I am still (bloody but unbowed) giddy with simple joy that five customers all agreed to give me eight days at the end of August to allow me one last southwest blast up into the trees under the firmament.
Review if you will the NaranjaWesty streak through Taos and Los Alamos and San Diego and Los Angeles and on up back to Las Vegas, Salt Lake City, Portland OR, Seattle, and that lovely little moment in Livingston MT with whc03grady and fam, Wisconsin Happyfolk, and Illinois after Michigan and New York with BusBassist and new cylinder heads in New Delhi after my day under cheesehead's new solar panel covered car cabana.
I have had good reason recently to ponder this Itinerary Life. When you are too close to a thing, you can't see it so well. I got caught up short on September 20th where a You Tube video-captured filch of an ice cream sandwich from a convenience store in Ohio burst forth onto the internet. I endured 48 long hours of the bleakest despairing sleepless appalled shame of my adult life. This Itinerary Life is over! It is over! But I loved it, I LOVED it, is it really over?
In my insomnia, the planned escape into immediate obscurity was well underway. An angel-who-doesn't-quite-own-it came flitting onto my phone screen at a gas station in Fort Oglethorpe GA and gently breathed a reminder that we all are all not so perfect and I must join the continuum of Humans right where I find myself. I guess one minute before 10:07PM on September 22nd, I was self-immolating hot shame, and one minute after, I was committed to rescuscitating all that I love.
Humans, can't live with them, can't live without them.
I tried to get back in the saddle with the BobD, and drove back into the remainder of the Itinerary, but no. I got the one critical call done in Aldie VA (honeybus!) and realized that I must, I must get off the road. Spirit is a lovely thing, joy is too, and they both have abundantly fueled seventeen years of this, this thing, but when they have taken leave, so must I take my leave.
I certainly have discovered my friends anew. Paradoxically, I have also discovered a self-respect brought to me courtesy of shame and the wise counsel of good friends.
After an appointment with Sylvester tomorrow morning then getting my teeth drilled out (root canal and two crowns) tomorrow afternoon, I head to Pensacola where I shall have the drawing board set up and functional by Monday October 14th. Then, please, can we get on to the next chapter of this unfolding story?
Colin
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