Thirty Thousand Feet of Uncertainty
I’ve been back on the road now for nearly 2 weeks and I’m finally getting back into the swing of things. I’m remembering what it’s like to have to pack my bag after a couple days of comfort. I remember what it’s like to carry that bag through unfamiliar streets at the glances of strangers as they wonder what this traveler is doing in their part of town. some of them will stop and ask and most will be really enthused about my story. I’m once again remembering the feeling of stepping off a bus and not knowing where, when, why, or how for any question that I could potentially ask myself. I know what it’s like to lay my head down on unfamiliar couches, pillows, and parks. I know what it’s like to make a friend one night and know you’ll never see them again. I know what it’s like to taste the beers the locals enjoy in the seats they sit in and cheer for the teams they care so much about. I know what it’s like to miss my mom’s home cooking, my friend’s silly stories, and the embrace of a lover so far away. Most importantly I’m learning to not only accept, but to embrace all that is laid out before me. The good, the bad, and the most fucked up feelings I can feel. This is where I thrive and this is where I feel at home.
I woke up early Friday morning because I was leaving in a couple hours and I still had so much stuff to do. I had to pack, I had to charge my stuff, and I had to figure out how I was going to fit all this crap into a backpack. First though, I had to say goodbye to a friend. As I walked out of the door on my way to breakfast my mom said, “don’t run any stop signs this time,” because she remembered how I started off my last day at home before I left less than a year ago on a trip much similar to this one. Last year it was breakfast with Emily, and on this day it was with Krista. This time I took my time getting to breakfast at Zenith and I kind of laughed about the situation. Take your time. Make a complete stop. 2 Eggs over easy, hash browns, and wheat toast.
It was 930am and I’m glad she decided on that time rather than the 8am she originally suggested. I had gone out the night before with my mom and after several drinks with her and 2 of my most loyal friends, I wasn’t really interested in getting up early. I still had so much do, and my time was running out. I couldn’t pull myself away from the table though. We talked about everything under the sun. Life, love, the future, and how neither of us can figure any of them out. We enjoyed our breakfast and said our farewells. She was one of the last friends I saw before I left last time and she would be the last this time. We said our goodbyes and this time our lips didn’t touch.
Laura was late picking me up and I was thankful. My breakfast nearly turned into lunch and I still had to backup my photos, clean up my laptop, and prepare for another journey down the rabbit hole. This time things were a bit more casual. As I was walking in from breakfast my dad was on his way out the door to go golfing. Our goodbye was a little less goodbye this time and more like a cya later. I guess he’s finally understanding of what I want out of life. My mom didn’t cry this time when I hugged her. She just said to make sure I call her. Even though I was going again and didn’t know when I’d be home, she was just thankful that she got to spend the amount of time she did with me. I really enjoyed my time with my parents. I came home last time a different person and for the first time, I looked at my parents as friends instead of the authority in my life that they had always been before.
Laura showed up around 3:30 and in her car was her husband Jeremy and his friend Luke. I’ve known Laura for a couple years now and she has been a very valuable friend to me. I love her husband as well just for his ability to make her happy. And he’s pretty fucking cool too. Luke and I had met briefly before and it would be a good time stuck in a car with the 3 of them. Laura warned me it was going to be a tight squeeze and that comment was an understatement. I had to drive with my pack pretty much on my lap for the entire drive to Pittsburgh. In her defense, I guess I forgot to mention that I was going on a one way trip. Whoops.
All over the country local couchsurfing communities organize weekend long events with the hopes of bringing in people to show off their city to. They setup pub crawls, house parties, tours, and just events that get people together in a new place with new friends. This is why we came to Pittsburgh. We would be staying with Arunan who I met last year at this event and who has become a good friend of mine. He has come to my CS events, Laura’s wedding, and random parties that he just pops in on. I really like the PGH CS crew. Lots of good people who really embody the CS spirit.
As soon as we got to town we met up with some other folks from Michigan at a church that was converted to a brewery. It was Meghan, Adam, Kendra, and Gabby. They were there with their host Amy who is another crucial member in the PGH crew. She is known for hosting us Michigan folks and helping organize local events. I had a glass of wine that I liberated from another table who was leaving after Laura dared me to do it. It’s not the first time I’ve taken left overs from another table. In fact, I’m eating some chips and salsa right now that I took from the leftovers of a guy sitting next to me at the bar who just left.
From there we were off to Hambone’s in Lawrenceville. Lawrenceville is the hipster part of town for PGH. It has undergone a revitalization in recent years and hipsters and long term residents alike live side by side along with many bars, restaurants, and art galleries. I surfed in Lawrenceville last year and ended up running into a roommate of last years host while I was at Hambone’s. He saw my name tagged and said, “Chuck Manley? There can’t be many people in this world with such an awesome name.” Along with running into Matt, I was treated like some sort of couchsurfing celebrity when I was approached by many people who had been to one of my events in Detroit. I was humbled that they were so thrilled to see me. It reminds me of my friend Derek who said sometimes it sucks being so well known because you don’t get to spend as much time with those you care so much about. Other times though it means you meet other people, like you, who make such a difference in the world around you and are recognized by them when you walk into a new place.
Along with running into people I didn’t know, I also got to see many familiar faces that I’ve met over the course of my CS “career.” Jacob, Luke, and Edwin were all folks that I met last year and was happy to see again. Steph, Helene, and Arunan were all friends who came to my CS event in Detroit. There was even Dhelia who was walking past and I stopped her and said, “hey you look familiar,” and was surprised when I actually knew her. “Yeah, we made out last year.” Oh, so you do actually look familiar. That’s a first.
From Hambone’s we were supposed to move on to Brillobox which is a really awesome place to get your grove on. We spent too much time at Hambone’s though and only made it to Brillobox as it was closing to pick up 2 other surfers who were staying with Arunan. I was sad I didn’t get to rage it up this time like I did last year. Last year Brillobox was the opening event and I had pleasant memories of running into Laura, Alan, David, Alex, Frank, and many other friends whom I saw for the first time since I had left. This time we just hung out on the sidewalk and waited.
Back at Arunan’s house things were divied up for us to sleep. Laura and Jeremy would take Arunan’s bed, Luke would sleep on the extra mattress that pulled out from underneath, the German’s that we picked up from Brillobox would sleep on the mattress that Laura brought that prevented me from putting my back in the trunk, and I would sleep in the corner on the floor because I was equipped for it. I brought Arunan a bottle of Robert Mondavi wine. It was a reisling that I got after doing a promotion for them a few weeks prior.
Arunan somehow managed to wake up long before the rest of us, and I would learn throughout the weekend that Arunan doesn’t need to sleep. He went grocery shopping and bought stuff to prepare breakfast. We had eggs, toast, and some french pressed coffee that really started the day off proper. I had nutella for the first time and it made me think of my host Lorie in Chicago who had me buy oreos and nutella for her oldest kid as a token of my appreciation. I can only imagine how good nutella would be with oreos!
The first event of the day was a meet up in a park for some team building exercises. We got there, parked the car, and then I realized I had forgotten my memory car for my cameras and I refused to go about my day without documenting it. I borrowed Laura’s car and headed back to Arunan’s to pick it up. Laura had GPS to get me to Arunan’s, but the way back wasn’t set on her technological crutch. Getting back was a challenge because the parking spot we were in was gone and I searched for nearly 30 minutes to find another. There was a lot of construction in the area and navigating downtown during a sporting event was a pain in the ass. Eventually I found a spot right across from where I left and off I went to the team building exercises. The one event I got to participate in was the human knot. We all stood in a circle, stepped forward several steps, and grabbed hands in random directions. Either our knot was really good or our knot untying skills were really bad, because after a little while of frustration we voted not to continue and instead break up into the next events.
I choose to do a ‘hike’ of Mount Washington to get a good view of the city. Someone from Kent state decided to ditch a bunch of international students on us and it would prove to be a pain in the ass. They moved slow, took too many pictures, and spoke very little English. Laura, Jeremy, and myself decided we’d go meet up with the pub crawl instead and start this Saturday off good and proper and get fucked up. Except I was sleepy and didn’t feel like getting fucked up quite yet. Until I got to the bar that served 40′s.
Our first stop was the Double Wide Grill in the south side. It was an awesome reclaimed space that was once an old school gas station with mechanics. Today it’s an awesome bar with a really great outdoor drinking space. I didn’t drink at this place and instead just kind of hung out with the CSers who came by, but really I just wanted to chill out and be alone. I just wasn’t in the mood to start drinking at 2pm and I wasn’t feeling much social at the time. The next stop would change that a bit. Walking into the Lava Lounge I knew I had been there before. It had to have been last year during the south side pub crawl. A sign on the door said that every 2nd Saturday they have Motown night and I was saddened to be there on the wrong Saturday because I would have loved to get down to some Motown. I tell the bartender this and next thing I know I’m singing along to the temptations and they tell me they serve 40′s on Motown night and offered me one. Along with the 40, they also had $2 well drinks for couchsurfers. A couple whiskey and waters, a 40oz of miller high life, and I was getting in the zone.
Luke and I walked to the next stop together and I have no idea what happened to Laura and Jeremy. We had a nice chat about life, stuff, and staggered our way down the street to where the house party was going down. Paul, who had led the pub crawl was a new couchsurfer to the area but he did it good and proper when he volunteered his awesome space on butler that he used for his business so we could party and use it for our business. It was a potluck style and the food was excellent. The booze was flowing and there were tons of people both CSers and his non CS friends. It was a little packed and slightly overwhelming, but it was a great time none the less. I met a lot of really great people and eventually made it upstairs to a whole new crew of folks. One of them was Taylor who had come to the Detroit couchcrash the first year. I remember a couple months after the couchcrash Taylor sent me an email saying he was hitch hiking through Mexico after riding his bike around the country for a couple months. I was partly the inspiration for that and I felt honored. Taylor asks me, “how do you feel about streaking,” and I jokingly responded with, “right now?” Next thing I know I was butt naked running through a house of 100 strangers with a guy I hadn’t seen in over a year. The rest of the night was pretty standard for a guy who runs around parties naked. People giving me beers, women throwing themselves at me, and police altercations. I’ll save that for the book because none of those are nearly as interesting as they sound.
The last event was a guerrilla drive in movie which was way more interesting than the last sentence of the last paragraph. Ben, whom I had met at the Detroit Couch Crash organizes this event regularly. I always see posts about it on facebook and I was happy that finally I was able to check it out in person. We went to an industrial area near the strip district, after stopping to get Pizza, and Ben setup a projector on the top of his van that shot dawn of the dead at a wall in a parking lot. He had an FM transmitter hooked up to his laptop and everyone in the parking lot was able to tune to the radio station to project the sounds of zombies shuffling through a Pennsylvania mall as they ate each others brains. We called it an early night and headed home for bed.
The next morning was the last day of the PGH weekender. Laura and crew were going home and the rest of us were heading to the lunch potluck and obscure games event. The Germans, myself, and Arunan piled into his car, picked up some bagels, and went to a park over in Squirell Hill to partake in the activities. We got there late, but somehow ended up being the first people to arrive. It reminded me of the Detroit Couch Crash where we learned not to have any events before noon because nobody would show up on time. We feasted on food and began the obscure games.
The game that was the main focus was circle rules soccer. The game was very simple, lots of exercise, and tons of fun. The way its setup is you have a circle with a goal in the middle. The goal is made out of PVC pipe and is a 6×10 foot rectangle with a goalie on each side back to back. There is a circle that encompasses the goal and nobody except the goalies can step foot in it. There are two teams who have to try getting the huge 2 foot ball in the goal from their side of the net while a defender tries to block it. You can punch, kick, head, and otherwise do whatever you want as long as you don’t hold the ball. I was on the yellow team. We dominated. I can’t wait to get back to Detroit and start my own obscure game league.
Helene, Arunan, myself, and the 2 Germans piled into the car. We were going to cook dinner at Arunan’s and then drop off the German’s at the airport. We stopped at Helene’s place so she could pick up some things to bake cookies and also left over vegetables that would go in our curry dish. I was excited for Helene to bake cookies and more excited for Arunan to teach me the ways of Indian cuisine. Arunan had a couple bottles of Founder’s Dirty Bastard Ale and I told the story of when I first had that beer. My girlfriend’s dad brought back a 6 pack of it and said, “Hey, I bought this because the name made me think of you.” Thanks, Frank. I really like the beer and every time I drink it I think of her and her family. They were good to me.
Arunan ended up giving me the recipe and having me cook the food. I was a little worried because it seems every time I cook Indian food I bomb at it. This time was the exception because it ended up perfect. It was a little spicy for Helene’s taste, and after a generous amount of Sri Racha hot sauce, it was blazingly perfect for me. Helene’s cookie’s complimented the dish well and I ended up eating like 6 throughout the night, and after freezing them, had a couple more the next day to go with my leftover curry.
After dinner we played a game that I couldn’t pronounce for the life of me and I can only assume giving Helen’s nationality that it was in a language I didn’t know. It was a strategy game based on growing a farm, and apparently I shouldn’t be a farmer because I came in dead last. Good night.
Arunan had to work the next couple days so I was on my own for Monday and Tuesday. On Monday I woke up and decided I’d hit Oakland. Oakland is the college part of town for PGH. It’s where PITT resides, college bars, and girls in yoga pants and north face jackets. I wanted to check out the cathedral of learning again, because it’s a really unique and beautiful building and after a year of practice, I wanted to take pictures inside again. The Cathedral of Learning is a 40 story late Gothic revival building that houses many of the classrooms that the students attend of which are the 27 nationality rooms each dedicated to the culture and design of its country it represents. I spent a good couple hours just hanging out with my camera and getting lost in the beautiful architecture.
I called my friend Nathan whom I had met last year after an encounter with a group of religious zealots on a street corner. He was studying religious studies at PITT and felt the need to get in on the conversation. He later admitted that he saw my backpack and figured I’d be an interesting person to talk to. A year later I had kept his number and gave him a call. He was busy with school work but invited me to his new place that he was living at with some of his roommates I had met last year. I walked the 15 minutes or so to his place and had a cup of tea with him while we filled each other on the blanks of the past 365 days. Where have you been, what are you doing, where are you going? I left shortly later to allow him back to his studies.
I took the bus from Oakland to downtown and was hoping to take the 36a back Arunan’s place, but I found out I was late by several hours. I like to remain independent while I’m on the road, so when he later asked why I didn’t call him for a ride, I simply shrugged and said, “it wasn’t that far.” In reality it was a long walk and I had to cross a river a mountain and walk for 5 miles to get back to familiar ground. During that walk I remembered what real familiar ground was like. I was faced with my first bad day and I had a pretty miserable time getting there for the first half of the journey. I was cold, wet, and I couldn’t help but wonder what the temperature was like in Costa Rica. I like to get down on myself a lot. I like to regret things. I like to question my sanity and wonder if the decisions I make are correct or not. I like that after you do that long enough, you realize you don’t have other option than to keep going. So I kept going. I got lost in the ghetto, hated myself, walked along dark freeways, but in the end I laughed it all off because this is all I have and this is all I’m going to have until I get through it. So I kept my head up, and one foot after another I beat the demons down and I kept moving closer and closer to a warm home.
I got back to Arunan’s place and I sat outside and laughed about it while I looked up at the stars wondering if anyone else saw them too. Nobody was there to reassure me that there were stars in the sky so I can only conceive I was alone in seeing them. I had a bagel, got out of my soaken-with-sweat clothing and I hit the mat for the night. Tomorrow I was to leave Pittsburgh.
Tuesday would be really relaxed. I didn’t even bother leaving the house other than to stand outside and contemplate the mysteries of it all. I applied for jobs, contacted friends back home, and ate left over curry that I had prepared 2 nights prior. It was kind of lonely being in his house all day by myself. I went from a weekend where everyone was happy to meet me, laugh at my stories, and buy me drinks to sitting by myself on my laptop plugging away my life with each keystroke that echoed in the empty room. I showered, shaved, and put on my dress clothes because I figured they would have less wrinkles if I wore them than if I rolled them into a ball and shoved them into my pack. Arunan was here and it was time to go. He was to give me a ride to the airport and I have a feeling I may not see him until I make it to India someday. I hugged my friend and thanked him for his hospitality. I can’t wait to see him again.
I boarded the plane and thought about how much things had changed in the past year. We always come up with these grand notions of where our life is headed and where time will take us, but as any good Buddhist knows, time is an illusion. It’s not to say that tomorrow isn’t real, because it’s just as real as anything we can ever come up with, but we need not project our image of self on that tomorrow because that’s where the illusion comes in. You can dream things up all you want, but if you hold on too tightly to it, you’ll end up disappointed when it doesn’t hold true. I can plan out a million things that I’m going to do in the coming months, but it’s just a fantasy in my head that needs to be treated as the pipe dream it is. Today is all we have and as I watched from 30 thousand feet the sun melt away in the distance covering the sky in a beautiful glow of red orange, and a million shades in between, with it went my notion of time and any worries it brought forth. I remembered that no matter how confused, frustrated, and defeated I felt the hours previously, the sun will continue to set and rise and with each rotation of the Earth new challenges will come. New obstacles will be thrown at me and new solutions will follow. New faces will be met and with most of them new goodbyes will happen. Zen teaches me to hold on to the moment while it’s here and make it my friend and when the time comes – to accept its passing. In a universe where time is an illusion the possibilities become infinite and when I awake tomorrow it will be a new place and a new adventure as I try to discover who I really am in this silly series of events we call our lives.
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