enjoy the hostel's free, pretty decent coffee, and go out into the moist air to pick up groceries or just walk the streets. It's been 3 months of near-constant travel through 8 countries, at least 40? 50? 100? different cultures and languages, and with 3 pairs of underwear on a tiny vibrating motorbike. It takes its toll after a while.

Hovering between two continents, in a holding pattern, gives me pause (no pun intended). 

I am in the middle of everything. For a while I had a light I was aiming for, a direction, a purpose and a sense of timing. My heart was pulling me, and the physical movement provided the momentum. No real thinking was required - just the tangible need and desire to go, as quickly as possible, and just try to appreciate the hell out of everything along the way.

Things have changed. My method will stay the same.. but the way isn't so brightly lit any more. It could be the sheer volume of what lies ahead that is daunting (actually, "crushing" is a more appropriate word) - the commitment inherent in making this leap, its complicated logistics, its monetary cost, the looming fear that I could get stuck down there and not have the resources to get back. The requirement of faith has intensified.

But then.. when you're an artist or engaged in any kind of creative endeavor - when you're building something - there's that period during which you can't see the end. You've made a mess: a massive, butt ugly, expensive, tangled web, and the only tool available to clean it up is trust. The belief - the knowledge, rather - that if you just keep going it'll work out one way or another. 

I couldn't have picked a more appropriate metaphorical moment to feel this way.