February 2023 | Trip

I had a dream where I met this young kid (who is set up for a future arranged marriage to another kid btw) and we’re talking. And he’s all like “oh you’re good at technology, can you help my dad with some PowerPoints” and I’m like sure.

So I go up in this giant but kinda dated house to the 3rd floor and it’s Donald Trump. But I’m like whatever, I’ll help. At least I’ll be able to tell my friends about it. So I get on his laptop and it’s a total mess, tons of windows open and desktop cluttered beyond heck. He is SO bad at PowerPoint. It’s like two slides, two pictures and his head is chopped off in both. His wife (?) is also up there they are talking casually. Trump is tired and so so sad.

So then some of my family are suddenly visiting around in the house, and I feel kinda ashamed I guess. So I keep sneaking in and out of the upstairs room to work on the  project bc I don’t want ppl to know I am helping Trump lol

When I accidentally leave the computer too long, so I have to log back into the laptop. Luckily it is not passworded. But it does have about 100 pop ups and spam and I am like man, this thing is crawling with viruses. Also his email his open and I think “wow I bet someone would pay a lot to read these” but I close it out without looking.

Eventually the whole place gets attacked by aliens (from outer space I feel O must clarify) and we have to clear out but…at least the guy’s ppt looks lil less embarrassing.

Uhh so. What a trip! 

Weekday is sugar addiction. Life driven by hollow treats. Your body can keep up now, but how long will it last? Fueled by cereal for lunch and juvenile pop artists one step above kidzbop. Short, sweet, hooked. Catchy headlines, simple narratives that go down easy. You don’t need to read the article – you know the conclusion. Dragging this project to the finish line but only one hour left in the day.

Weekend is Beck’s morning phase. Frosty crunchy dawn gives way to cozy car cocoon. The world is brown but bathed in a yellow that turns even the ugliest blight of the city into a blazing feast for the eyes. Drive fifty in a seventy-five of empty freeway. Eyes are not on the road but on the dirty fogged office glass, one hundred windows winked shut by curtains against the yellow light, sleeping in. A massive billowing black tarp draped over a billboard undulates in slow motion. Wisdom in silence. Sun beams melt abandoned structures back into wood, stone and clay. The truth of what’s inside. The coffee brown and organic too, forever piping hot in an insulated keep cup. Two hundred miles to go, but all the time in the world.

Looking forward to it is half of the point, but you have to be careful not to let your imaginings get too solid. If they do, it becomes almost impossible not to compare the reality of vacation to the version in your head–and then you run the risk of your expectations manifesting into disappointed entitlement. 

Like when your plane springs an oil leak before you take off causing you to miss your connection and you get stuck in Newark until midnight when you should already be halfway to Athens.

Or when your baby has jet lag and wants to do nothing but play at 3 am.

It actually takes practice to set aside everything you want it to be and open yourself up to just experience it fully–no matter how good or bad. Anyway, the baby doesn't seem to mind that the pool is freezing cold. 

Have you ever been on a picnic where you spend nearly all of your time trying to find the perfect spot? It can be a restless and exasperating experience, and decision making on vacation can get like that. One of the next three souvenir shops may have a better price, or if we just go over that hill, we might get a quieter view of the sunset, or let's read fifty seven more Google reviews of restaurants before we decide where to eat. 

Did you know there is a website that allows people to find, map, and rate the all best picnic spots? It might be beneficial to have all of the information before choosing anything. It is definitely a natural tendency to try to ensure you’re getting the best when it’s so rare to be across the ocean in a place you’ve dreamed of going for years. But perhaps verifying every move before it’s made detracts from the possibility of stumbling into anything that stands out along the way, forgetting what you didn’t choose. I’d like to be the person who does not regret the little things, even if I do find a better picnic spot later. Regret can taint a lot of perfectly good moments.

Another thing that taints a trip like that is the pervasive stress of all the possible things that could go wrong. What if we don't make the boat on time? What happens if I get sick from brushing my teeth with this supposedly unpottable tap? People don't mug you if you have a baby with you, right? 

While the baby napped in Santorini the television was playing a program informing me that the whole island is actually the rim of a volcano that used to be twice as big and tall before it exploded in ancient times. As far as the experts can tell, the status of said volcano is very active and may erupt with little warning any time creating what the narrator made very clear would be a “doomsday event.”

They called the people living on the island "in denial." So that's nice. 

But then in the same program I found out about Yellowstone and how when that volcano blows, it will take most of North America with it. Not if, but when, and It's not an exact science at all as to when. Experts say they’re best estimates could be off by a hundred thousand years. So is everyone in North America in denial too? 

I think my point here is that we shouldn’t worry about things we can't control because we could all die in a volcano eruption at any time now anyway. 

Vacation is pitched as a brief escape from regular life, but I want more out of traveling than that. I want to be transported. Transported in a way where I gain new perspective and become something better. I don't want to soak up all the relaxing moments staring at the sky growing dark over the mediterranean like a sponge that gets wrung out again when I get back. I want to soak it up like the soil so I can grow things that stay. I don't want a mere fleeting gratitude for the good times; when my breath is taken away by the light hitting a fairy-castle-like monastery tucked away among rocks that are a geological anomaly, I want my soul to be moved in a way that makes me no longer the same.

I don't think that sort of thing can be forced, and faking it would be worse than being a miserable complaining wet blanket–because at least that would be honest. But I think what I can do is hold myself to a high standard of openness. To let go of expectations. To not get hung up on the choices I didn't make or the things I didn't get to do or see. To stop being afraid. Because once these hindrances are done away with, I can truly delight in all the little things and all of the colossal things too. And contemplating delight is a true vacation.

Tripped in

Tulips

Two rips

Stains

Pains

Laundry

Two coins

Need three

Change

Change

Caffeine

Two shots

Two sips

Notice

Eyes

Lips

Too soon

To kiss

Two years

Two shots

One miss

[ redacted and revised ]

Day 1 -- Chilling at DTW, couple hours till the first flight. Cole is cool, into BMX and techno, and is slowly going to realize I'm a square. But he won't care cuz he's so nice. The year is 2020. The first wave of covid passing but every news outlet says not to travel for thanksgiving. Well we aren’t traveling for thanksgiving, we’re traveling for an ad agency in canada i’ve never heard of. To film a collective of screen printers across america. First stop: north carolina. We land and navigate our way out of the airport. It's not easy, we've got like six cases of camera lights action. Cole talks to anyone and everyone, always with an earnest "may I please..." Lyft driver warns us that he “wouldn't fuckin get gas in the neighborhood where we're staying." Well he probably wouldn't fuckin get gas in the neighborhood where I live either so I'm not too concerned, but it does shake our confidence in the production coordinator who booked all our travel, whose first language was definitely french. We arrive at the hotel and decide the camera gear is too big a liability so we find another hotel--much to the vexation of the hotel desk guy. At the new hotel we discover that our bootlegged covid blood tests didn't come with a lancet. So we call the production coordinator who suggests we ask for sewing kits at the front desk. We stab ourselves and it's pretty hilarious. Negative. Then we have burgers and beer downtown Charlotte.

Day 2 -- Room service breakfast. Damage Lyft driver's carpet with one of our many cases. Wrong address on the shoot schedule. Neighbors are suspicious. We embarrassingly have to load back in with the Lyft driver to the correct house. He slaps us with damages later, ouch. I’m supposed to make our interviewee prick his own finger with a sewing needle because apparently he wasn't able to get tested in the days leading up to this interview. His son is amused. I'm suddenly behaving like a director, old habits from when I used to shoot. We struggle to hide the lav but the interview goes decent. I watch the interviewee’s son play Fortnite while we wait for pickup. Our next Lyft driver has such a strong southern accent I can hardly understand him. Back up footage at the airport. Feeling tired thinking these two weeks are going to feel like a year. Edited on an airplane for the first time, didn’t love it.

Day 3 -- Even at 7am, muggy hot air outside the motel double doors in Florida. Couldn't resist an espresso so I'm walking to Starbucks. Interview today, no one seemed that into masks. Went well, still not the hip artist space we've been looking for but Cole is much happier with the b-roll. Gaff taping the lav works. Iguanas. Phone call with the agency in the airport, the producer seems to indicate that January is fine to finish everything. Cole and I talk why he hired me--one reason is John told him the best thing that happened to him work wise was Cole and me. Cole told me about seeing John’s cat getting hit by a car, and almost cried telling the story. The cat survived tho. Call Amanda that night. She gave a guy 20 dollars today and he cried, said all his family is dead and he lives in an abandoned house. Next flight. Nondescript office park outside Chicago. Next hotel, like an apartment suite with two bedrooms, kitchen, fireplace. Everything is so dead. Pizza time.

Day 4 -- Lyft driver works TV shows, knew audio guy Cole knows in Detroit. The drivers are always more talkative than I expect. This shoot is at a huge operation, merch for the biggest music artists. Plus they have a billion boxes of mr beast hoodies. Interviewee is very italian and buys us italian sandwiches. I'm laughing at everything he says because I'm a people pleaser. Work-wise, feels like we have a decent rhythm down. Lyft driver tonight says 2020 is like a netflix special, and we're on the 11th episode. He's also into conspiracy theories. Footage is looking good, but I'm anxious to get an edit out to make sure we're on the same page with the agency. Italian food and wheel of fortune.

Day 5 -- Our next stop is also in Chicago. The type of shop we'd been imagining. Great interview, great look, and great tacos. Cole drinks hot sauce like it's normal. Interviewee drove us back to our hotel. I think Cole almost cried when Google sent him a cute slideshow of his pets. I edited the footage from today and it all came together super fast. I miss amanda. Can't believe this is only day 5. I use my per diem for expensive lobster and it's like 3 pieces in a sad take out container.

Day 6 -- Early flight to portland. Podcasts on the plane. Some people get this really self-satisfied look on their face taking off their mask for snack time on the plane... And just leaving it off long after their coffee is gone. It’s kinda funny though. Oh yeah, it's thanksgiving. I’m feeling sentimental about the first thanksgivings with Amanda's family, candle making. And swanton ohio--so glad we went for a walk at Oak Openings before I left. We're staying at a very fancy hotel called "the hoxton." The concierge recommends Duck House for lunch and gives us the card of a place selling legit thanksgiving dinners. We do both. Per diem, baby. Portland is boarded up big time from protests. And dead like everywhere else. Chinese takeout up at the park with the mossy trees. The sight of orange chicken steaming in front of the faded hills. Some zoom with my fam. A short walk in the woods. Cole zooms with his family, which sounds lovely and fun. Some zoom with Amanda's family, which is long casual zoom pollet style. Client is in love with the first edit! Cole and I are stoked. Takeout thanksgiving dinner finally arrives. Exhausted.

Day 7 -- So lovely waking up, getting a coffee at the gorgeous coffee shop in the lobby, and editing. Amazing walk at the arboretum. Cole keeps running off the trail to identify mushrooms. Otherworldly glow through the fog/cloud. Depth, moss, mushrooms. Everything is always wet here. We wander our way through the forest and find a way to loop back. We talk, feel like pals. Hle makes me feel kinda lame. Like, he has a layover for 12 hours in iceland, and he parties with strangers, crashes at their house before catching the next flight. Crazy. And I like his stories about lending his lawn mower to his neighbor so they could make a little money. And kids always knocking on his door asking him to fix their bikes. He knows more people in my neighborhood than I do. Amanda and I talk about having a baby.

Day 8 -- Early morning to drive our rental minivan to Eugene. Interviewee makes us coffee, and I snag a pop tart. It's an easy-going, pleasant day. I drive the van in the warm sunshine to get us some bagel sandwiches and smoothies. It's weird how they don't let you pump your own gas in Oregon. Cole sees my book fall out of my bag and asks me what it is. I feel embarrassed and tell him it's a sermon about how love is the most important thing. He compares it to ram dass haha. We watch the rest of Happy Gilmore at the hotel and fall asleep.

Day 9 -- Wake up early and get some editing done. It's easier to edit in the morning. Interviewee music merch connection is cool. Typical pnw, brags about area’s quality of weed and offers it to us. She got stoned after the interview. Shrouded in fog the entire day. Sent over a third edit. They want to hire us again to film the cancelled ones in January. Talk to Amanda for a long time in the airport, and it really lifts my spirits. Can't wait to be home. Time change, don't get to the Austin hotel until 1am. Trouble sleeping.

Day 10 -- Interviewee is humble. James Victore popped in to pick up a print, guess they are good friends. I spend the afternoon editing in the break room upstairs. The days feel so chill when we don't have to catch a flight.

Day 11 -- Travel day. Austin > O'Hare > Lincoln. Uneventful, until Amanda tells me she got in quickly for an ear appointment about her ear ringing + hearing loss. Glad she got in so quickly as it sounds like you need to administer steroids early for the treatment to be effective. She's still at the office right now, says the doctor was really helpful, but no official diagnosis yet. I'm now on a plane the size of a bus, flying to Nebraska. John reached out about finishing an edit due Wednesday or Thursday, but I won't even be back by then. Looking into the future, it seems challenging to try to accommodate various producers. Raise my rate across the board? Talk to Amanda about her hearing appointments. Got the steroids, but nothing conclusive yet. Important camera case got lost, hope it shows up soon before the shoot. This is one of the hotels where we don’t share a room, but Cole hangs out in my room. He seems homesick, by his own admission. We walk to the gas station for beers. The case arrives! I edit some but it's hard to want to.

Day 12 -- Finish up Eugene video, it was harder choices but I've still got the touch. Lincoln shop is pretty dope, a hive of activity. Started out with Christian metalcore merch. He seems cautious to open up about his religious roots, like me. They take us to a local fast food joint for lunch, Runza, and it’s weird but I'm glad we had some Nebraska cuisine. Like a hot dog bun encapsulating a bunch of ground beef, onions, and cheese. I feel sad for all these older people driving Ubers during covid. So many unknowns these days, it’s funny we’re out here. Cole buys some champagne to celebrate being done. Uber downtown to the hip historic side of Lincoln, eat at Leadbelly where our server has already caught wind of us from hosting our first uber driver here, old man Scott. A couple drinks, a shot, hardly make a dent in all the food. We laugh and feel sentimental. Strangers to friends in 12 days. Cole tells me his Sam story, our mutual connection. Gutsy owning up to a mistake on the job like that. A life lesson.

Day 13 -- Woke up at 4am again, I don't know why my sleep schedule has gotten so whack. But Amanda's up at 5 CT so we talk a bit. Continental breakfast next to an artificial holiday tree, and then we load up the gear one last time. Sleigh ride is stuck in my head like I'm at the end of a Christmas movie. Cole has vince guaraldi in his, says that's the only record they play all holiday long. In the airport, desperate to find water. The airport is small like a library or something. A farmer from South Africa who works in Nebraska nine months of the year gives us all his american change, but the vending machine is sold out of water. Thankfully there's a water cooler and like, two cups left. I spend the change that the vending machine didn't eat on a nutter butter. South Africa guy is pleasant but then gets maybe more racist than I’ve ever heard in my life and I just leave. Feel disturbed. I feel like that's happened 3 or 4 times on this trip now, where I just check out instead of engaging. Story of my life. Agency’s communication is concerning. I'm going to try to push out all these videos as fast as possible so I can relax. All this random work; bring on the nights and weekends. I'm going to be quarantined anyway.

There is a train station in downtown Denver with comfortable couches and fancy-ass lighting fixtures. It feels like a cross between the billiards room and the conservatory in the Clue mansion. Warm sunlight streams through the glass ceiling, disguising the fact that it is the record-breaking coldest day in February yet to date. But my departure time approaches and I must close my book, throw away my empty latte cup, and descend beneath the amtrak trains to where they keep the buses. 

It’s a different world underground–cold, clammy, confusing, smelly. My eyes adjust to the darkness and I scan for where the Greyhound terminal might be, but there are no clues on my ticket or the screen listing the departures–where my destination is listed just says, “see attendant.”

Luckily, an attendant has spotted my discombobulated expression and approaches me.

“Where you headed, hun?”

“I’m trying to get to Pueblo.”

“Your bus will arrive right over there,” she points behind us to the left. “Hopefully it will be on time but some of the buses have been coming late–we switched over to a new system yesterday and it’s unfortunately slowing everything.”

I pick a chilly metal bench nearby to wait, and I try to open my book again, but I’m becoming increasingly interested in the activity of the transit employees in my vicinity. There is apparently no overhead speaker system, so when the bus headed to Kansas City arrives these five ladies spread far and wide using their voices to make absolutely sure no one headed that way misses it. 

The woman who helped me earlier seems to be unofficially in charge. Whenever she takes action, the rest of the staff do what she does, and other transit workers keep asking her how to deal with new issues that are coming up with the system overhaul. I hear her optimistically repeating that they’re all in this together–

“I don’t get it either, but we’ll figure it out as we go.” 

She also seems to know everyone who works in this station by name, and has something like a personal relationship with each of them. The security guard stops to flirt with her every time he walks by while making his rounds, and she has a short conversation in Spanish with the man driving the floor sweeper–they are both laughing by the time he moves along.

The short elderly bus driver to Kansas city returns her playful greeting with some teasing of his own before informing her about some changes made to their route–unfortunately they have had to remove all local stops. This transit woman immediately takes action like a benevolent queen by separating the confused travelers into two separate groups and helping each person in the local line to the next best bus that can get them where they need to go. She knows most of the destinations by heart without using a reference.

Over and over again I am witness to the incredible competency and proactiveness of not just the queen, but all five of the Greyhound staff. They are all good at their job–or at least definitely trying to be. What stands out more, however, is the incredible kindness and dignity they are giving everyone they speak to. They are sitting down with the handicapped and homeless, walking them through the complexities of buying tickets online–some using their personal phones–while they eagerly try to understand the novel system themselves.

It’s clear that this new overhaul is throwing everyone for a loop. I hear the queen telling her security guard friend in a low voice,

“It’s totally fucked. They put everything online so I’m not allowed to issue refunds to my customers who get screwed over when things get messed up–they have to apply through the app or the website. We can’t even print tickets for people! And the folks who are least likely to have access to a computer or smart phone are the ones most likely to need our buses.”

This is the only time I hear her complaining about the situation, however, and I take note that her main grief in the frustration is that she can’t help the people who need it. It's inspiring to see such an obvious force for good in the world, especially in an underground bus station that would otherwise be a mega-depressing environment.

I’ve worked a lot of jobs like this–low-paying, high stress, difficult service jobs–and the norm seems to be pervasive negativity. The only camaraderie employees have is all of the mutual complaining.  The way I personally used to console myself in this type of work is this idea that this isn’t my real job. I’m just doing this temporarily until I can get to another more important career. It’s not that I think I’m too good for the work, it’s just that it’s almost impossible to not lose heart without some route of transcendence, especially when the people in charge who are calling the shots from a comfortable office don’t understand or care at all how ridiculously complicated they are making the day to day lives of their employees, and the ground-workers are the ones who take all the shit for it. 

This transit woman warrior queen, however, is a shining example of how positivity and being good at your job can be just as “catching” as complaining or checking out. Hell, even I’m getting inspired by her attitude. It’s not just the competency (although that is also rare). There is an additional X factor–a love for her job, or maybe a love for humanity–that leaks through all of her interactions. 

In this situation I’m almost certain I would be thinking, “Who cares? This job sucks and just got worse. Why should I put forth an effort for a company who doesn’t give a shit about me?” But down here in transit hell these women are loving each other and their job and the lowly greyhound passengers–it’s obvious. 

Embarrassingly, I start to tear up by the thought–when I would be fighting the system with a “fuck everything” attitude and finding a way to dissociate, they are transcending the situation by engaging with the work set before them and doing what they know really matters. They are looking folks in the eye. They are being proactive about dispelling confusion and reassuring worried travelers. They are laughing and joking and noticing and connecting and doing their honest to goodness best. Simply, they give a damn. 

My bus finally pulls up and I line up with the others. I feel a fierce camaraderie form with the other passengers as we talk to one another that I may not have felt had I not been observing the Greyhound transit workers who have been looking out for everyone. As I pass the queen I compulsively tell her, 

“You know, you’re really good at your job,” and she is visibly embarrassed, but I’m glad to have said it anyway. I want her to know that what she is doing matters–that somehow in taking her job seriously without losing her mind over the stress of it was making a difference–and I board the bus with a little more clarity on just how I want to fight the good fight.