22/09: My first bout of homesickness...
It was bound to come sooner or later. It doesn't matter how independent and happy i feel travelling, it was bound to come...and it did, 8 months in to my travels to the day, the 21st of September.
I had just spent a month travelling West Australia in my beloved van with one of my best friends, John Potocny. I have known John since we were 4. Pre-school together, same soccer teams as kiddos, and the unbreakable bond of learning to surf together sealing our friendship for life. Spending a month together, after he has been living in Hawaii for the last 11 years keeping us from spending anything more than a week together, was just like old times. Like we hadn't skipped a beat since we spent weeks together on a surf trip to Baja when we were 18, indeed that was the last REAL surf trip we had been on together, into unchartered territory.
But it had to come to an end, as all good things must, and after a month JP was due back in Hawaii to run construction crews and make that dollar. We had to be up early to get him to the airport on time, like 3 am early, and had been up late the night before with a mate from the Bluff named Clay, a fellow American with whom we got on real well. The ride to the airport was a quiet one, we were both exhausted, and the goodbye was quick and unemotional, as only good friends and strangers are capable of; "Good times man, great to see you, thanks for coming, see you later" that sort of stuff. And then he was gone and i was on my way back to park the van in an empty beach parking lot and get some real sleep.
I awoke in the South Beach parking lot in Freemantle, one of my favorite spots in the Perth area. A big green grassy lawn meets some small sand dunes that open up to a 200m long beach edged in by jettys dotted with fishermen. A great place to go for a short run and a cool refreshing swim and start a new day, which was exactly what i did. Then off to the laundromat to do some washing and get the stink of a few weeks at the Bluff off of me and get ready for civilization again.
It was in these next 2 days that the lack of motivation and loneliness kicked in. I had no plan, only options, and it was this new freedom that confined me. With John I had a plan, to take him to all these great surf spots in a month that required a certain itinerary in order to accomplish it. But now, I could go north again back to the Bluff, but i had just missed a big swell and even though I was craving the familiarity and friends i had at the Bluff, it was a heck of a long way to drive, some 1250km. I could go south, down to the Margaret River area, but the weather wasn't looking so good and I would inevitably be spending some amount of days sitting in the van in the rain. So i decided to stay in Perth to sort it out, update the site, keep an eye on the weather.
And Perth is not good for me. A sprawling suburban city with no surf. I am not so good with cities, even when i lived in San Francisco i had to live at the Beach in order to maintain sanity, on what i called "the fringe" of the city. So after a day of hanging out in an internet "station" and wandering around looking for lunch without being able to decide between Japanese, Indonesian, Swedish, or Indian food for lunch, just finding myself at a loss to make a decision, i realized i had to leave. I spent a really nice evening with a friend of Clay's, a girl named Laura, who invited me to park in a lot behind their house in North Freemantle and use their bathroom, even take a shower. We spent the evening discussing possibilities as she was getting ready and excited to start out on an adventure of her own. She fed me a veggie curry she had made that afternoon and we shared stories and looked through a travel book that was a compilation of all the countries of the world with a 2 page summary of what must be seen and done in each country.
This helped to lift my spirits, but it wasn't until the next afternoon, having driven south and left Perth behind me, that i got into the water at Injidup Car Park and had a surf on a little right hander that was protected from the South wind that was mucking up the surf at most other spots. It was this salt water bath that reminded me of what keeps me going, what i love most in life. I love surfing. Surfing never lets me down.
I had just spent a month travelling West Australia in my beloved van with one of my best friends, John Potocny. I have known John since we were 4. Pre-school together, same soccer teams as kiddos, and the unbreakable bond of learning to surf together sealing our friendship for life. Spending a month together, after he has been living in Hawaii for the last 11 years keeping us from spending anything more than a week together, was just like old times. Like we hadn't skipped a beat since we spent weeks together on a surf trip to Baja when we were 18, indeed that was the last REAL surf trip we had been on together, into unchartered territory.
But it had to come to an end, as all good things must, and after a month JP was due back in Hawaii to run construction crews and make that dollar. We had to be up early to get him to the airport on time, like 3 am early, and had been up late the night before with a mate from the Bluff named Clay, a fellow American with whom we got on real well. The ride to the airport was a quiet one, we were both exhausted, and the goodbye was quick and unemotional, as only good friends and strangers are capable of; "Good times man, great to see you, thanks for coming, see you later" that sort of stuff. And then he was gone and i was on my way back to park the van in an empty beach parking lot and get some real sleep.
I awoke in the South Beach parking lot in Freemantle, one of my favorite spots in the Perth area. A big green grassy lawn meets some small sand dunes that open up to a 200m long beach edged in by jettys dotted with fishermen. A great place to go for a short run and a cool refreshing swim and start a new day, which was exactly what i did. Then off to the laundromat to do some washing and get the stink of a few weeks at the Bluff off of me and get ready for civilization again.
It was in these next 2 days that the lack of motivation and loneliness kicked in. I had no plan, only options, and it was this new freedom that confined me. With John I had a plan, to take him to all these great surf spots in a month that required a certain itinerary in order to accomplish it. But now, I could go north again back to the Bluff, but i had just missed a big swell and even though I was craving the familiarity and friends i had at the Bluff, it was a heck of a long way to drive, some 1250km. I could go south, down to the Margaret River area, but the weather wasn't looking so good and I would inevitably be spending some amount of days sitting in the van in the rain. So i decided to stay in Perth to sort it out, update the site, keep an eye on the weather.
And Perth is not good for me. A sprawling suburban city with no surf. I am not so good with cities, even when i lived in San Francisco i had to live at the Beach in order to maintain sanity, on what i called "the fringe" of the city. So after a day of hanging out in an internet "station" and wandering around looking for lunch without being able to decide between Japanese, Indonesian, Swedish, or Indian food for lunch, just finding myself at a loss to make a decision, i realized i had to leave. I spent a really nice evening with a friend of Clay's, a girl named Laura, who invited me to park in a lot behind their house in North Freemantle and use their bathroom, even take a shower. We spent the evening discussing possibilities as she was getting ready and excited to start out on an adventure of her own. She fed me a veggie curry she had made that afternoon and we shared stories and looked through a travel book that was a compilation of all the countries of the world with a 2 page summary of what must be seen and done in each country.
This helped to lift my spirits, but it wasn't until the next afternoon, having driven south and left Perth behind me, that i got into the water at Injidup Car Park and had a surf on a little right hander that was protected from the South wind that was mucking up the surf at most other spots. It was this salt water bath that reminded me of what keeps me going, what i love most in life. I love surfing. Surfing never lets me down.
