Monday, February 15, 2010

A New Day


New Adventures

Well, I guess the beginning of Joe Part 2 starts today. A solo adventure to the sunny land of mexico. Mazatlan to be precise. On my birthday of all things.

How will it turn out?

No idea. Not sure if I will sink into melancholy and hide in my room for 2 weeks or muster my courage and stifle my sadness and venture outside to sit by the pool or walk along the beach or take a bus into town and buy trinkets made in china.

So, first of all the blog. No way could I continue the mojo blog without the Mo part. No way could I continue the mission statement we had of seeing the world together. (Hard to do when Margot had invoked the ‘until death do us part” clause in our marriage contract.)

But how could I not do a blog?

Sure there was a bit of laziness on my part as I didn’t want to have to write a travel journal, a ton of emails to my friends, my nightly letter to Margot and work on my novel. I didn't want to spend the whole day and night writing and not get a lot of planned relaxation done. Thus, the blog. Saves me some time with emails and journaling. I hope.

Anyway, on with the blog. http://travelswithjustjoe.blogspot.com/

To be honest, I was very nervous about going. Margot had always been great at remembering to pack things without a great list going. (She had a list in her head.) As well, she would always be a calming influence on my overactive imagination.

Therefore there was no one to stop my mind from racing off in wild directions. Simple things, like what if I forget my passport or wallet or pants? What if I forget to set the alarm clock or there is a power outage or I get attacked by ninjas in the middle of the night? What if I get to the airport and have the wrong boarding pass and don’t realize it and I board a flight to Hong Kong and when I get off the plane, I get lost in the airport and find myself on the street where I am taken by Tong kidnappers who put a smelly dark hood over my head and take me to their lair where they find out I am not a wealthy business man from Dallas and beat me silly in anger, then decide to ransom me anyway, cutting off various toes and sending them to my friends in hopes of getting some money but none of my friends have money either so I am beaten daily and forced to live in a tiny, wet, cold cell for 6 years where I finally manage to pick the lock with a petrified shoelace and race out into the sunlight only to be blinded and hit by a bus.

Yeah, see, it would happen. Sure.

Now this kind of thinking may help with writing but not so much with remaining calm.

All kidding aside, the whole idea of going without Margot to a strange, if sunny, place seems wrong. But then the whole mess of cancer and dying seems wrong. So maybe this is just a different stage of wrong. Something I need to force myself to do, like climbing back into our bed for the first time after she passed.

Certainly, I don’t want to have fear guide my life from now on. But the otherside of that is a lot of life is overwhelming at the moment and is this too much, too soon?

Got to the airport in good time thanks to Owen who had offered to drive me from his house in Richmond. Took only 2 bags with me, loaded with enough clothes and books for 2 weeks. In fact, I had way more books that I could ever read in 2 weeks due to a decision I could not make at home. Do I read quality books that would better me as a human being and maybe teach me how to write or read thrillers and military SF? Like choosing between a filet mignon and a bag of cheetos.

In the end, I chose not the decide and brought both. My carry-on bag weighed more than I did after a hefty meal at the Keg.

Check-in went relatively quickly though I hated all the old couples and middle-aged couples and young couples, all representing what I had lot in the past, the now and the future. Managed to book a wiodow seat and made sure I wasn’t going to Hong Kong by mistake. Then made the epic walk to my gate. Policemen zipped by on bikes. Massed security guards milled around like frightened eighth graders at their first dance (mostly talking with each other and doing, at least as far as I could tell, very little in the way of security duties). Hordes of vacationing tourists like myself bunched up around the big screen TVs showing the Olympic gold we had won last nice over and over again.

Typical airport stuff, really.

Had to take my shoes off, get my laptop out, debelt myself and walk through the scanner trying to make sure my pants didn’t fall to my ankles. I remember seeing the Nazis do something similar to the plotters who tried to kill Hitler. Except they let the plotters keep their shoes. Funny times, eh?

Watched as 6 tall Chinese pilots made their way through the security zone. Not one of them was under 6’2”. All 6. What are the odds? Is it a requirement? Mark?

Being a thoroughly modern airport, they had internet and a plug in from my laptop so I sat down to start the blog and catch up on what’s happening around the world. However, being a thoroughly modern airport built by the lowest bidder, the plug-in didn’t work and it took a while to finally get internet. Not that it mattered, really. I watched planes come and go, the sky blue and bright the mountains crisp in the background, a wall of evergreens hiding the blight of suburbanization.

The adventure begins.

1 comment:

  1. I love your blogs. You absolutely rock. And your writing really rocks! I swear I feel like I'm there with you. (Which I sort of am -- in spirit anyway. S.

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