Since the holidays are upon us and I am woefully behind in keeping up with TrippinWithDon.com, I figured that I should let you all know that I have not somehow become a married-with-children suburbanite driving a minivan or possibly worse, in some ditch on the side of the road getting my bones picked clean by giant vultures.
“Surely”, you’re thinking, “Don’s freewheeling life has to have plenty of adventure to write about. Maybe he just ran out of song titles to give them?” No, I still have plenty of songs but since I got back from Europe, the soundtrack of my life has been more instrumental elevator Muzak rather than Jimmy Buffett drinking songs. So now you’re thinking “Whew, finally a short Christmas letter”. Whoa there, Let’s not get ahead of ourselves.
For those of you that are very very busy or have adverse emotional reactions to spelling errors and poor grammar, here is the short version; so far, so good.
A longer version of this letter includes 34 states and 23 other countries since I left Seattle. Most of which are covered by previous blog entries so you’re off the hook there.
This little-ish year-end letter comes in somewhere in between. And don’t worry so much, I have spell check turned on.
I am still homeless. Living in discount chain hotels and couch surfing while I figure something out. It isn’t as great as I imagined it would be. Living in a 200 square foot room with a microwave, mini-fridge, AC, flatscreen TV and maid service is a palace compared to the 80 Sq feet and no amenities of my teardrop trailer.
I have to admit that I had it pretty good in Seattle, I could walk to 
restaurants, bars and grocery stores. The Lowe’s was a 5 minute drive away. I had a free bus pass that got me back and forth to work quicker, let alone cheaper, than driving myself. Except for one, my neighbors were great. Now don’t go thinking that I am getting homesick, I have been back twice and both times reminded me why I left. The traffic, crime, uptight hipsters, cost of living. Etc. have only made it easier to not look back.
Somewhere along my long and winding road, I overheard a couple of people who don’t live in Greenville, South Carolina say that it’s pretty nice there. That’s good enough for me so that’s where I have been hanging out off and on since July. I found that it’s close to the mountains and just a few hours from the beach. It’s a big enough city that there is a variety of things to do especially if your interests revolve around church or hunting. Otherwise Atlanta, GA and Charlotte. NC are just a couple of hours away. It is one of the fastest growing cities in the Southeast too.
People are really nice in the South which is a bit unsettling after 20 years in uptight closed off Seattle. I can’t tell you how many aimless small chats I have had or overheard while in line to buy groceries for my dinner. Being a polite guy, I put on my biggest smile while thinking “Lady, I am hungry and tired, I just want to eat this box of Twinkies and go to bed.” It seems to work, because I always get blessed on my way out the door. So I have that going for me in case I decide to run for Pope the next time an opening comes up.
Even cops give you the steering wheel wave when they pass you on the road. I can never wave back fast enough before they are past me and I spend the rest of the day wondering if they think I was some kind of cop hater and are going to pull me over next time. Then again, if I wave first, do they wonder if I am over compensating for a pile of dead bodies or bags of cocaine in the back of the car. I am sure that having a Washington Driver’s License, Ohio Car Tags and no visible means of support won’t help.
Leaving my mark around Greenville
The odds of my engaging with the police are much higher than you would expect. People here are crappy drivers and I drive a lot. In one afternoon, I was hit from behind twice. I keep the trailer hitch on the car so I got off lightly both times. The rear enders, on the other hand, got a souvenir 2” hole in their plastic bumpers. The 3rd time, yes THE THIRD TIME, a couple of weeks later, was a little faster and I ended up with $8000 of damage and a rental car for 3 weeks. The responding cop had some questions about all my addresses and lack thereof but ended up giving up trying to figure it all out and just ticketed the other guy.
The downside of Greenville is that it isn’t all that cheap and it probably won’t be getting cheaper. Which means that I am going to have to get a job to keep up this extravagant lifestyle. My Project Management skills don’t translate well to this part of the world. Jobs here are either Web design software or construction based so I am not seeing anything that I can talk my way into. Besides, I am not eager to crawl back into the cubicles with the 9 to 5 commuter crowd so I will be expanding my horizons after the New Year.
I have been staying busy helping a friend of mine to clean-up his customer database and write technical blogs for his website. His small company matches up small and medium sized businesses with companies that provide Telecom Services with a focus on getting more services at a lower price. It’s pretty casual work for me but it helps me to stay busy, plus I get a free bed at their vacation house now and again. Where I get to chop wood, rake leaves and burn stuff.
In a non compensated plug for the business, here is his website: www.TeledataSelect.com. You can check it out what he does or read the blog if you can’t get enough of my writing here. The service is free to the customer too.
I am currently driving my way back to Ohio for Christmas. Spending time in a few places on my way. Pittsburgh has everything Greenville does plus snow. It is quirky and hipsters seemed to have overrun the place. It is almost a mirror image of Portland if Portland was less uptight. Even Cleveland is on the list but that is a long shot.
So my New Years resolution is to bite the bullet, choose a place and make the best of it. That and lose this Twinkies for Dinner weight.
Last look of my stalwart companion
The get-a-job resolution aside, I still like to aimlessly drive around the country but now it is without my little trailer. The poor guy took a beating last year sitting out in a Cleveland Winter then roasted under the hot Georgia Summer sun. By September, it was pretty much unusable. I kept planning that I would take it back in to my garage to rebuild it. That garage doesn’t exist yet and someone offered a few hundred dollars for it AS-IS so I unloaded it. One less thing to worry about.
One of the benefits of not having a job last summer was that I was going to have the opportunity to see my first full Solar Eclipse. I could have stayed put since its path was going to pass right over me in South Carolina. The bad thing is that all of the people that didn’t have the luxury of walking out their back door and looking up were going to be elbowing their way into my ‘backyard”. The closer the eclipse day got the more I realized that the event was rapidly going to become a circus. Hotel rates were tripling, apocalyptic traffic congestion were predicted and depending on where you wanted to stand, you were going to have to pay admission to look up.
I bought a box of power bars and a bottle of water drove my rental car around the Appalachian Mountains for 5 hours until I found a rest stop that hadn’t been overrun by Eclipse Seekers. Looking back, spending the night in an empty rest stop in the middle of the Appalachian Mountains probably wasn’t all that wise. It wasn’t long after I got there, though, that the rest stop wasn’t so empty. It continued to fill up into the night. When I woke up, the parking was full and cars were lining the highway.
It was a beautiful sunrise a clear sunny day, except for that little cloud popping over the next ridge. A Little cloud that grew and grew as the hours passed. By the time the eclipse had started, that one little cloud had brought friends and they were all starting to converge on the Sun. With 45 minutes to go, I gave up on my little mountain top viewing site, packed up the remaining power bars and inched my way around the viewing spots the other watchers reserved across the parking lot with blankets and chairs.
By the time I worked my way back to the highway, I only had 20 minutes left. I looked up for the biggest hole in the clouds I could see and drove in that direction.
I found an empty parking lot back closer to town, parked and got ready but was thrown out pretty quickly. Turns out that it was a Defense Contractor’s office complex and they don’t much appreciate folks hanging out around their property with cameras.
Goofy Glasses were worth it
I drove another half mile up the road and found another spot just in time to start noticing that it was getting darker. I tried to take pictures but wearing those Eclipse Glasses and trying to find a tiny sun spot in the view finder turned out to be impossible. I gave up and just enjoyed the show.
A full Solar Eclipse with clear skies only lasts a minute or two but WOW what a minute! Pictures really can’t do it justice since they can’t capture the chill in the air, the silence that comes with darkness as the stars come out and the Corona explodes out from the moon. It is just amazing to see. It ranks up there with the Northern lights.
The downside of the Eclipse is that while everyone arrived at their viewing sites over the past day, they all wanted to leave at the same time. My route back to Greenville was along the viewing path so it took six hours to travel the 60 miles back. It was worth it though.
It is hard to top a Solar Eclipse and Santa is on his way, So I am going to cut this letter short (relatively speaking). Best wishes for 2018 and stay tuned. I am still Facebook free and don’t have enough deep thoughts to post on Twitter but I do post photos from my adventures on my TWDonMiller Instagram account if you are interested.
Later, I have to get back to procrastinating.
Don
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