My Life

Two days ago I was camping on a small uninhabited island I could walk around in five minutes. I was with two kids from Colorado who are major outdoor enthusiasts. Dan is a boisterous groovster who is kind to everyone and always greets people with a smile. Mark is a Dead Head hippie who hasn’t cut his hair in years or shaved in six months. After years of heavy drug use and acid trips he has quit drugs and has never been the drinking type. His favorite hobby is contact juggling and poi, a kind of fireball twirling seen at Hawaiian luaus. He entertained us all week with his tricks and a million jokes. They love nature and going off the grid. They don’t understand city living and passionately told stories of their home.
We rented a small boat and puttered around the island of Solta stopping along the way to climb sea side walls and dive off cliffs. We also swam, ran out of gas, ate ice cream and basked in the sun. We drank with locals and cooked our meals over beachside fires. It was a surreal beauty. We lived in a paradise of crystal water and without people. Imagine those Corona commercials but better. They both have tattoos but unlike bimbos with tramp stamps and deuchebags with unknown Japanese symbols on their biceps, they deeply believe the symbolism behind the ink they got.
Eventually we came back to the mainland and separated the next day but not beforeI ran in to Cameron, an Aussie I had a brilliant time partying with in Frankfurt, Germany. Cameron and I met up yesterday at the beach and were accompanied by his friend Charlie and another kid, Jack. Cameron is a grinning good guy who is quick to make friends and has a smart wit about him. Charlie is his lifelong friend and neighbor who was born in Korea and treats relaxation as the most natural thing in the world. They met Jack in their hostel who is English but was raised in Singapore. He has been all over the world and has an enviable number of stories to tell about fantastic places.
After a few hours on the beach we realized it was beer-o-clock and spent the afternoon wandering from one café bar to the next drinking half liters of cheap Croatian beer. Our conversations were all over the place, smart, and hilarious about topics such as the social impact facebook has on dating (are any of you facebook official?) We stared in disbelief at both the sun drenched beauties and the mustache-clad Croatian men who are
exceedingly fat but still opt for a tiny speedo revealing more than I care to elaborate about. Their skin is leather and they all look like seasoned mechanics coming home from work. When the comfortable shade got too hot or whenever bladders became full we would simply stand up, walk ten steps and dive off the promenade in to the cool water and float around for a few minutes before joining back in the festivities. We lived the pampered life. We took the road more often travelled and loved it. Taking it easy was implied. We were in heaven.
That night we swapped our trunks for a pair of jeans and partied at clubs along the beach. Their was an inebriated bliss in the air that’s unique to a summer day. We didn’t have to buy many drinks because the job was done and we were able to concentrate on the assumed competition of picking up the hottest girl there.
This morning I woke up in their hostel two hours after check out in a bed I neither reserved nor paid for. The guys were getting up also and we talked about the escapades and our future plans. Not wanting to draw the attention to the hostel staff of my intrusion however, I packed my shit quickly and confirmed the plans of my friends. Realizing our paths were headed in different directions, I clasped hands with my friends and wished them happy travels and I would hope to run in to them again, at the very least on facebook. Goodbyes on the road are never too emotional. There’s no need. Nobody ever remembers goodbyes, they just remember the awesome times shared together.
So this is my life. I wander from place to place and find unique, fun people who are doing the same thing as me. We have a kind of bond not everyone is lucky to have. I’ve heard people discredit what I’m doing by sarcastically giving speeches about finding themselves like this is a pilgrimage I expect to leave from as a more complete person but never actually reach, but that’s not true at all. Yeah, a lot of travelers are at the crossroads of their lives but most of us just want to have a ton of fun and delay the inevitable of figuring out what comes next. I don’t have expectations and I’m not trying to change but if it does happen at least I can say it happened naturally and truly brought on by the places I’ve seen and the people I’ve met. Asking for anything more would just make me look like a dick.
On Monday I meet up with Kathleen and her boy toy so that means this incredible freedom of being alone is coming to an end. It will be great to see her after six months though and I know she is as adventurous as I am and supposedly her bf isn’t that shabby either. All my experiences here have been awesome because I have had great company. Thank god there are so man cool people in the world.