Drive By Lifein'

In a travel station in Missouri, they sell barbecue pork and old men sit in the far back corner smoking cigarettes and talking about the weather. Their chat halts momentarily when the two yanks come in to use the bathroom and buy a few sticks of sugarfree chewing gum. The Missouri bathroom smells like the perfume I used to use when I was 13 and trying too hard to be normal. If I knew then that I, eleven years later, would smell that same scent in a dirty Missouri travel station, would I have bothered sneaking it from my Mom's dresser in the first place? If I knew when I was thirteen, by the age of 24, that I would have lived in Watford City, North Dakota; Packwood, Washington; Marble Falls, Texas; and on a seismic research vessel in the middle of the Gulf of Mexico, would I have believed it? All of those years of dreaming and flipping through National Geographic magazines wondering if I would ever see the outskirts of Greenville, MI, I finally reached beyond the pages. My brother, Christian, is reading a book called Factory Girls about Chinese factory girls. He says the Chinese believe that a family's history begins when the first person leaves. Until then, you are living someone else's life. That seems pretty accurate to me.

In the past few months, I have neglected my blog, primarily because I was living at a summer camp in Texas. TOS was not devoid of drama in the least bit. If we called ourselves a family, we were quite the incestuous family. Of course I did not partake in incestuous behavior as my options were quite limited and even in my drunkest states, I was not going there. I had a lot of fun, blobbing, water sliding, rock climbing, surfing, and exploring a state I once vowed never to visit. I'm glad I broke my vow, because life, at least my life, is not about picking and choosing where to go. It's about adventure being thrust upon me and grasping it and going wherever the wind takes me. I refuse to let chances pass me by out of fear. I've made a lot of odd choices, like living with Biggy C in a trailer park or attempting to befriend a crazy homeless man in Ann Arbor, but out of the odd spewed rich stories. I've also had a lot of failures, like my Austin basketball group or that Ironman I met with or that Mississippi embarrassment, but in the end, who the fuck really cares. My failures all have one great likeness - they all began with a taken risk. If I don't continue to take risks and stuff money down homosexual men's pants, who will I become? Will I become part of my family? - someone living an ancient man's story? Thus, in three days I will pack my life into a thirty pound bag, board an airplane flying from Grand Rapids, MI to Houston, TX, then board a helicopter that will fly me onto a seismic research vessel in the Gulf of Mexico. Life is a daring adventure, or nothing at all.