davethegrinch.net

Dave says:

And so, first, an apology. What a way to leave our loyal readers. After all we’ve been through together, the ups and downs, highs and lows, ins and outs and I (we) leave you hanging somewhere in New Jersey lamenting dead relatives. That was not the way we intended to honor you and for that we beg your forgiveness. There is/was a method to the madness however. I wanted the last entry in this travel collective to be the denouement, drawing together the sights and smells of our adventures into a neat little package with a pretty bow on top. But this task caused great consternation and ultimately frustrated failure. Perhaps you could draw your own conclusions but, apart from that being disrespectful to you, we just didn’t think you could do it. It’s not that we underestimate your capacity for understanding and reason, it is that we have come to note that our travels are just too big for encapsulation. We have not come to terms with the shear width and breadth of them ourselves yet, so to expect our family, friends and casual voyeurs to formulate a precis of our voyages goes beyond the reasonable. Nevertheless, we live in a summarized society so, with apologies proffered but no retractions offered, here is the superlative list we all crave:

1) Distance traveled: 96,180km/59,764 miles
2) Continuous overland distance traveled without flying: 30,979km/19,250 miles
3) Highest elevation gained on foot: 4610m/15,124ft
4) Lowest elevation gained by swimming: 24m/78.74ft
5) Number of countries visited longer than one night: 23
6) Number of photo’s taken (and kept): 5137
7) Number of words written on our blog concerning these adventures: 104,544

And so on… and on… and on some more after that. Oh, but what a let down. The summary of the whole two years into bullet points loses its heart and soul. 5137 pictures – how boring. Would you want to sit through them all? Nope, me neither. What does a mile mean? A Nepal mile is a lot different than a USA mile. No, my friends, the reason why this last entry has been so long coming is that I’m quite literally unable to write it. It’s not emotion, although there has been plenty of that around here just lately, it’s just a complete inability to form my thoughts into words.

Today, I decided to take the plunge. This is my last day ‘off’ before returning to work, before returning to the normality in which we all exist. It has been slowly creeping back yet has not been wholly unwelcome. Some shopping, some decorating of the condo, a cat, a car and a regular Christmas have all made successful inroads to my road-hardened heart. But now, on the eve of being served the largest slice of normality pie (a la mode), I decided that enough was enough and this last entry must be written.

And here it is:

It still doesn’t say anything. I still can’t do it. Good grief David Browne. Here’s some random brainstorming formatted into a list, perhaps you can make sense of something:

• • So that is what Mongolia looks like.
  • Sarah rocks the world and puts all naysayers who ever said anything condescending or disparaging about her ability to do this, to shame. I am proud of her and you should be too.
  • I miss it.
  • I don’t miss it.
  • I have a lot of photos and a bunch of them I’m really quite proud of.
  • We wrote a lot of words and we’re proud of them too.
  • The world is generally poor.
  • The world is generally happy.
  • The USA is generally the inverse of the last two statements.
  • The USA is truly great but not because of the previous statement.
  • My understanding of the world is inversely proportional to my knowledge of it.
  • Will I ever do this again?
  • Technology reaches everywhere and everywhere people’s lives are better for it.
  • The developing world’s food is wonderful, yet its wine leaves a lot to be desired.
  • Seattle’s ethnic restaurants are really quite authentic in everything but price.
  • Souvenirs are overrated.
  • Merrell make the best trail shoes in the world.
  • Never take clean drinking water for granted.
  • Squatting to use the toilet really clears things out.
  • We need to allow goats on our public buses, it lends the whole operation a sense of community.
  • Sacrificing goats in front of a 737 should be recognised by Boeing as an official maintenance procedure.
  • China is not at all scary.
  • Russia is.
  • I Am-sterdam.
  • Amsterbeth is Amsterdam.

So there we are my dear friends and family. The night before it all comes to an end. I can’t help but feel a sense of foreboding. Is this it? Is this Pee Wee’s Big Adventure? Sure, we’ll take vacations to the weird and wonderful but a vacation, as we have discussed, has different goals than those of extended travel. I have traveled my entire life, big travels too, but I’m nearly (almost, sort-of) forty. Is this the part in the movie where I settle down, get a Golden Retriever and wait for the urge to buy a two seater sports car to kick in? I don’t know and neither do you and that’s part of the adventure too I suppose.

Nah – you know, from that last paragraph to this I’ve made up my mind. Fuck it! Life’s too short to hang around waiting for Death to come around with the check and in his over-familiar way say, “I’ll be your cashier when you’re ready. No rush, take your time.” (Liar!) Dine and dash, my friends, dine and dash.

The Acceptance Speech
Wow, we don’t know what to say, We’re flabbergasted. Firstly, we’d like to thank the academy for voting us the recipients of the Dave and Sarah Travel Award for 2007/2008 but we couldn’t have done it without the following people:

Nancy – For the being the post office, business manager and car rental agency.
Jackie & Ken – For giving me back my bedroom for probably way too long. It’s nice to know the feeling of sharing a bed with a girl whilst in my parent’s house still feels the same.
Amsterbeth – Hey, what else needs to be said?
Nina, Steve, Beth & Graham – The UK taxi service and proprietors of the best Bed and Breakfast in Lightwater, Wokingham and Padstow.
Amber and Chadwick – Buddy Holly Lives!
Hugo – My best photographs are all because this crazy Dutchman stubbornly refuses to use a digital camera.
Rachael Evans – Bring it on, we’re not scared anymore.
Patti & Leslie – We didn’t completely mess it up. That makes us very happy.

This entry was posted on Monday, January 5th, 2009 at 11:40 pm and is filed under Global Travels, USA. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.