There isn’t much to say about February down here in Baja. The month came and went with surprising speed. I am still plugging away at things, trying to fight off the doldrums. The weather doesn’t change much and so the days have a sort of repeating effect, forcing me to get creative with things to do. Some days are marked with little more than doing the dishes and cleaning countertops, or wandering aimlessly on a random dirt trail out in the desert.
I’ve taken to going out for a walk most afternoons, just setting a stopwatch and seeing how far I can walk in 10-minutes, and trying to beat my “high score” the next time. Fortunately it is a beautiful area, though I’ve really had my fill of desert environments. I’m only about a mile from the beach though, and the Sea of Cortez always offers a nice incentive when I’m out for a walk.
Several flowers are blooming and the smell of pollen is in the air, though it of course isn’t springtime yet. A lot of native plants like to do their work in the winter though, as the summer heat is no time to sprout flowers; better to lay dormant and save water. Still, the new colors and smells remind me that time is moving, and even with carbon-copy days there is no denying that the clock is ticking.
I’ve also been busying myself with plotting and planning for where I might go exploring this summer. The general plan was Alaska, and while I still want to visit “The Last Frontier” at some point, the more I plotted points-of-interest, the less I wanted to visit it right now. It has more to do with waiting for the thaw than anything. I’d like to get on the road sooner than June or July, and May is a hit and miss time for being that far north on a motorcycle.
That has me thinking about going south. While my plan for “south” has always been “all the way south” to Ushuia — the southernmost city on the South American continent — I can also do a sort of open-ended ride. You can just start exploring Mexico, and once you’re down near the Yucatan you can think about continuing through Central America. Once down to Panama you need to ship across the Darien Gap, since there is no road linking Panama and Colombia.
So you could also ship the bike back to the US, or Colombia to start the South American leg of the journey. Chile has several cities you can use as a bail-out too. Looking at it in sections makes it far less daunting: when you try to zoom out on Google Maps to see all of South America, you will start seeing the curve of the Earth pretty quick. The same goes for Alaska though. It is SO FAR up there before you even get to the border.
It’s odd that going 3,000 miles across the US seems so short compared to 3,000 miles north, but of course it’s about change as much as it is distance. The continental US has geography changes sure, but it’s not like moving into the Yukon Territory, 60-degrees above the equator.
Most of the US northern border is on the 49th parallel, which is roughly where Paris sits. Up at the 60th you get almost 19-hours of daylight in June…it’s just not the same as traveling the same distance east and west. You enter a new world, not just new environments or cultures. And of course there is also one of my most dreaded problems: repeating scenery. Add to that mosquito hell and Kodiak Bears and it’s certainly shaping up to be an adventure.
Of course, going to Ushuia involves a lot of repeating scenery, especially as you get further south into the arid, bleak, and windswept sections of southern Argentina. Down there is also Patagonia though, which sounds as exotic as Shangri-La to my ears. A place so exotic, I don’t even know if they have tacos 🙂
Speaking of that, I recently started playing around with some of the chatbot, so-called Artificial Intelligence out there. Mainly I needed to know if it was really going to replace writers, and that sure looks to be a long ways off. It generates some real garbage, but it can help with research or if you’re stuck on something. It still has a propensity to fill in the blanks with total garbage, much like a person who doesn’t want to seem like they’re uninformed, and promptly sticks their foot in their mouth by saying something stupid.
It also isn’t so great at following prompts, but if you give is a really “out there” idea it can truly inspire. Look at what it gave me when I asked for a taco riding a motorcycle:
Now that’s a happy taco. I can relate, but I often forget how much fun being on a motorcycle is, since I do it so often.
Clearly I have a lot of free time, though I am making progress on my book when I’m not doing the dishes or something equally exciting. The daily grind is something we try to get away from in our normal lives, but my life isn’t really normal. I don’t have anyone I’m responsible to except myself, which I’ve found out isn’t someone I take good care of.
I seem to have developed the idea that if I take care of the people around me, they’ll take care of me. That is true of some people, most of the time, but if you aren’t looking out for you, life will beat you down like a diseased circus monkey. While I no longer have people drawing life out of me like a wraith, I still need to put some living back in my life.
What’s more, I think most people — myself included — feel better when we are contributing to something bigger than ourselves. It’s why we volunteer, it’s part of why we start families, and a lack of that feeling is a major reason we get dissatisfied with our jobs, even if the money is great. We need to contribute, and for many of us the feeling of contribution is more important than the pat on the back or recognition of others.
I’d like to say I’m going somewhere with that, but I’m not. It’s simply a thing I’m aware of, have been aware of, but I find it helpful to put it into words. It’s a theme I run into a lot while traveling actually, because “exploring” and “riding around on a motorcycle, looking at things,” is kind of the same thing. It’s hard to tell when you are doing one or the other. It boils down to a feeling, and it isn’t explainable. But, despite their external similarities, they are very different indeed.
It is very similar to the feeling of riding towards something or away. You’re doing both in a literal sense, but I find if I’m trying to get away from some sort of feeling, the feeling persists. If your destination is “down the road” it becomes difficult to quantify anything you are doing. As human beings we tend to only know things by relating them to other things. There is no up without down and no there if we can’t define here.
As I wander the world, the question slips away instead of the answer coming closer. You can drive yourself insane if you think too hard on this kind of stuff. It just goes to show you that putting a tool in someone’s hand and putting them to work is a very simple solution for this sort of aimless inquiry; people don’t have much time for philosophizing when there’s weeds out in the field. Of course, keeping busy is also a terrible replacement for finding your true purpose, so the knife cuts both ways.
If I’ve bored you I apologize. Many people have little interest in this sort of ethereal rambling: it hurts their head. Of course, if you’re still reading, that’s kind of on you. I’m sure there’s some dishes for you to do instead.
As for me, I’ve got plans to make, books to write, trips to research, and ethereal ramblings in my head to sort through.
Johnny Killmore 