(Author's Note: Since I've got some 250 signs to paint and post just to catch up to y'all, I'll try to keep things lively here by interspersing pictures with some stories from my life. Enjoy.)
When I was eighteen my friend Tiernan pulled a map of Mexico out of his backpack and showed me where he and his girlfriend had just been. They'd gone to the border with about $250 between them and then just traveled around northern Mexico on busses and trains. They hiked into mountains, slept in canyons, campgrounds, and $5 hotel rooms with no itinerary except to just keep moving and take things as they came until the money ran out. After about two weeks of travelling they crossed back over in El Paso with about $10 left between them and then spent three days hitchhiking back to LA. It was, quite simply, the coolest story I’d ever heard.
It's weird to think back on how random moments can end up changing your life: discreet epiphanies that you don't even notice when they're happening, but end up echoing and reechoing throughout the rest of your life. With over twenty-five years to think about it, I know that those few minutes listening to Tiernan and watching his fingers fly around that map ended up setting the stage for pretty much everything that's happened to me since.
Even though Tiernan turned me on to a life of adventure, it was Reagan who really inspired me to live each day as if it were my last.
USA - 837
When I was eighteen my friend Tiernan pulled a map of Mexico out of his backpack and showed me where he and his girlfriend had just been. They'd gone to the border with about $250 between them and then just traveled around northern Mexico on busses and trains. They hiked into mountains, slept in canyons, campgrounds, and $5 hotel rooms with no itinerary except to just keep moving and take things as they came until the money ran out. After about two weeks of travelling they crossed back over in El Paso with about $10 left between them and then spent three days hitchhiking back to LA. It was, quite simply, the coolest story I’d ever heard.
It's weird to think back on how random moments can end up changing your life: discreet epiphanies that you don't even notice when they're happening, but end up echoing and reechoing throughout the rest of your life. With over twenty-five years to think about it, I know that those few minutes listening to Tiernan and watching his fingers fly around that map ended up setting the stage for pretty much everything that's happened to me since.
Although I had no way of knowing it at the time, ever since then I started living almost entirely for the sake of adventure: never knowing what was going to happen next and never really wanting to.
Not long after that Ronald Reagan was elected President and quickly became one of the other Great Inspirations in my life...
Not long after that Ronald Reagan was elected President and quickly became one of the other Great Inspirations in my life...
Even though Tiernan turned me on to a life of adventure, it was Reagan who really inspired me to live each day as if it were my last.
USA - 837
FB - 590
3 comments:
Reagan?????
Heh-heh-heh. In times like this, I miss old Ronny Raygun.
Is it just coincidence? In the 80's I pretty much made the same money in '81 as I did in '89. In the 90's I started getting raises for a change and made more money, much more, in the end than I did in the beginning. In the '00's I haven't really gotten a pay increase except where I had to change jobs and even then they were small increases. Coincidence that there were Pervublican administrations in the 80's and 00's? I think not.
Reagan sucked ass. I cried the night he beat Carter.
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