Going Greyhound

In my experience, it’s best to pick a seat near the front of the Greyhound. That way, people tend to walk by you, in hopes of finding an empty pair of seats farther back. And if you’re unlucky and someone does sit next to you, at least you’re close enough to the driver to alert him if your seatmate turns out to be unusually sketchy.

My problem is that I don’t look sketchy enough, and despite my strategizing, I often end up with a seatmate. Unfortunately for me, I look like the kind of person you want to sit next to, apparently sane, recently bathed, no visible neck tattoos. On the Greyhound, obvious derangement is probably an asset.

This evening I’m feeling optimistic. The driver has taken our tickets and closed the doors, we’re due to depart, and I have the seat to myself. Then, at the last second, two more passengers appear. I sit up and make a half-hearted attempt to look like an escaped lunatic, but to no avail. Inevitably, one of the latecomers plunks himself down next to me. Ah well. It’s only a four-hour ride from Seattle to Portland. How much can possibly go wrong?

My seatmate is exceptionally quiet. He seems exhausted, closes his eyes and apparently drifts off to sleep, completely upright. So much the better, I think. I immerse myself in an Outside article about a war veteran gone missing in Montana’s Bob Marshall Wilderness.

My seatmate jerks upright with a sputter, and I am jolted out of the Bob. A fresh glob of puke covers my neighbor’s lap, and a thick purple smear coats his orange goatee. We both take in this change in circumstances. I consider tearing up my magazine to help him clean up, but realize its glossy pages might just succeed in further spreading the puke around, perhaps onto me. He’s wearing an absorbent plaid shirt; I suggest he take it off and use it to mop up. The smell is revolting.

“I turned 21 last night,” he offers in explanation, chunks of puke dribbling out of his mouth.

“You know, there’s a bathroom back there,” I prompt, gesturing towards the back of the bus. “Maybe you should go clean up.”

Happily, he concurs, and heads to the bathroom, where he remains for the next half hour.

I have been going Greyhound ever since I started paying for things myself. I actually appreciate the window into the very particular slice of American society that rides the bus, and often emerge at my destination with spectacular tales of lechers, drunks, acid-tripping poetry slammers and, during one especially sobering journey, an obese southerner off her meds who was inspired to remove her pants in the middle of the night, before collapsing at the rear of the coach, forcing the driver to drag her, mostly naked, to the stairwell atop an emergency blanket. The bus ain’t always pretty, but it serves as a reality check of sorts. And it’s by far the cheapest way to travel.

These days, it seems excessive to pay double the price for the luxury of the train. Although I have made some strides forward, I’m still unemployed and uninsured, and struggling to live within my very limited means. I’m getting there – it looks like one of my internships may soon morph into paid and career-building contract work – but it seems prudent to avoid unnecessary expenses when I can.

The director of the organization where I’m interning talked to me about health insurance today. “A rock climber without insurance? Hmm…you know that you can buy it online for not too much money, don’t you?”

I had resolved to forgo insurance, like trips on the train, until I was more settled and secure. But the conversation got me wondering. Perhaps I am going about this backwards. Maybe my spartan tendencies are contributing to my sense of insecurity. If I invest a little more in myself, go out on a limb and “indulge” in health insurance and a few other luxuries, I might feel more confident and settled, and other elements might start falling into place.

The guy behind me taps me on the shoulder. “I don’t wanna start playing footsie with you, but I dropped my Gatorade. Would you mind grabbing it for me?”

I bend over to retrieve the errant bottle, dipping dangerously close to the puke-splattered jeans of the 21-year-old next door. As I hand over the bottle, a passenger two rows back who sounds as if she’s got 50 years cigarette tar in her lungs starts hacking uncontrollably. An obese granny walks by, shouting to her grandson, “No, you CAN’T use the bathroom. It stinks! You’ll just have to wait ‘til Portland.”

I buy my seatmate a bottle of water from the Tacoma station. He seems to be feeling better. A Greyhound employee instructs us to cover our orifices as he walks down the aisle, coating us all with disinfectant and air freshener. The fetid odor of regurgitated alcohol is mostly gone. Maybe the tides are turning. Maybe I’ll go ahead and buy insurance.

And next time, what the hey – I’m taking the train.

Down and Out in Hipsterville

It may come to this...

"So one day Jimmy brung his wife inta work, and man! Was she ever ugly! Next day, when Jimmy come in, I let him have it: 'That's some wife you got there! She's a real dog, Jimmy! D'you put her on a leash when you take her out? You keep her in a kennel while you're at work?' He didn't talk to me for maybe a year after that."

Darlene, my comrade at the reception desk, is recounting her days as a sawyer at a lumber mill in rural Oregon. As the mill's only female laborer, and only black employee, she tells me, it wasn't easy to prove herself and gain the grudging approval of her colleagues. With her skill for acerbic verbal jabs, steady work performance and willingness to punch out the odd good-ol'-boy who got a little too fresh with her, she eventually earned their respect. I'm pretty easygoing by nature, and the reception desk where we're sitting is light years removed from the mill, but I'm taking the story's message to heart: I definitely want to stay on Darlene's good side.

So far, so good. I don't seem to have offended her yet, though it appears she hasn't quite made up her mind about me one way or the other. The job is absurdly easy; aside from the occasional administrative task, I mostly just sit there. All Darlene asks is that I organize my breaks so that she can leave in time to catch her bus. She doesn't appear to care if I do anything else at all. As soon as I sit down in the morning, she encourages me to go upstairs and fix some coffee, or to peruse the goods at the grocery store across the street.

It's excruciatingly boring, but I don't care. It's work, and I'm broke. While the quest for a rewarding, meaningful, benefited job continues, in the meantime I'll take whatever the temp agency throws at me.

Which, so far, has not been much. Even though I try to reduce my expenses to rent, food and the occasional, modest social outing, the money I've earned temping so far has not come close to covering these costs.

I've never had much money, but I've rarely felt as aware of my relative poverty as I do right now. Which is perhaps not surprising, since up 'til now I've (sometimes unwittingly) managed to adopt the following strategies:

Free housing, South Sudan style

(1) Isolate yourself somewhere where there's almost nothing to buy.  I recommend South Sudan, small-town Michigan and the Canadian Arctic. That way, when the consumerism bug bites, at worst you'll drop two bucks on a pair of cheap flip-flops, a root beer float, or a bowl of caribou soup so bland you'll never be tempted to order one again.

(2) Work for food (and a place to crash). The digs might not be stylish, nor the grub gourmet, but hey- they're free. Get rid of housing and food expenses, and even the stingiest stipend starts sounding pretty good. 

Low-budget entertainment

(3) Surround yourself with people who are at least as reluctant to spend money as you are. In Missoula, some students I knew tried to survive for a week off of food scrounged from dumpsters, just for kicks. (Though they gave up after four days of nothing but bread, I was inspired by their dedication.) Our compound guard in Uganda, meanwhile, spent nothing. He lived off the harvest from his home village and was saving all of his earnings to begin to replace his family's livestock, which had been pillaged during the war there. After a chat with him, I felt guilty leaving the compound for a $5 dinner out in town. 


Alas, such techniques are not so readily employed in Seattle. First, there are plenty of pretty tempting ways to spend money here: on roller derby tickets, Asian foot massage, artisan beer tastings, writing workshops, trapeze classes, ski weekends, indie film fests, home canning lessons. I haven't been able to find a job that offers regular compensation of any kind, let alone room and board. And my friends here, lovely as they are, enjoy expensive cocktails and ski vacations and Groupon deals for rowing lessons. I can't blame them, but I can't always join them, either.

And so it's a relief when, before clocking out on Wednesday, Darlene tells me, "We'll miss you tomorrow." I'll be back on Monday for another three days at the reception desk, and apparently I've earned Darlene's approval. It ain't much, but these days, I'll take anything I can get.

Not what I had in mind: How I found Seattle for the first time (Part II)

This is the second installment of a two-part series. You might want to read part I first. 


"The distinguishing mark of true adventures is that it is often no fun at all while they are actually happening." 
-Kim Stanley Robinson


Early in my second year at McGill, I discovered a book that would change my life. 


I had returned to Montreal with some reluctance. I felt like a sheep being herded along some safe, established path, without really knowing where I was going or why. I wanted to strike out on my own, but didn't really know how, and was afraid of what might happen if I didn't have some kind of plausible alternate plan. For one, my academically-focused parents might possibly disown me. I needed to convince them that I could fend for myself outside the confines of school, and maybe even do something worthwhile while I was at it. 


And then came Work Your Way Around the World, perched innocuously on the "careers" shelf of the University Bookstore. Continent by continent, it detailed work and volunteer opportunities for the aspiring vagabond, from freelance blueberry picking in Norway to vegetable gardening at remote Andean orphanages. The book provided contact information for thousands of organizations and testimony from actual people who had dived in and lived to tell the tale. 

There was enough in that book to keep me busy for several years, at least. It was just the boost that I needed. I made two rules for myself: (1) Do only things that you find interesting and exciting; and (2) Earn your keep. No crawling back home to ask for money. At the end of the school year, I informed the registrar's office that I'd be taking some time off, and all of a sudden, I was free.


Six months later, when the Greyhound bus spat me out in downtown Seattle after a delirious 24-hour ride up I-5, freedom didn't seem so sweet. I had blown almost all of my summer savings on a police car that had burned to a crisp in the Sierra foothills a week after I had bought it. My plans to farm my way up the coast were bust. I no longer cared if I found something "interesting and exciting" to do; I merely wanted to recover some of that money, before the holidays if possible.


I landed a minimum wage job running the register and washing dishes at a pizza joint in the University District. Besides my sister and her small social circle, I didn't know anyone in town. This was okay, as it meant I wasn't tempted to spend money. But I was miserable. Occasionally, through a break in the autumn skies, I'd catch a glimpse of Mount Rainier, hovering phantom-like on the southern horizon, or the jagged Olympic range to the west. I felt that I would really like it here, if circumstances were a bit different. As it was, I simply observed, wandering from the library to the supermarket to the waterfront. My bank account slowly filled up again. I chipped in for rent. 

The fact that this was only temporary kept me sane. I bussed over to Missoula to check out its Forestry School, and felt more at home there after one weekend than I had after two years in Montreal. I also completed an application with Frontiers Foundation, which sent volunteers to indigenous communities in the Canadian Arctic to help in schools. To my great relief, it was accepted, and I'd be leaving for Tsiigehtchic, a tiny Gwich'in town at the confluence of the MacKenzie and the Arctic Red Rivers, on February 1st.


So I tried my best to enjoy the present. At the pizza joint, we competed to see who could fold pizza boxes or assemble a respectable pie the fastest and shared stories about the odd characters who came in off the Ave. But I felt slightly guilty the whole time. It was a huge release when I finally turned in my notice and caught a plane home, armed with plans for an adventure in the Arctic.


Had I been a bit more shrewd, I might have added a third rule to my list, one that would have saved me a good deal of grief in the future: Avoid expectations. Nothing is ever what you have in mind.

Not what I had in mind: How I found Seattle for the first time (Part I)

Zoom to a two-lane highway on a glorious day in the western foothills of the Sierra Nevada in October 2000. I am ecstatic. For the past month, I've been sleeping in a cramped camper in the backyard of a dysfunctional family in a broken-down town in the middle of nowhere. A rooster struts underneath the camper at five-thirty every morning to wake me with an ear-shattering crow. I am ostensibly here to learn how to make goat cheese, but there are some problems. First, I have discovered that I absolutely hate goat cheese. "What flavor do you like the best?" would-be customers constantly ask me at the weekly farmers' market. I try not to flinch, then reply, "Well, uh, most people seem to like this one," demurely offering them a sample of the spreadable herb-garlic. When some folks cringe at their first taste of that distinctive goat-y flavor, I have a hard time disguising my sympathy.


Also, the farmer I'm working for isn't the most disciplined in her profession. She rarely emerges from the family trailer before 9:30 am, and even then she only puts in a few hours of work each day. I'm beginning to wonder if she has a trust fund somewhere.  Her husband is on disability leave after taking a bad spill from a ladder during a roofing project. He's told me he wants to brush up on Auto-CAD and go to school for architecture, but every time I go in the house he's sprawled out on the couch eyeing the television with mild disgust, and menacingly wielding a fly swatter. Every visible surface in the room is covered with fly carcasses. Including the ceiling.

There's more. It's breeding season, and the farmer's friend has generously loaned us one of her horniest billy goats. From the tiny slit of a window by my camper bunk, I can see him repeatedly mounting the females, who want none of it. He's not in the least discouraged. Watching his efforts, I consider giving up males altogether. As part of the mating ritual, he pees on himself and then smears the urine all over his shaggy brown coat. Pheromones fly and permeate the property with a putrid stink. The farmer's eight-year-old daughter comes home from school with a teacher's note: Alexis has smelled a little ripe lately. Could you please give her a good washing? I would worry about my goat-stink too, but it seems inconsequential, since I never leave the farm.


This isn't exactly what I had in mind.


I'm taking a year off from school. After two years at a highly reputable Canadian university, I've had enough. I feel like I've just been doing what's expected of me without really knowing why. I'm tired of classrooms so large I can't even see the professor or dare to shout out a question, of professors who look at me blankly despite my repeated visits to their office hours. More importantly, I'm craving some genuine experience, beyond the confines of the classroom. I'm inspired by Into the Wild, by a recently discovered passion for mountains and wild places, by a few charismatic vagabonds who've crossed my path. I'm 19 years old, and I've been in school my entire life. I know there's a lot more out there, and I can't stomach another semester until I get a taste of it.


My plan for the fall is to volunteer my way up the coast on different organic farms. For a very reasonable ten dollars, the organization Willing Workers on Organic Farms (WWOOF) has sent me a listing of West Coast farms that will provide room, board and informal training to people willing to work a very manageable average of four hours a day. There are dozens of listings, from hippie-run healing centers in the California desert to tiny market farms in the foothills of the North Cascades. I tell myself I'll start in California and slowly head north to Washington, arriving in time for the apple harvest. My parents are not thrilled that I have dropped out of school, and seem anxious about my farm-hopping plan. The house is full of tension, and I want to get out of Massachusetts as soon as possible. So when the goat dairy farmer offers me a month-long stint on her farm, I don't hesitate. I jet across the country with a friend who's Tahoe-bound and am settling into the camper within a week.

After a mere couple of weeks among the goats, though, I'm going stir-crazy. The camper, the flies, the inactivity of this sleepy town are driving me nuts. I solicit the help of a depressive yet mechanically-savvy Deadhead who's friends with the goat farmer and buy the first car he presents me with. It's a 1985 Dodge Diplomat, a retired old-school police cruiser complete with searchlight and decal. Again, it's not what I had in mind, but the price is right, and it appears to run. I fork over $800 of my summer savings and prepare for a backpacking weekend in Tahoe with my cross-country conspirator.


So back to that highway in the foothills. I have escaped, temporarily, and freedom is in the air. My tenure at the goat farm is almost over. This weekend, I'll finally get a taste of the much-anticipated Sierras, and in a week or so, I'll be making my way to a new farm, which in my mind can only be better, much better, than where I am now. And if it's not, I can always sail away in my cruiser.


I have escaped the shrub-covered foothills and am climbing into the mountains. My heartbeat quickens as I pass the 2000 foot elevation marker. The road begins to twist and turn. For the first time in a month, I enter an honest-to-god forest. The trees tower over the roadway, creating a cool, shaded tunnel through which I hurtle upwards. I have just passed the sign announcing 5000 feet when thick grey smoke starts pouring out of the vents in my hood. I pull over and pop the hood. When I step out to survey the scene, I'm alarmed to note that my engine is actually aflame. Armed with overpriced organic cider from this morning's farmer's market, I douse the blaze, to no avail. I am in the middle of nowhere, northern California, and the car that I bought a week ago is on fire.


I remove my belongings from the car's trunk and stand back. To my astonishment, cars continue to drive by for what seems like a long period of time. Finally, a concerned citizen comes to my rescue, but his fire extinguisher is no match for the veritable inferno emanating from my hood. Eventually, the fire is too impressive to ignore, and traffic stops in both directions. People emerge from their vehicles and join me in spectating. The windows explode one by one, and the flames surge upwards, dangerously close to the canopy of this dry western forest. One of my newfound pals snaps my grinning image in front of the blazing car. All things considered, I feel like I'm handling the situation pretty sportingly.


Forty minutes later, when the singed remains of the cruiser have attained a fairly uniform grey hue, the volunteer fire department arrives on the scene. I answer their questions.


What make was it? 
A Dodge Diplomat.


So...it was grey, right? 
Nope...white.


Well, miss, you should be able to get a ride into town with the tow truck driver. 
Thanks.


I call the insurance company to report the loss, and they tell me they're going to send an agent out to confirm that the car is, in fact, totaled. After surviving an unexpected snowstorm in the Sierra backcountry, I return to the goat dairy and call the insurance company yet again. You got the car in storage? Good, we're gonna send someone out there sometime this week. The next time I call, they are indignant. Your policy didn't cover fires, they tell me. We're not sending anyone out there.


My coolness is starting to dissipate. I call the storage folks and tell them to destroy the car, and learn that they have been charging me $100 per day to keep my wreck of a vehicle in their lot. It's been there for ten days. My summer savings are all but exhausted, and I'm only a month into my gap year adventures.


I'm not about to crawl back home this early in the game. I call my sister, who has just completed a summer of volunteer work with the Forest Service in rural Idaho and is in the process of moving to Seattle with her boyfriend. They're currently crashing on the couch of a friend's friend, but if I'm really desperate, I could crash on the floor temporarily.


I'm as desperate as I've ever been.


Looks like I'm moving to Seattle. 

Sweater Vest Smackdown

I am seven miles into an eight mile run when I encounter the first stoplight of the afternoon. I sidle onto the curb beside a well-dressed young lad who looks like he's straight out of a Land's End ad, sweater-vested and khaki-panted, and toting a scrunched-up paper lunch sack, to patiently wait for the light to change. I have learned to wait, semi-patiently, for the light to change. This does not come naturally. I am from the Northeast, after all. When I first arrived in Seattle with the intention of staying, I was amused and slightly disconcerted to note the serenity with which pedestrians waited at traffic-less crosswalks until the signal turned green. Didn't they have somewhere to be? Couldn't they see that NO ONE was coming? I did, and I could see, and I wasn't going to idly stand by while valuable time slipped through my fingers. I crossed the street as I damned well pleased.

But several months have passed since then, and I, ever flexible, am trying to adapt. I stand politely next to Mr. Sweater Vest and wait. A minute passes, the light turns green, and I am off for this run's final mile.

A few seconds later, I catch an argyle-patterned blur. The sweater-vested one zooms past me on the sidewalk, lunch sack still in hand. He darts ahead with surprising speed. My ego protests, and I give chase, but there's no catching this one. He cruises into the distance, and I bemusedly make my way home, wondering at the contents of the magical sandwich bag.

Don't get me wrong; I chose Seattle. After a geographically stable childhood in small-town Massachusetts, I spent my 13 post-high school years roving from Montreal to New Hampshire to California to Washington to the Canadian Arctic to Montana to West Africa to Vermont to West Virginia to France to Michigan to Oregon to East Africa, with lots of to-ing and fro-ing in between. My backpack is worn out. I sold my skis, and my beloved road bike, after hauling them from temporary home to temporary home five too many times. I don't know who my mayor is, and have missed just all about all of my friends' weddings. For a good while the adventure of all that movement was worth the inconveniences, but somewhere along the line I realized that there might be advantages to a bit more stability (it might have been the night when the miniature bed on loan to me from the French school district collapsed beneath the weight of an unsuspecting houseguest).

My adventures are by no means over, but I'm increasingly feeling the need for a semi-permanent "place to hang my hat" (à la Bruce Chatwin) - a place from which to base my exploits, where I can store not only my headgear but also my new bicycle and my eventual skis, where I can invest in a bed that won't fail me at crucial moments, around which I can build the sense of community and self that I realize more than ever is important for my sanity. Chatwin was a bit cavalier about said place, but I was pretty deliberate about Seattle. First and foremost, it's ringed by exceptional mountains and glacier-green rivers, the most beautiful landscapes I know. It's full of ambitious, active, outdoorsy folks who aren't afraid of a little rain. It's an internationally-minded place, home to some of the most diverse neighborhoods in the country and a significant refugee contingent, including a sizable population of "Lost Boys" from one of my beloved former homes, South Sudan.

I did not come here to be a hipster. In truth, I make a pretty pathetic hipster. If you have a hipster mustache, I am probably already laughing at you. I do like cupcakes, but damned if I'll fork over three-fifty for one. Don't ask me to swing dance, even if I do look kinda cute in my decidedly unhip jeans and sweater combo; my stumbling and fumbling will totally mess up your hard-earned hipster moves. How do you pedal so effortlessly by me on that unforgiving Seattle uphill stretch - are your hot pink knee socks turbo-charged?

Maybe I'll adjust in time, but meanwhile, please join me as I gape and gawk at all that I am not, and reflect on the long and winding path that brought me here, the fabled land of hipsters - Seattle.