One Week Later

I have noticed that the week before any major trip tends to be crazy as hell.

Since my post last Friday I have sold/packed/thrown away almost all that I own. I have spent every day saying goodbye to friends and family - and I still have a list of people I did not get to see. Dave has been in Costa Mesa surfing, while I have been wrapping up my time in Portland.

Among other things I have driven hundreds of miles, eaten at over a dozen bars and restaurants and paid for virtually nothing. Somehow I got everything done that I needed to do during all of this and I gotta say - for all the stress involved, there are definite perks to leaving town. It was an awesome week and I am still processing all the things that happened.

Tonight I will celebrate my sister's 25th birthday at a swanky restaurant and surely have a fun, yet intense emotional evening of reminiscing and farewells with my family. This of course will be followed up by an emotional morning of much the same right up to the moment my train pulls away from the station.

After all that I will be headed south and a new chapter in my life will start. All that I own will be on my person or in my pack and I will have no one to answer to other than myself. It is situations like this that remind me how beautiful life really is.

-Cash.