All Good Things Must Come to an End

I'm sitting in my house in Chico now...a house that I had inhabited for almost a year before my sudden disappearance into the European Continent. It's still my house, and nothing here has really changed. But yet, it doesn't feel like my house. It all feels quite strange. It's like what David Byrne from the Talking Heads says in one of his songs: "This is not my beautiful house...How did I get here?"

Well, I'll tell you how I got here...it took about 27 straight hours to be exact...a new travel record for me. It was one of those days that just wouldn't end, where I kept finding myself stuck in some chair with my knees bumping up against the seat in front of me. For the London to New York leg, the trip started out quite pleasant as I chatted up a pretty young woman named Dorothy getting her doctorate in clinical psychology at UC-Berkeley. She had just gotten back from Morocco, and so we exchanged travel stories and had a good laugh. The plane ride was also quite pleasant as they fed us lunch and let us watch movies on the tiny screens built into the backs of the seats. Watching movies felt like such a luxury to me. I hadn't seen a movie in God knows how long. It didn't matter what movie was playing...I was watching it. "Shrek the Third" could have been a complete piece of crap, but I wouldn't have known. At that moment, it was an artistic masterpiece to me. Then I watched "Lucky You," which was some movie about people playing poker. Once again, this movie could very well have blown chunks, but I was in heaven anyway. And then finally, it was Marlon Brando giving the performance of his life in "On the Waterfront." Oh, I was so happy I could have cried.

However, as I kept heading west, I noticed that the people around me kept getting weirder and weirder, and my travel situation kept becoming more and more unpleasant. For the New York to San Francisco leg, American Airlines suddenly became cheapskates and were now going to charge me to eat a meal. They were also now charging me for headphones to watch the movie "Lucky You," which I had just seen. Lucky me, my ass. Disappointed, I sat down beside a gentleman who at first seemed normal. Then I suddenly realized that...hey...this guy only has one arm. One arm! That put everything into perspective for me, and I suddenly remembered that old saying from my youth: "I cried when I had no airline meal to eat, until I met a man who had no arm." Or something like that. Anyway, after seeing this man with just one arm, I just counted my blessings, quit bitching and read my book.

The Amtrak leg of the journey from San Francisco to Chico seemed interminable. Just when I thought I was through with all the frat boy college types, this whole crew of guys piled into the bus heading to Emeryville, exhibiting the typical dumbass behaviors I had been trying so hard to get away from all summer. There was a "Rock the Bells" concert going on in S.F. which they had all just attended, so they kept screaming "Rage!" and "Wu-Tang!" over and over and talking about getting wasted and getting high. I just wanted to throw myself in front of the Amtrak bus and just end it there.

The late-night Amtrak train to Chico wasn't too bad...just extremely late at night. It was about at this point that I started getting a little delusional from being up for almost 24 hours. The 9-hour jet lag was really started to affect me. Several times I woke up out of my groggy haze and thought, "Crap, Eric, we gotta get off the train or we'll miss our stop!" and then I'd suddenly realize that Eric wasn't there, and I wasn't in Europe anymore. Yep...I was really starting to mentally lose it. Once I got off at the Chico train station at 2 am, I started looking at some of the other folks getting off. Talk about some scary-looking individuals. I mean, I was nothing great to look at either after being a bum in Europe for 10 weeks, but compared to some of these folks, I wasn't doing so bad.

So now I'm back in Chico at my home, ready to get my life back together and move on with the next phase in my life. I think it's going to be a slow process these next few days. I've suddenly realized how dumb I've become when it comes to doing some of the simplest things...like operating a cell phone. I'm afraid to see what's going to happen when I try to drive my car again! Yes, living in the land of America again will be a little odd for me. When you go from having nothing but the junk on your back...to suddenly having access to cars and computers and refrigerators and a nice comfortable bed to yourself...you suddenly realize how good you really do have it in America, and you feel a little spoiled. You also realize that you really don't need to accumulate a lot of stuff in life to make yourself happy. For me, what makes me happy is travelling around, and seeing things, and taking pictures, and then writing about it and sharing it with others. I like stories and memories. I've even debated writing a book about the experiences I just had in Europe. I hardly doubt anything would come of it if I do write it, but at least I'd have it for my own benefit.

To all of you who've kept up with the blog this summer, I hope you had as much fun reading it as I did writing it. And I hope it inspires some of you to go off and check out some of the wonderful things that this world has to offer. As I've learned during my 32 years on this planet, life is short, so take full advantage of the time you've got here and see as much as you can.

Well, I guess that's it for The Travelin' Fool. Hey.... you don't need to cry. Here... dry those tears with this napkin I picked up at the Hofbrauhaus in Munich. There you go! There's no need to cry, because there will be other adventures in the future. The Travelin' Fool will live on... but for now, it's time to put away the blog and move on to other things... such as finding a job so I can support future trips around the world! Oh, once the travel bug hits, it's a deadly thing. So much to see in this world, so little time.

Brian