relaxing travels

i started saturday morning at 3 AM, forced awake by an alarm set to stun me out of well earned sleep. i stumbled around in the dark, afraid of the blaring lights that would replace the night with the flip of the switch. i had started another holiday, time away from work and the standard pace of life that i bury myself within. what sounded like a great idea when originally planned, was forcing me up, when i would much rather snuggle into bed and let the weekend slowly creep past. i laced my boots, shouldered my backpack and headed for the door. pushing the grumpiness away, i tried to relax and draw in the comfort of a promised relaxing vacation.

driving to the airport i called my son in the US and found him preparing for a 10-boy sleep over. how he ever convinced his mother that having 10 boys over for a lack-of-sleep over is beyond me. allowing a small horde of laughing tweens to commandeer your home is right up there with running away and joining the circus. it sounds like fun and adventure, but when you get right down to it living with monkey poop all around you has its limits of enjoyment. then again, there i was hours before sun-up being slowly driven to a discount airport so i could fly to a communist country, board a train and go into the mountains. who was i to judge?

i need this holiday. the timing was set months ago to allow me to juggle three projects. the planning has appeared to work out, the first seems fully stabilized, another that is in test but is coasting down its planned slope, and the last is running ahead of the curve a bit like a runaway train. the past few months have been a roller-coaster ride; and it is clear i need to get off and take a break from the "fun".

a roller-coaster is probably the wrong metaphor here, it has been more like bungie jumping must have been before the sport had a name. in a moment of boredom someone started a sentence with "what if we..." and for some reason thought it would be fun to actually to try it. we then cobbled our gear together and found a high ledge and at the last moment called home to warn the parents what we had decided to try. there was tension and some coercion to force us to let go before we were completely ready, but we survived the first thrilling fall before hearing the onlookers say, "dude, that was awesome, do it again".

this is what i needed to get away from, the desire to sieze the day with white knuckles from fear of death secondary to unrestrained free-fall. it does feel amazing when the stress is replaced by the reality that you did let go, you accelerated toward a short sharp shock, and then just as you were sure you had overstepped, you where snapped back and the curve reverses itself to one of upwards safety. it clears the mind, but there can be a hangover, and taking a rest from the party is a good cure for that.

so here i am, walking a neighborhood i mapped in my head on previous visits. i know where to go for a morning ca phe sua da with banana pancakes, or to get a very good croissant to eat while strolling along the lake. i am ready to move around the city on foot, cyclo or motorcycle. i am looking forward to sitting on a corner for hours, drinking bai hoi and eating pho ba for less than the price of a single coffee at starbucks. i am also going to eat at my favorite italian restaurant in asia, go to mass in french, and if i am really lucky get my name on a wall of fame for drinking 10 shots of "rocket fuel" the rice wine served straight or with infusions of your choice from lemon to snake. why in god's name would i want to drink rocket fuel, not once but ten times in row? well, it will get me a t-shirt as well as the bragging rights of success. it will also probably give me a serious headache, so this will have to wait until after the train to the mountains.

maybe that is why i needed this vacation. i needed to have a challenge that would not matter if i failed to do it. i mean, who cares if i stop at 9, or push to 10 and then fall off my stool. i really do want to get to ten for the t-shirt, but the shirts are only 5 USD and i could always buy one rather than drinking my way to ownership... but that really isn't the way to get the t-shirt is it?

just like all the other stupid things i do, it's the doing that is most important. owning the shirt means that i also own the experience. i can wear it not because i can afford to buy it, but because i stepped my ass up to the bar and ordered the drinks while someone was keeping count. if no one cared to watch, if it didn't matter to anyone at all, why would the doing matter. i don't want to wear a shirt if i didn't earn the damn thing. and, i don't want to celebrate something that is easy enough for anyone to do it. it might sound stupid, but it's true that there are too few challenges in life, you need to be proud of the ones you have survived.

if you are really lucky you can look around the table after your jump and with a steady voice say:

been there, done that, got the t-shirt.