La Quinta, CA: The Much Awaited . . .

Miles since last blog: 7.4
Miles Total: 3655.5

Route

Short walk today, I'm in no hurry at the moment and just happy to be in civilization again. People are where it's at. They're where the magic happens. Out in the desert or in the city, it's the experience of interaction that brings such a unique and mystical seeming feeling to this life. I'm now entering the final ten days, that's sort of a non sequitur but I thought I'd just throw it out there so you can do as you like with it, call it a girl, idolize it, I don't care, it's yours now. Oh wait, there's my train of thought, where's that ticket? Ah, here it is-next stop, the non-story story.

The Non-Story Story:

Today, I met a man, the comedy trekker. He's a young guy who started a walk across America a few years back where he'd stop in comedy clubs and do stand-up along the way. He made it pretty far too, from NYC to Texas. I can't blame anyone for stopping in Texas, just watch my Texcape video on youtube and you'll know why. I knew who he was from before we had met because I research other walkers, but I didn't know much about him. I didn't meet him through any kind of social network or our similar pass times, no one alerted either of us that we were in the same vicinity, nope, I met him at Burger King. I sat down across the aisle from him and some of his friends, they were on their way back to LA from a trip to Phoenix which I gather now was for his Birthday.

If you've been reading for awhile, you know I have this Kismet that follows me around sometimes, for instance, I met another guy walking across the desert, not for any charity or purpose, he was just trying to get to the other side and didn't have a car. I'd followed his tracks all day and even remarked on video and in a text to my cousin (whom was being amazingly awesomely helpful as a support vehicle for a few days), then I caught up to him at a rest area because I sat down on the adjacent bench and recognized his shoes from the tracks, he read my sign and we started talking. I gave him a bottle of water and my cousin gave him a ride to the next town.

Now, I am here to offer a less mystical explanation than Kismet. Odds are, had I gone any other way or any other speed, I would not have met either of these walkers of the earth here in one of the most barren (okay, I'm on the edge of the barren part in civilization now, but whatever) parts of the country. The thing is, unless I do walk some kind of magical path, which let's assume I don't for the moment, had I gone another way, SOMETHING else would have happened. Chances are, I would have been dazzled by whatever that event was too, and who knows, if I had gone a bit faster maybe I would have met with a fate even more amazing. So the story here is really no story at all, the story isn't about a magic path, it's about making a path that will cross with others so you have more chances of getting experiences like these. For some this idea may take away from the experiences I've had, the idea that they aren't destiny or beyond our grasp. I submit instead that it is empowering, to know that I can affect this kind of event on my own life completely with my own actions and not dependent on fate or the stars or anything else, but simply by mixing things up. But hell, I was a mathematician.

The Non-Story Story:

When I meet people, like the Comedy Trekker, it inevitably comes up to the point where someone says, "Gee, you must have some crazy stories." And I'm sure I do, the thing is, I can never think of them. It occurred to me in the shower that this is probably because a stories worth or craziness is based on what you are used to, and I am used to a crazy life.

The fact is, that when your week starts with being picked up and taken home by a cage fighting pastor with two families who constantly twirls a gun on his finger and talks about when he used to deal drugs for the mexican mafia, and ends with a couple of 85 year old gay guys who have been together for 55 years and are telling you about dinner at Liberace's house a block away, none of your stories seem all that unusual to you anymore. The fact that the middle of the week was filled with a day where you got stung by a bee on one foot and then stepped into a cactus and had to pull out 20+ barbed thorns from the heel of your other foot and at one point even got your hand stuck to the very same cactus leaving yourself in a painful yoga pose, well, this doesn't seem out of the ordinary either. It was the same day we headed up painted canyon road, woke up at some mineral baths and saw the Salton Sea and Joshua Tree Nat'l Park, you know, a normal day.

Maybe this is why when someone asks me, "Any good stories?" I can't think of any. To someone else, maybe each of these days are okay stories, to me there is no story, it's just my life.

146