Thursday, March 17, 2011 - Long Beach, CA
Having a day where I've just sort of collapsed - too much of everything lately but fun. I managed to get a little work done for school,but it was a major struggle. Read quite a bit today, some from the Palin diaries, a bit from a textbook on ancient Greece I just picked up, and also from my Lonely Planet guide for Crete.
Speaking of Greece, the trip is starting to expand. I've decided that I'd like to write a book about the experience, so I now plan on being gone for two months instead of one. I'm really happy about all this. I've always wanted to try my hand at a travel memoir and this is as good a time as any to give it a shot. it also shouldn't cost me too much more to live on the road in Greece for that extra month than it would here at home. I've also got nothing pressing to come back to until I start work again in mid-August, so why not just stay away? I've wanted to visit Greece for pretty much my entire adult life and I may never get back there again after this trip - and now that I've made the decision to double the length of my stay anything suddenly seems like half-assing it. I mean, I'd like to think I'm going to live to be a hundred plus and feel great the whole time I'm doing it, but I'd be an idiot to count on that. I'm now at the age where I'm realizing that there are certain things I'm going to get only one shot at at best, which means I've really got to start making my life what i want and need it to be. This summer I want and need Greece - a lot of Greece. So I'm going to make it happen - end of story.
In addition to reading about my trip I've started to make out a rough itinerary. I don't want to do too much planing; I want there to be a great deal of spontaneity to my travels. However, I also don't want to go in without some sort of game plan. So far I've sketched myself a nice little path from Hania to Crete's west and southwest coasts, which involves a great deal of hiking and a boat trip or two (I'm trying to stay out of buses and cars and the like and experience things in a slower, quieter fashion). Who knows how much of this I'll end up following once I'm actually on the ground. But if nothing else it should center me, which I've found to be a good thing on long trips such as this ...
[Feeling a little guilty as I write about my dream trip. Like so many others around the world I've been watching Japan sink into the radioactive mud for the the last week. It's a little hard to plan something joyous while watching something so awful go down. The only good thing about all this is that it might just be a death blow to nuclear power (and nuclear arms?). I get the feeling these meltdowns are going to be far nastier than than the mainstream news organizations (which have long been cheerleaders for the nuclear power industry) are letting on. If this is the case the true nature of this insane dance with death become so obvious to all that I hope, and to a certain extent believe, the people of the world will finally force their "leaders" to put the brakes on the use and development of these frightening facilities.]
2 comments:
OK, until I read the post below my first thought was that you were reading the SARAH Palin diaries and couldn't quite make that work in my world...
Yeah, I noticed a while back that she's sort of ruined that name. It sucks thinking of her every time I write the vastly cooler and more important Palin's name.
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