Ch. 1 - Away We Go

And so, new philosophy in hand, I set out on the first leg of my trip from New Jersey to Columbus, OH. Happiness and immense relief immediately came over me as I pulled away from Jersey, and I didn't look back once.

Mostly because I couldn't! My poor little Hyundai was packed to the gills! Yes, that is a giant blue stuffed bear taking up valuable space behind the passenger seat. Anybody got a problem with that? The car still handles great and gets good gas mileage, and at this moment, that car is the love of my life! I try to treat her well. Her name is Foxy, by the way, named so because I had to buy her after my old car broke down on the way back from the Foxwoods Resort and Casino in Ledyard, CT. So, Foxy and I have been happy together since then and are enjoying our new life on the road.

The first six hours flew by on a wave of excitement and adrenaline. I wasn't tired at all and felt like I could keep going forever. Alas, I had to stop in Wheeling, WV. Why, you might ask would I need to stop in West Virginia? Well, you see, it had been some five months since I went to Foxwoods and I needed to gamble! You can take the boy out of Vegas, but not the Vegas out of the boy. Wheeling is home to the Wheeling Island Casino, which I had designated ahead of time to be an essential stop. It was actually bigger and nicer than I had imagined and it worked out great! I played poker for about 45 minutes, made some good hands, a couple of timely bluffs, and walked out of there more than $200 up.. more than paying for the first leg of my trip! Actually, I did not walk out of there.. I ran the fuck out! I had to get out of their before the local toothless realized a Jew just took all their money! In my mind this is what I looked like to them in their minds:

Am I being unfair to the people of West Virginia? I don't think so...

So, I won, escaped with my life, and after that it was two more hours to Columbus and I was looking forward to dinner and seeing my friend. It was not long after I arrived that I started to figure out which casino I will be stopping at during the next leg of my trip.

My Manifest (Destiny) Manifesto

I sit down to write tonight at my computer in Columbus, OH, some eight and a half hours from New Jersey, yet only at the beginning of my new journey. Before the end of the month I will have set foot in or driven through 15 states and gone roughly 3,800 miles. And I will be happy. I am already. So it is I return to this blog after a 7-month dormancy, with a new philosophy, a renewed spirit, and on my way west once again.

My new philosophy is the new title of this blog. This is how I intend to live my life for the next few years. It is both literal (as you can see in the picture) and figurative. Simplicity! Minimalism! Before I go any further, let me say that I don't have nearly enough self-esteem to presume that any of this or what I will say in the coming posts is important or original in any way. I don't pretend to have all the answers or even all the right questions. The title of this blog is really only meant to apply to me.. whether this idea is right for anyone else is up to them. I promise only to share my thoughts and experiences as I think and experience them... and believe me, it is very hard for me to believe that anybody cares to read those either!

I do want to say, though, that what led me to quit my job (a steady income, in this economy!) and split for the coast (the west one.. no offense to the Jersey shore) with only what I can pack in my sub-compact car is not as ill-conceived (crazy) as it may sound to most rational human beings. The decision has been a long time coming and I will elaborate on my logic in the posts to come, I'm sure. For the time being, let me say to those rational humans that I am one of you! And I am not stupid (well, not completely), I am not careless, and I am not irresponsible. Nor am I brave, courageous, or in possession of a large set of balls, as some others might think. Believe me, I am racked daily by fear and worry, but I have simply decided not to let that stop me. It is the right thing, at the right time, for me to do.. This much I now know to be true.

This new course of action, and the life philosophy that slowly led to it and is being shaped by it, is something I came to after long and careful consideration. Of course I could have kept thinking and plotting and saving more money in perpetuity, but there came a time where I could think no longer and the situation called for action. This is not bravado, this is straight-up fear and laziness, trust me. But this combination has always worked for me in the past. Fear is my biggest motivator... not so much fear of external things like plane crashes and bugs, but of internal things. My number three fear is boredom and stagnation. My number two fear is not being happy. My number one fear is not forcing myself to get out of an unhappy, boring situation for a long time. In my life I have been able to ignore these fears for a while (we all have to), but sooner or later I use them as a call to arms. Again, I have plenty of daily fears about normal things like money and death (and bugs), but I will force myself to make a change if for no other reason than just to spite my own fearful brain. And I always do my best work under pressure. Sometimes I just have to apply that pressure myself. Sometimes I just have to pack all my shit in a car and go, even if all the details aren't ironed out yet. Really, part of the fun is not knowing exactly what will happen.

In short, I felt I was becoming a shadow of myself in Jersey (seen here waiting for the train on my last day of work). I was not happy and I had to get out! That's all I've done so far...

All's quiet on the eastern front

So, it's been a while. I make no excuses, even though I have many. But today I have called out sick and I am watching the snow fall outside my window.. I got nothing but time to think and blog. It's snowing a lot.. like a foot! That's just overkill.. an inch or two and I think we all get the idea, any more than that is just unnecessary. Oh well, whaddya gonna do?

Since my last blog I had a birthday and it is now 2009. I often think about how we will be thought of in a hundred years. Think about how we think of people who were alive in 1909, and born in the 1800's... Like they were almost in a completely different world. Will that be how we are thought of by people in 2109? It's weird. We like to think we are the center of the universe and the most advanced generation ever.. but we're just a passing fancy in the grand scheme of things. Wow, this cold medicine is some good shit.. blowing my mind!

But all that is kinda pointless to think about.. All we can do is live our lives the best we know how in the age we're given. We must do the best we can for ourselves and our loved ones. That's enough for me.

To that end, I am doing OK. They laid off a bunch of people at work... but not me. It's been cold and snowy.. but last week it was 60 and sunny for a day and I hit golf balls. I am reading more than I ever have... the train is good for something. I have now watched all of The Sopranos on DVD... "when in Jersey..". Margaret and Mia moved away and I miss them a lot.. but they're happy and safe in El Paso and I couldn't be happier and thankful for that!

So, it had been a while, but now I'm back on the blogging wagon.. or is it off the wagon? And now a few pictures from the last couple months: (Links to more pictures on the right)
My best snow man so far.. a fine hood ornament. $21 plate of pretty lousy latkes from the Stage Deli.. It was Chanukah and I was desperate. The rocks of Sea Bright, NJ, my most recent daytrip.. about an hour south on the Jersey Shore.

Well, that's all I got for now.

You talkin' to ME? Well, I'm the only one here.

Earlier this week I did what I think may be a rite of passage for New Yorkers. I argued with a cab driver. And it felt goooood. Actually, it wasn't a cab driver so much as a private car driver.. and I feel a little ungrateful complaining about a free private car ride home, but, damnit, I had to wait an hour on the corner of 5th and 52nd and I was annoyed!

You see, when an event goes later than about 8pm at work they will give us poor bastards who live in Jersey or some other god-forsaken outer-borough a voucher for a car ride home so we don't have to worry about taking the train. I have done this several times now and had no problems in the past. I call, they tell me what number car will be picking me up, I wait in front of the building, and in a few minutes the car comes, I get in, say "Home, James" and in about 45 minutes I am delivered home without ever having to associate with the common folk.

Yes, sometimes the drivers smell (true story!), or ask me about what I think of the desktop computer they plan to buy at Costco (on sale!), or refuse to use their GPS and insist on asking me for step-by-step directions (like I know where the hell I'm going!), but these are only minor annoyances one must endure for a free ride home. But Tuesday night I knew I was in bigger trouble when I got a call from the car dispatcher telling me that my driver said he couldn't wait in front of my building and wanted me to wait on the aforementioned corner.. about a half block away.
Now, I had no problem going to this corner (above is the view from the corner), but I did not quite believe the story I was being told because: A) The driver would not have had to "wait" in front of my building.. I was there waiting for him, all he had to do was pull up and unlock the door, and B) I had just witnessed one of my coworkers being picked up by her car right in front of the building not two minutes before I got this call. Nevertheless, I walked to the corner and did not see any car waiting for me. I waited a good ten minutes before calling dispatch, who informed me, rather rudely, that the driver was circling and would be there in three minutes. OK. I waited. I waited another good ten minutes before calling again and talking to a different dispatcher. "Where is the car?" "He'll be there in three minutes." "That was ten minutes ago." "Oh. Let me call the driver." "Great." So, he calls the driver and tells me that the driver is waiting at the corner. I tell him that I am waiting at the corner and have been for 30 minutes.. there is no car here. He confirms I am on the right corner, says he doesn't understand either, and he will have the driver call me directly.

The driver calls, all pissed off, asking me where I am. I say I am where he told me to be.. where is he?! He now changes his story and says he is circling and will be back in 15 minutes. Ugh.. whatever. So, I wait, and I pace, and I mutter all manner of profanities under my breath as I watch every one of a hundred or so cars drive by, none of them MY car. If I had just taken the train I would have been home by now! 20 minutes later, the car finally pulls up and I get in, all pissed off.

There is about 20 seconds of silence after I shut the door... we are both figuring out how exactly we wanted to yell at each other. I finally ask what the problem was and he tells me 52nd street had been closed the whole time and was just now opened and that he had just wasted an hour because of me! I said I just wasted an hour too... standing on a very open 52nd street watching hundreds of cars go by! He insists that it was closed until just now and I must not have been standing there. I assure him I was and that I don't really want to argue with him but, "Where did all those cars come from if the street was closed?!"

He didn't say another word the entire ride home. The tension was thick in that Towne Car as we passed a million tourists in Rockefeller Center and Times Square, and got caught in a major backup on the Jersey side of the Lincoln Tunnel. I didn't get home till 11:30... I had left work at 9:00. I was annoyed and tired.

Yet, at this point, as I said, I was actually kind of exhilarated by arguing with the guy. I felt like I could take on all comers... I wasn't gonna take shit from anybody! I was lean and mean (and not bogged down by any man purses). Bring it on, assholes, I'm a fuckin' New Yorker.

Here are more pictures from this week. So many tourists near Radio City that they bring out the horse cops... I like horses, they're so pretty. Wait, I forgot I'm a tough guy now... Horses aren't pretty, they're stupid and should all be sent to the glue factory. Yeah, I told them...

(Forgive me horses... I didn't mean it... I still love you!)

There is no Santa Claus

So, last night was the big Rockefeller Center Christmas tree lighting. Naturally, I was not there as I have no interest in being caught in a shit storm of tourists. However, since I work two blocks away, I have been able to see them getting the tree set-up and prepared for the big day. I saw things I did not want to see. Things that have caused me to reevaluate the entire world. Yes, the entire world.

First, I saw that the tree is really not as big as it looks on TV. I am sure it looks nice with the lights, and it's no small tree.. just saying, it could be bigger. I was underwhelmed. Second, and most distressing, I saw them adding branches to the tree. Literally teamsters hoisting up outside branches and tying them to the real ones with rope to make it look fuller. Well, in my mind, they might as well put up a sign right in front saying, "Oh, and kids, by the way, there is no Santa Claus... Merry freakin' Christmas".

Now, I am no great lover of Christmas (being Jewish I am contractually obligated to say, Chanukah rules) or of lying to kids, but The Rockefeller Center Christmas tree is a cultural institution and I was surprised how pissed off I was to have my illusions shattered. If this tree is fake, what else could be? Is the Empire State Building really that tall? The Brooklyn Bridge really that old? The Bronx really that dangerous?

In the end I am not sure if I would have rather not seen what I saw, or if I am glad the wool has been removed from my eyes. For, I have seen the tree in the full bright light of day and I am forever changed. The tree has been exposed as a symbol of the delusions, self-perpetuated and/or inflicted, that we all carry with us.. especially during the holiday season. In short, there is no Santa Claus... not now, never was. Jesus, I must have woke up on the wrong side of the bed this morning!

On a side note, I left the bag of stuff that I usually carry with me on the daily commute at work last night and therefore did not have it with me on the trains this morning. I found myself much happier without it! Free and unencumbered. I'll just have to carry my ipod in my pocket from now on. So, no more man purse for me! I am liberated, hear me roar.

Snow and THE Ohio trip

Hope everyone had a Happy Thanksgiving! I think it is probably my favorite holiday, if I could call any of them favorites. In general, holidays suck. Nevertheless, I found myself driving some 9 hours each way to Columbus, OH. This was my first time in Ohio, where both sides of my family are actually from. My friend Mitch, seen here in front of his house (clearly very happy to see me), is a pathology resident at THE Ohio State University. That's right, THE. If you don't say the "The" they will yell at you. Silly and pretentious? Yes. But the campus is nice and Mitch likes it there. He cuts up dead people for a living and gave me a tour of the morgue. I saw a split second of my first real dead person.. I saw something bright red that was probably some sort of guts and decided that was quite enough.

The drive went smoothly and surprisingly quickly. Along the way I made my first ever snowman at a rest stop in the middle of nowhere Pennsylvania. He isn't very big, doesn't have a face, and is really pretty pathetic, but I love the poor bastard and was sorry to leave him behind. I'm sure I'll have more practice making snowmen in the coming months. Yesterday I woke up to snow falling outside my window. Sounds romantic when I put it that way, but I wasn't thinking romance at the time. I was just hoping it would be over by the time I got out of the shower. It was.. but it did stick a little and I took a picture of my car's first snow.The snow really is pretty to look at, and is still sorta a novelty to me, but I can't say I am looking forward to too much of it. It's cold! Although, I did get gore-tex shoes and feel I am now ready to kick winter's ass.

So, This is Fall... Weird.

Fall in New Jersey and New York is real, people! Before now I had never seen an actual season besides summer and maybe one week of winter, at best. It has been nice, as you can see in the pictures of Central Park.. the leaves really do change colors. And then they fall.. hey, I get it now! But... I fear for the coming cold. What is this Florida-by-way-of-Vegas dude gonna do? I really have no idea. Margaret showed me how to wear a scarf, I bought some long underwear, which I figured out how to wear on my own, and I ordered some gore-tex shoes online. I will have the gear, but will I have the will?


Otherwise, a lot has happened the last few weeks, some good, some bad, some meh. I have had some of the best days and some of the worst.. sometimes they were the same day. See what I did there? I will try to catch up on the ol' blog soon.

Enough to say that I deeply miss my two favorite people in New Jersey, but knowing they are happier makes me happy.