Stupid 2p2 only allow 100k words to be posted at a time. Adsman's post is about 50 pages on word and 150k words. Impressive, sir....
Part 13
Question:
i am european and most people i know who visited middle and southern africa haven't seen much more than their hotels and some guided tours of the sourounding regions. what they told sounded more or less fake and made for tourists, so my question is: do you have any tips for an africa vacation aside of the default tourists spots? like must do's and places to visit where you can still get a small insight of the real deal?
Reply:
I will assume that you are not talking about a family vacation. I can highly recommend Uganda, as the people are extremely welcoming to whites. You can stay in a 5 star hotel if you want - you can stay in backpackers, it really makes no difference. You just have to get out there and explore. Walk around. Go where you want. Uganda is so accessible due to the large variety of features in its small size. I recommend the South-West corner of the country. Be aware, don't take the silly 'romantic' view, where all Africans are intrinsically good people. They are just like us - some of them are dirtbags, some of them are extremely good, most fall somewhere in between. Travel light, carry a thick roll of $1 bills that you can hand over if you are robbed. I always carried my valuables in one of those elastic knee braces. Wear long clothes at night and sleep under a net. Malaria is not fun. Wear wrap-around sunglasses. Be prepared for the fact that African food is bloody awful. Haggle over everything. Don't put up with any crap. I recommend not hiring a car. If you have an accident and kill somebody you will be beaten to death on the spot. Stay away from the North of the country. I wouldn't go higher than Murchison Falls National Park.
Part 13(Continued):
I started playing poker in high school. For some reason it always interested me. I was the one that organized the games. We played stud mostly, as I disliked draw. By the time I got to Uganda I was familiar with hold em. I discovered an expat game and introduced hold em to them. We played no limit. I practiced on the free money tables on planet poker during the day. The game was good and it kept me solvent, as Uganda’s tourism industry had been hit hard by the Biwindi massacre.
I was playing in a few bands around town, but the money wasn’t good and we were expected to give our share to the local musicians in the band. The locals couldn’t believe that a mazungu could be hard up. The owner came out a second time to see why we weren’t making more money. He was building a luxury house in New Zealand and needed every cent he could get. There was a local Indian businessman who ran the main photo shop in Kampala. They had a nice earner on the rafting photo’s, but they also stocked our T-shirts as well, which were big sellers. He was eager to increase his margin on the shirts, so he went to the owner with a business plan under the umbrella of marketing. He came up with a bunch of ridiculous ideas that he hoped would land him the position of marketing manager. The owner fell for his plan in a big way. He didn’t make him the marketing manager – he made him the general manager. Overnight we had a guy in charge who knew nothing about the business, and whose primary motive for being involved was to line his own pocket. The owner flew back to New Zealand.
This all happened at the end of 1999. The guides had decided to organize a two-day rafting trip for the millennium new year. The trip consisted of continuing on a mile or so after the normal take-out and spending the night on an island in the middle of the river. We organized with local villages to supply us with cooks and helpers, as well as local musicians. The two-day trip was usually run once every couple of months. We wanted this one to be special. A lot of the British Airways crews requested runs to Uganda after hanging out with us, and we had built up a few friendships with the pilots, as well as some more intimate friendships with the hosties. We contacted our favorite crews and told them to request the new year in Uganda so as to go on the two day trip. We also hand picked a few more punters, including three young American lads from Seattle who were making a documentary in Africa. They were stand-up guys, plus they had great liquid acid.
All up there were about 25 customers on the trip. We organized four rafts, with myself, Piley, Colin and Jeno guiding. Brums was to be the support. He was going to drive out from Kampala directly to the island with all the important supplies. We did the first day of the trip and arrived at the island a few hours before sunset. The camp was already set up and we divided up the tents and started drinking. Piley placed two cakes that he had prepared on the table; a dark and a white chocolate cake. What he didn’t tell us was that these were dope cakes, and the white one was extra potent. Piley smoked around 20 joints a day, so for him to call it potent meant that it was deadly. The first thing I knew about it was when a BA stewardess came rushing up to me and asked me to come and have a look at her friend.
I walked up the hill to their tent. This absolutely stunning blonde English girl was completely out of it. She had eaten a whole piece of cake. She kept moaning and saying that she had smoked dope before and it had never had an effect on her. Jeno made the wisecrack that you had to inhale to feel the effects. She was sure feeling the effects now.
I rushed down to the table and immediately confiscated the cakes. It was too late. About ten of our punters had already partaken. I called the group together and told them what was up. I said that if they had eaten any of these cakes, the best thing to do would be to stick their fingers down their throats immediately. As I was saying this, a big guy who must have weighed close to a hundred kilo’s gave me a funny look and fell over. His wife was furious, and rightly so. They were going to spend the millennium new year looking after their friends and loved ones.
Piley was relaxing by the fire having a beer. I was absolutely furious with him, but I couldn’t dress him down in front of the punters. I couldn’t dress him down anyway – he just didn’t give a sh*t. He had also brought his hooker-girlfriend on the trip, something which was strictly forbidden. She was a most unlikable person, and she was presently busy bullying all the hired help. I told her to shut the feck up and keep out of our way. She went to Piley and complained, and he confronted me, calling me a racist. I asked him what I had to do to prove I wasn’t a racist. Start sleeping with black hookers? Colin stepped in and calmed things down, but it wasn’t the start to the evening we had been hoping for.
We watched the sun set over The Nile, as we ate and enjoyed the show put on by the local musicians and dancers. Most of the guests had recovered from the effects of the cake, and I dropped some acid and partied away the night. The next day we all crawled out of the tents and tried to face the next thousand years. It was then that I realized that Brums and Joyce hadn’t turned up. They had dropped off the supplies and then gone off to make a quick run to get some extra beer. We were worried but there was nothing we could do. We rafted down through the second days rapids until we came to the take-out. Brums wasn’t there either. We got back to Kampala were we found Joyce and Brums safe. They told us what had happened.
They had had to hire a taxi, as the adrift car was being used for other purposes. Driving through a small town, a man had suddenly stepped directly into their passing car. Brums knew the score. You kill somebody with a car, even if they have decided to end their own life by throwing themselves under your wheels, you better get the hell out of there. The taxi driver went to put his foot down. Brums stopped him, jumped out of the car and dragged the badly injured man into their taxi. When a mob forms in Africa it happens fast. Everyone joins a mob. A top Ugandan judge was once found to have been in a mob that hacked a supposed thief to death in the center of Kampala outside the main post office.
The crowd surged around them. Brums was outside the car arguing. This was the only car in the village. If they wanted the man to be taken to hospital, they would have to let them go. A terrified Joyce and the taxi driver stayed locked inside the vehicle, while the injured man bled over the rear seats. Brums said that it was a very close thing. Finally, after about twenty minutes of heated argument, they were let go. They drove straight to the hospital in Kampala where they left the man. By that time it was too late to come back out, and they weren’t in the mood for it anyway. Piley wasn’t speaking to me anymore. It wasn’t a great start to the new year.
Part 14:
Question: Did you, or have you ever considered carrying a gun in case you are somehow the victim of an angry mob? I mean, if they are not the party directly wronged, do they still want to risk their lives to get somebody?
Reply:
No, I mean you'd need to carry an AK47 to have any effect. Ugandans are the nicest people, but get them in a mob and it's trouble. An example;
A thief was apprehended in the center of Kampala. This just means that somebody grabbed someone else and started screaming thief. He might have been a thief, he might not have been. Anyway, instant mob forms to partake in the ritual beating to death of said thief. This is right in front of the main post office on the main street. Two uniformed policemen happen to be there and go to rescue the thief from the mob. I've seen a mob in action. They aren't angry as they kill some guy, they're usually laughing and having a great time.
The mob is not happy that their fun is about to be taken away. The mob turns on the two policemen. The two cops are in serious trouble. They take the only option available to them - they start shooting with their AK47's. The final balance is something like ten dead and a bunch wounded. There were so many killed because the cops had to keep shooting to save their lives. The mob wouldn't stop even when bullets were flying. The next days newspaper had a tally of the dead with photo's. There was a lawyer, an architect, a local businessman, an off-duty cop, women, children, you name it. The newspaper was calling for the heads of the cops for killing these 'fine', innocent, upstanding citizens.
So really, carrying a gun was not an option. I much preferred to rely on my wits to get through these situations. Safer in the long run.
Part 14(continued):
Our new general manager didn’t fool any of us. We knew he had no interest in promoting Adrift. He kept up the marketing charade for a few weeks and then it was left to the guides to do the real marketing. We would go to all the hotels in town, handing out flyers, trying to drum up business. One of the better marketing tricks was to just hang around the Sheraton pool. Meanwhile, the GM ordered 500 more T-shirts. At least that was the official number. The real number was much, much higher. The T-shirts were very high quality and were manufactured and printed in Kenya. They cost around $3 each with shipping, and they sold for $20. He was making a killing selling them out of his shop. We were making feck all on the river.
Things couldn’t go on this way forever. He had to show some progress to the owner. I was his very vocal opponent. I called him out regularly at staff meetings for being an out and out crook. He tried to cut back on costs. Apparently instead of three safety kayakers, now we only needed one. So we had this photo-shop owner trying to tell us how to work on the river. Most of the guides muttered and complained behind his back. I preferred to do it to his face. Because I was out of control. Africa had gotten to me. I was pushing the boundaries too hard. I was becoming very antagonistic on the street. I got involved in more and more hairy situations. I wasn’t drinking too much, taking too many drugs or banging hookers. No, I was trying to take on the whole country.
One night we were at some crappy club. Full of the Ugandan upper and middle classes, but the girls still came right up to you and asked you for sex. Because you were a mazungu. And when I brushed them off they got pissed with me. Their faces turned to sneers. They joked with their male friends that I couldn’t get it up. The males laughed and scoffed – these pathetic losers who were happy to watch their women throw themselves at whites and then degrade themselves even further by joining in the jeering. All so that they might have some slim chance of getting their dick wet. I said to my mates that I was going. I couldn’t stand being in the club any more. They said that they would be right out. I walked outside and stood off to the side of the club, leaning against a wall. There was a line of people waiting to get in. I was nowhere near them. A bored bouncer thought he could have some fun with me. Show the waiting Ugandans how to boss around a mazungu. He had a pump action shotgun. He walked over to me and told me to get away from the wall. I just looked at him. I didn’t say a word. He pointed about 50 meters down the street and told me that I could wait over there. I kept staring at him. He started getting worked up. Didn’t I know that I had to do what he said? I remained silent. It wasn’t going the way he wanted. He was looking like a [censored] in front of the crowd. He un-slung the shotgun from his shoulder and let it hang down by his side. He repeated again his demand for me to move.
I looked down at his gun, looked back up at him and said, “What the feck do you think you’re going to do with that?”
He came right up close. Our faces were inches apart. He told me that I had to move now. I told him to go feck himself. By now there was a big crowd. Everyone was watching. Some of them began calling out; “Mazungu, you move! You do what he says!” I ignored them. I just stared this prick out. I wasn’t moving. I had my piece of wall. It was a nice piece of wall. It felt comfortable behind my back. My arms were loose by my sides. I wanted him to start it. I was prepared to ram that gun down the back of his throat. All my time in Africa, all the crap I had put up with, all the frustrations, it was all right there below the surface, itching to get out. And he knew it. He saw it in my eyes. At that moment I was prepared to do anything. He backed up a few paces. He jeered at me, called me some names. The crowd made disparaging noises. But I wasn’t moving from my stupid piece of wall.
My mates came out about five minutes later. They walked over to me, unaware of what had just happened. I started to walk away with them. The bouncer called out some comments. I didn’t care. I was just sick of the place. I’d had enough.
We had a staff meeting. I don’t remember the details. All I know is that I was angry. I was angry at the way we were being treated. I was angry at this moron thinking that I was really that stupid to not know what was going on. We had an accountant from New Zealand. He was a good kayaker. When he had first come out we had had high hopes for him. We thought that a kayaker would be on our side, would understand how things worked on the river. We were wrong. He was a typical accountant. For him there existed only numbers. It was impossible to reason with him. He was also a fool. He truly believed that our GM was a good guy. So when he thought he had found evidence of someone stealing he went straight to the GM with his findings. The GM was delighted. He immediately emailed the owner, informing him that he had discovered that one of the guides was a thief. The owner was happy. Progress was obviously being made. He told the GM to deal with it. The thief was me.
After the meeting the accountant and the GM invited me to go up to the office upstairs. The other guides were outside playing some volleyball. They presented me with their evidence. It was nonsense. It was easily explainable. I wasn’t a thief. I clearly explained what the discrepancies were. The GM was not happy. He had found a thief, he had contacted the owner, the thief had to be fired. He was realizing that he had acted prematurely. But then I did a very stupid thing. In my naivety, in my misunderstanding of how the world worked, I found myself volunteering to resign. I have no idea why I said this. Perhaps I thought that it would prove my innocence. Who knows. Looking back I think that it might have been a part of me that knew I had to get out. I had to get out of Africa before I got into some serious trouble. The GM accepted my resignation. The guides were stunned. They demanded that I be reinstated. He held firm. He had been offered a way out of his predicament. He wasn’t silly enough to throw away such a gift. The guides demanded that I be given time to save up for a ticket out. He gave me two months. Then I would be without a job. It was February 2000. I had been in Africa for a year. Now I had to find a way to get the hell out.
Part 15:
There was no point in getting out if I didn’t have a destination. Australia was out of the question. It would be too much like giving up. But I was in a bit of a panic. The poker game had ended some time ago due to several diplomats and UN boys being moved around. I had about $150 to my name. I would need at least $800 just to get a one-way ticket to London. I went into the main internet café in Kampala and emailed my dad. For the first time since leaving home I was going to have to ask for some help. My dad replied to the email the next day. It was curt and to the point. He had remarried a few years previously, and at the tender age of 55 had begun the whole family thing all over again. When I dropped into Perth on my way to Africa I had met my baby sister for the first time. They had just had another daughter a few months previously. He gave me the bad news. She had a heart defect and required radical new surgery to correct the problem. He had a great deal on his plate. He did give me an option – he’d pay for a ticket, but only to come back to Perth.
There was no way I could do it. I was blown away by what I felt was level A abandonment, but at the same time for worry for what was going on back home. I had a few black days and then I started to get my act together. First I needed a job. I narrowed it down to three options. I could go back to Canada and work for the dude who originally wanted me the last time I was there. I contacted him and he was extremely keen. Jeno had two good contacts as well. The company he had previously worked for in Norway, and a company in Italy where a friend of his had just done a season. The problem with Canada was the distance. It was going to cost a lot more to get there. I asked them if they could help spring for the ticket. The response was cold. So Norway or Italy it was.
The decision that swayed me was the chance to learn a language. The idea excited me, and put down as a choice between the two I felt that Italian was a more useful language to learn. I contacted the company in Italy. They were looking for two guides. Jeno decided to come as well. He’d had enough of Africa. We hit the company up for two jobs and a few days later they email their confirmation. Destination and job resolved. Three things remained – the cash, the work visa, and revenge.
I began my now long and familiar relationship with Italian bureaucracy. There is an Italian embassy in Kampala, and Jeno and I spent a great deal of time there getting next to nothing achieved. On top of this, the other guides were slipping the two of us as much work as they could. Colin had been running some kayaking courses down at Bujagali, and he kindly swung most of the work my way. I was slowly dragging the cash together. The accountant had become a non-entity amongst the guides. He lived with us, he worked with us, he went paddling with us, but we only acknowledged him on a professional basis. He couldn’t understand why, which spoke volumes.
Mick was gearing up to the launch of his new rafting company. He offered me a job, but I turned him down. I was now focused on getting out. There was just one other little problem. I had been seeing a Spanish girl who was a diplomat in Kampala. Spanish girls are awesome, just awesome. She was a tidy little number and a whirlwind in the sack. She was also good to talk to, held her drink, didn’t nag and had realistic expectations of life. She was a good thing. I told her that I had to get out, but that I was going to Europe. She understood, and we made plans to meet up as soon as we could.
I was hell bent on planning out some elaborate revenge on the GM, when his brother died in mysterious circumstances of a heroin overdose. The three brothers ran the shop together. I started picking up on disturbing rumors, and after a chat with Mick I decided to leave well enough alone. I felt that I was getting out at just the right time. Sometimes the Universe gives you a sign, sometimes it gives you a nudge as well if it thinks you need it. I have learnt to listen to these hints, as you ignore them at your own peril. What in the short term could be construed as a disaster often turned out to be a blessing in the greater picture. I have had this happen to me often in my life and travels. It is best to be calm in these situations. Sit and think things over without emotion. Work out what needs to be done. Change is often painful, as we do not like the unknown, even if the known is not a good place to be.
I went into the South African Airways office to find a ticket. I got extremely lucky. There was a nice Ugandan girl working there and I happened to get called up to her window. She possessed a rare ability not found often in Africans – initiative. I explained my problem. I needed the cheapest one-way ticket possible to London for the beginning of May. There was a special on. There were 10 seats available for the special and about 250 people had applied for them. But she liked me, and god almighty I liked her. I went into their office on the crucial day. She saw me and gave me a big smile. I had jagged the last ticket for the princely sum of $650. I had my ticket out.
My last night in Kampala I spent with Mick and Amanda. Mick and I dropped some excellent acid and we went to the Kampala casino. We got slaughtered. Amanda got slaughtered. We were so off our faces that we started taking other peoples chips when we ran out of money. At one point I remember leaning over towards this very large South African and telling him in a serious and confidential tone that I was on drugs. “No sh*t”, came the reply.
On leaving the casino at five in the morning Mick drove his car through the plate glass window of a jewelry shop. We sat there pissing ourselves with laughter amidst broken glass and jewelry, while alarm bells shrieked into the early morning hours. Mick put the car into reverse and we just drove away. We were driving back home when we got pulled over by two policeman. Mick stopped the car as they had guns and a radio. We were drinking bottles of beer. Amanda was unconscious in the back. The policemen saw the beer and their faces lit up into huge smiles.
“Ah, mazungu’s! You are drinking! This is very bad! We must arrest you.”
“No, no, no, no, no,” said Mick. “You don’t want to do that.”
“Oh yes I do. You are drunk and very bad people. You must be punished!”
“We’re not drunk!” said Mick. The cop pointed at the bottles of beer. “Well, maybe a little bit, but where we come from that’s ok.”
I looked at Mick with some confusion. It is?
The cops looked equally dubious. “This I cannot believe. You are making fun of me.”
“It’s true!” Mick protested.
“Where are you comes from?” asked the cop with great suspicion.
Mick and I answered together with enthusiasm, “Australia!”
The other cop sneered. “This is not possible. I cannot believe that in Australia you can drink and drive your car.”
“Well,” Mick began, “It’s like this. In Australia, if you drink a lot and get drunk, then you have to drive more slowly, because it’s harder to drive, so we drive slower, and then we have less accidents, so drinking and driving in Australia is encouraged and we have very, very, very safe roads.”
I looked at Mick. He had to be kidding. The cops looked at Mick. The cops looked at each other. There was a long silence. And then the first cop said;
“Okay, you can go.”
And we sped off into the night, pissed out of our minds and laughing like crazy. And Amanda slept through the whole thing.
Part 16:
I got the midnight flight to London. The plane was jam-packed full of screaming kids, angry parents, and people panicking because they’d never flown before. But I was sweet. I felt a moment of nostalgia as the wheels left the ground. This was it. I was gone. Outta there. I nodded off to sleep as the kid next to me drooled over my arm. We flew into London in the early morning. I got my bags and took the underground into the city. A real train. Nobody was hassling me. Nobody was trying to be my friend. I was being completely ignored on a packed commuter train. I had a huge grin on my face.
But damn it was cold. It was raining. There was mist. I’d forgotten what mist looked like. I didn’t have any warm clothes for this weather. I was getting a bit of attention, which I put down to the fact that I had a tan that was as deep as any white dude can ever hope to get. Surrounded by pasty faced poms. I had relatives in London whom I’d never met. The sister of my dads second wife and her family. I had their address and phone number. I had to get the tube all the way out to New Cross Gate, which I did. I found a public phone and called her. She said to stand out the front and wait for her. A few minutes later a lady who looked just like my dad’s second wife pulled up.
“I’m Lindy. You must be Adam. Jump in.”
We took off through the traffic and she said that she had to do some shopping, was that all right? I said sure, no problem. It was amazing driving down a street with no holes in it. We pulled into a huge supermarket, Tesco’s or Safeways or something. I followed her into the store. I spent the next 20 minutes wandering around in a kind of daze. Food. Real food. Australian beer. Meat. Pork chops. Chocolate. Mustard. I picked items off the shelves and just stared at them in my hands. It was then that it really hit me that I was out of Africa.
Lindy found me and had a laugh. “My husband Steve is from South Africa,” she said. “He’ll understand what you’re going through.”
We were driving to her house when I saw a sign for a McDonalds. “Stop,” I said. “I hate their food, but I have to have a burger. Just a Big Mac.”
We pulled into the drive-through and I ordered. I held the package in my hands and opened it with care. There it was. A Big Mac. Lindy was watching me with an amused grin. I took a bite. It seemed to be the best thing that I’d ever tasted. I ate it all without a word. Now I was really back in the First World again.
They were very well off, had a lovely terrace house. She showed me to my room. I sat on the bed and stared out the window. I was in London. I had about $100 and no ticket to Italy. But I knew that if I could get out of Uganda, I sure as hell could get out of London. The rest of the family came home later. Steve was a lovely chap, a bio-chemist. He wanted to know all about my adventures in Uganda. We talked into the night, drinking from his excellent collection of wine. They had three young children that were constantly fighting and carrying on, but I didn’t care. I felt at peace. At one point Steve asked his eldest son Matthew if he wanted to go out for a drive the next day, which was Saturday. Matthew made a face and ran off.
Steve sighed. “I’ve just bought a new car and I wanted somebody to come for a spin with me.”
“I’ll come,” I said.
His face brightened up. “Really? You’re not just saying that?”
“No, no. I’ve never been to England. I’d love to have a zip around.”
The next morning he opened his garage to show me his brand new Porsche 911 Turbo S. Oh yeah. Lets go baby. We high-tailed it out of London and sped off through the countryside. It was a beautiful Spring day. He took all the back-roads he could find. Narrow lanes that drifted beneath oak canopies. The car was amazing – like driving a train on a road. It just glued itself to the tarmac. We stopped at a little pub and had a gourmet lunch. He insisted on paying, and I was grateful for it. We got back to London at a reasonably late hour. Lindy had dinner on the table, and we spent another night hitting up his reds. Since I was going to Italy we had to drink Italian wine. I can’t remember what it was, but it was sensational.
The next day I phoned a contact that I had. A pilot who worked for British Airways, Captain Paul. He’d been out to Uganda a few times and we’d struck up a friendship. He lived in Maidenhead, which was just outside London. He told me to come out. He had a few days free. I caught the train out to Maidenhead and he met me at the station.
We had a few beers and chatted about my situation. He had been trying to get my on a cargo flight out of Uganda but the contact hadn’t paid off. At one point he just came out with; “Do you want to go up for a spin?”
“In what?”
“In my plane.”
So it turns out he’s a stunt pilot in his spare time. His plane turns out to be the most powerful two seater prop plane there is; a Russian somethingorother. I get to sit in the front. Captain Paul sits in the back. We’re on this old airfield that looks like a relic from WWII. He fires it up and we catapult down the runway. We’re flying over little English villages when I suddenly realize what he’s up to. He’s getting me back for all those times I flipped, surfed and pounded him on the Nile. And that’s when we start doing tricks. Upside down, looping, diving at the ground, spinning around. It’s all I can do to clench my stomach and neck muscles and not throw up. And then I hear his voice over the two way go;
“Okay Adam, you’re now going to become one of the few people in the world who have gone backwards in an airplane.” What the feck? “What we’re going to do is to climb vertically into the sky until we reach a height of such and such. Then I’m going to turn off the engine…” WTF?? “…and we’re going to keep going up until we stall, then the plane is going to drop back down and flip forwards, where I will restart the engine and we will fly away.”
And God help me, that’s exactly what we did. The really freaky part was when the stick came alive in my hands. “Okay, Adam. You’re flying it. Do what you want.” I have to be honest, I didn’t do much. When we got back down he happily informed me that I’d pulled -2G to +8G, or something of the sort. The mechanic was impressed. “He really threw you around up there, eh?” I didn’t throw up though.
Captain Paul then did a very nice thing. He organized me a flight to Italy with BA. Told me not to worry about it, I could fix him up when I was able. I thanked him profusely and popped back to London. Another day to sort some stuff out, and then I was in Gatwick taking a flight to Italy. I was essentially arriving with no funds at all. Heading into Milan. I didn’t speak any Italian either. Jeno would be arriving a couple of weeks after me. I felt like I’d been doing this for far too long.
Part 17:
The GM was the worst backstabbing situation. Perhaps I didn't make it clear that he was somebody that we hung out with before he became GM. Before that situation happened I just assumed that if you did the right thing, others would do the same back to you. It was a good life lesson that you always have to watch your back.
I was standing at the baggage carousel in Milan when I noticed a young guy who had to be a riverguide. Apart from the fact that he was deeply tanned, he had a whitewater helmet clipped to the back of his backpack. I walked over, introduced myself. His name was Zane, he was a Kiwi, and could you believe it, he was walking for the same company that I was. He had also brought a guitar with him. We shouldered up our kit and were heading out through the airport when we heard some music being played. There were people singing as well.
“That’s Kiwi music, bro,” Zane said. “Lets check it out.”
Sure enough there was a group of about 15 New Zealand Maoris jamming together amidst a big pile of bags. Turns out that they were a famous traditional music group over in Italy for a tour. We sat down, and Zane pulled out his guitar and he began jamming with them. They were very welcoming. One of the girls asked me where we were going and I explained what we were in Italy for. After a while I asked if I could have a guitar and somebody passed me one. Then we really got jamming. A big crowd began to form and we played for about half an hour until finally I said that we had to be goiong if we wanted to get up to our base that night. We fare welled the group and headed out to the bus area. Both Zane and I agreed that it was a very cool way to start our Italian sojourn.
We got the bus into the main train station in Milan. It was quite imposing, in its neo-gothic-fascist style architecture. I found a phone and called the rafting base. It was five in the afternoon. The phone was answered by a nice lady called Carla who spoke English. After some hasty conferral we worked out that there was no way we would be able to reach the valley that evening by train. She told me to call back in five minutes. I called back and she told us to get the next train to Verona. One of the Italian guides who worked for them lived there and he would pick us up and look after us for the night.
We hopped the train to Verona and got there around 8pm. We were standing outside waiting when a young guy in a little Fiat 500 came to a screaming halt. He jumped out and introduced himself as Tobia. We piled into his tiny car and he rocketed off through the narrow cobble-stoned streets, weaving violently in and out amongst a horde of scooters and luxury cars. He pulled up outside a picturesque apartment building and we dragged our gear upstairs. He had dinner waiting for us on the table, and a big carafe of red wine. We dug in with gratitude. He rolled some joints. He was 21 and looked younger. He’d been rafting since he was 15 in the same valley where we’d be working. We asked him about the river, and the company we’d be working for.
He laughed. “Charlia is the big boss,” he told us. “Very strange man, crazy sometimes, he can be good, he can be bad. But lots of work, money is very good.”
Zane and I were both keen to learn Italian. We got Tobia to teach us some words. He got us both to memorize a phrase which he told us meant something fairly innocuous. Turned out that he was teaching us how to say, “I don’t speak Italian very well but I love blow jobs.”
The next day he had to work in the city, but he dropped us off in the center after we went to the station to get our tickets and stow our bags. We had about four hours to kill in Verona. We wandered into the historical center and just walked around with our mouths open. Finally we took a seat an outside bar that was one of many that ringed the huge piazza around the Verona Arena. The Arena is a small version of the coliseum, but still incredibly imposing. We sat there and drank our first Italian cappuccinos. It was a beautifully warm Spring day. The girls were incredible. Hottie after hottie walked by, all dressed like they had just stepped off a Milanese catwalk. Zane began to tell me about all the hot girls he had had to leave behind in New Zealand to come here. I was starting to get the impression that Zane was a nice guy but he had a tendency to exaggeration. Whatever, I didn’t care. I was just so happy to be there.
We took the train up to Trento. We left the Lombardian Plains and entered the foothills of The Alps. This was the valley that led to Austria, the route Napoleon had taken when he had invaded Italy centuries before. The mountains got higher and higher as the train sped North. We arrived in Trento an hour later. Our directions were to walk a few hundred meters up from the main train station to a smaller branch line called the Trento-Malè. This train went directly to our valley. Our destination was a little village called Caldes, in the Val di Sole – The Valley of the Sun.
The little electric train finally left and we headed into the mountains. It was a real cattle-train. It stopped every five minutes on the way. It took us almost an hour and a half to get the Caldes. We got off the train and looked around. We were high in the mountains. There was a good deal of snow on the immediate peaks, and it was much colder than Verona had been. We shouldered our gear and walked into the little village. There was nobody to be seen. Dogs barked at our passing. The village looked like it hadn’t changed for a thousand years. We headed down out of the village towards the river. We figured that the rafting base had to be down there somewhere. We came to a bridge and got our first look at The Noce River. It was a narrow, rocky river, only about 100 meters wide. The water thundered under the bridge. It was quite a high level. We stared at the river for a few minutes looking at the obvious lines through the rapids and then we continued over the bridge where we found the rafting base.
There was a little office with a smiling, chubby lady behind the desk. She came running out with a big smile on her face. This was Carla and she apologized profusely that nobody had been at the station to meet us. We told her not to worry about it. Charlia wasn’t there, but she got someone else to mind the office and she took us back into the village to the guides apartment. It faced onto the main piazza. It looked to be about 500 years old. We walked up the lobby stairs and she knocked on the door of the apartment. The door was opened by a young, smiling Aussie guide named Josh. There was also a young couple, Nick and Emma. Nick was the guide, Emma was his girlfriend. They were very young and had bagged the main room. The house was cool, there was a mural on the ceiling of the living room. We dumped our stuff on our beds. I’d sort out the accommodation later. All I knew was that I was buggered if a bunch of young kids on their first trip overseas were going to grab the best rooms.
There was another guide as well, but he was up in the village bar getting wasted. They told me his name and I couldn’t believe it. I wandered up to the bar and sure enough it was Maz. I’d worked with him in Cairns years before.
He saw me and let out a huge sigh of relief. “Thank Christ you’re here. I’m going insane hanging around with fresh-faced youngsters. They’re doing my head in.”
He bought me a beer, and we caught up. He’d spent the last six months rafting in Peru, and had come straight from there. “I’m going into coke withdrawal,” he told me. “I spent six months with a couple of grams up my nose every day. At least they’ve got pot here.”
Maz was in his late thirties. He had dreadlocks and a scraggy face. He had a joint hanging out of his face. He was disreputable. He was not to be trusted. He filled me in oh how the base worked, the different personalities and possible problems. There was a South African guide called Ralph who was here with his wife. They had gone away for a few days. Maz was skeptical of his abilities on the river.
The next day we met the boss, Charlia. We took a raft and went down the entire 25km section of river, taking turns on the stick so as to show him we could actually guide. The river was non-stop rapids for its entire length. It was fun guiding a technically challenging river again, having to actually zip through large rocky sections, as opposed to just punching through enormous waves and holes on the Nile. The boss seemed to be a head case. He was weird, moody, and his English wasn’t any good so we had problems communicating. The South African got back and we did another trip down the river. It was obvious that he was doing what I’d done all those years ago – he was faking it.
Part 18:
Question: I get the impression that living this way, you have to sacrifice the chance for real money, education, and probably a chance at a family (or most guides choose not to). It sounds like you will always end up where you started, just older with a lot of great experiences. Agree/Disagree?
Reply:
Yeah, this can most certainly happen. Life is a trade-off. You can't have everything. A lot of my old friends from Perth got the whole marriage/morgate/kids thing happening. I don't have that. I'm not that worried though. You can always catch up to get that stuff, they can't catch up to get what I've done.
Mark and Uncle Mick have come over to my place for some snowboarding, so I haven't had much time to post. Apologies.
Part 18 (Continued):
We had a bit of a problem with the money. At that stage the currency in Italy was still the lira. A beer cost 2500 lira. The weekly shopping bill came to something like 93,456 lira. It was a pain in the butt to say it in Italian, we were buggered if we wanted to say it in English. Maz came up with our own currency name. He started to call lira, pingers. So a beer wasn’t 2500 lira, it was two and a half pingers. That shopping bill would be 93 pingers. It worked well. So well that we still use it today.
Jeno turned up and I filled him in on the situation. He wasn’t particularly impressed at our sleeping arrangements, or Ralph, who was turning out to be a real nightmare. Rafting isn’t just about steering a boat and looking after your punters. It’s about looking after each other as well. When you go rafting, you want to be backed up by good guides. If you get into serious trouble, you want to know that you’ve got real experts watching your back. So a rookie guide is a liability on the river. He won’t be able to help you, but you have to constantly help him. That’s fine, because we’ve all been there. But this situation was different. We had a rookie guide that was continuing to pretend that he was an expert. Which meant that he wasn’t listening to us. He was so freaked out about getting busted that his way of dealing with that was to puff himself up with self importance. If I was behind him for a 25km trip, he wouldn’t look at me once. So if I flipped, or wrapped, or had a big problem, he wouldn’t know. He’d just keep heading down the river. And when things go wrong on the river, they happen fast. If I said something to him after the trip he would get angry with me for daring to presume that I knew more than him.
One day we’d all had enough, and Jeno, Maz, Zane and I went down to talk to the owner. Charlia was somewhat surprised. He said that the guys resume was top notch. I asked to see the resume. He had listed The Coruh in Turkey as one of his rivers. Zane stepped up and pointed out that Ralph had been there, but only in the capacity as a safety kayaker, and only for a short period of time. The resume painted a different story. We ran quick checks on his other places of work, and the same story continued to emerge – he wasn’t a riverguide, only a safety kayaker, which is like someone who’s only ever driven scooters wanting to drive a semi-trailer across the USA.
Charlia was a bit of a tool though. He told us that we had to deliver Ralph the news of his demise. As usual it got left up to me. There was a very nasty scene at the rafting base, but the other guides all stood around and backed me up. Charlia was hiding in his office. Ralph and his wife packed their bags and were gone the next day.
We were all struggling with our Italian. 99% of the punters were Italian, and we had to be able to deliver a ten minute safety talk. But there were other, more disturbing problems. Charlia’s operational system involved the guides having to wear waterproof two way radios. I would be heading into a big rapid and suddenly the two way would come alive; “Where are you? What are you doing?” Well, I’m on the ******g river and I’m ******g rafting, what do you think I’m doing? But he insisted on doing this in Italian, saying that we had to be able to speak Italian. Right, we’ve been here for two weeks and you expect us to be able to communicate in Italian on a two way. Tosser.
Every day he’d change the operating procedures. One day we’d have to dress the punters first, the next day we’d be dressing the punters and he’d come out screaming at us saying that we had to load the boats first. Every day like this. A big storm came through and it rained for three days. The river flooded and we weren’t able to raft. But Charlia had punters booked – we had to raft. His bright idea was to go and raft another river, one that had never been rafted before. It got less run-off and was usually dry, but the rain had upped it to a reasonable level. We loaded the punters in and set off. It was an hours drive to another valley. We arrived at the put-in and Charlia gave me a bicycle and told me to ride down the river and count all the dams. I just looked at him in shock. Dams?
Sure enough the river was full of artificial weirs. These are the most dangerous objects on a river, as the water drops over at a sheer 90 degrees on a uniform ledge, which means that it creates holes that are almost inescapable. Very, very dangerous. I rode for about five km and I counted almost twenty weirs. They were all run-able, but you wouldn’t want to make a mistake. I cycled back and told the others the good news. Nick was an excellent kayaker – he’d represented New Zealand at the world rodeo championships, and it was his job to scout ahead and signal the lines to take and danger spots to avoid. After the trip he freely admitted that he’d never been more terrified in his entire life. We had three rafts, myself, Josh and Zane. But the really killer point was the two-way. Charlia set them up and then proceeded to follow us on a bicycle, whilst screaming instructions into the two way.
A few minutes after setting off, it became clearly apparent that we were in trouble. The river was so heavily dammed that its normal flow was extremely low. Which meant that any heavy debris that fell into the river that would normally be washed away had not been. Added to this was the fact that the rocks were a slate-grey color, which was the exact same color of the water. I barreled down the first rapid and suddenly without warning I slammed into a large submerged rock. I hadn’t been able to see it. The river hadn’t had a chance to carve a path through the debris built up over hundreds of years. This place was a death trap.
We ran the five kilometer weir section, passed through a pool and entered the ‘natural’ section. I preferred the weirs. The river was a complete mess. Nothing made sense. The lines weren’t clear. Rocks were sticking up in the middle of rapids where rocks just shouldn’t have been. They were unavoidable. At one point we stopped to scout a section. We were making painfully slow progress. Josh and I scrambled over the slippery, knife-edged rocks to try and find a good line through the rapid. Charlia was standing on the other side of the river watching us. The two-way came to life as he began screaming at me. I looked over at him and calmly switched the radio off. Josh did the same. He began jumping up and down on the far bank in fury. We ignored him. Suddenly Josh gave a yelp and leapt into the air. He’d trodden on a viper and had [censored] himself with fright. He kept repeating that he’d trodden on a snake.
“That’s great,” I said.
“But it was a snake!”
“Did it bite you?” I asked.
“No…”
“Then can we get on with finishing this horrible trip?” I asked calmly.
We managed to get the boats through the section. The river flattened out and it began to rain again. Nick was ahead in his kayak. I was the first raft. Suddenly Nick began back-paddling in a frenzied manner and darted off to the side of the river. I signaled the two rafts behind me to eddy out as I called a back-paddle from my crew. My raft was in the center of the river. Nick jumped out of his boat and rushed forward. Whatever he saw made his shoulders slump. There was a huge weir that we didn’t know was there. My boat was already too close. There was no way I’d be able to avoid it. Using river signals I was able to determine from Nick that it was a sheer drop, over ten meters high, with a large recirculation at the bottom – a death-trap. I couldn’t believe it. I was going to die on this stupid piss-ant river, in this stupid valley, working for this stupid company. I was more angry than scared. What a pisser.
Nick suddenly signaled that there was a 45 degree ramp, just left of center in the weir. If he could direct me to that we’d have a shot of punching through. I had no visual markers so I was dependent on Nick getting me to the exact point. My crew had been back-paddling for over five minutes now, they were stuffed. I called for a final effort and managed to slot the raft directly onto the ramp. We shot down through a curtain of water and busted through the stopper at the bottom. I owed Nick a beer.
The other rafts pulled out and dragged their boats around. It was far too dangerous to attempt again. My crew were delirious with happiness and relief. We arrived at a large town. The river ran between two twenty foot high stone walls. Charlia signaled that we had to exit the river at this point. We somehow managed to stop, and we dragged the rafts up the sheer drop. It was close to six in the evening. We had set out at ten in the morning. This trip would have taken us a couple of hours back in Val di Sole, but he didn’t give us a cent extra. We packed up and then went to a local bar where we told the other guides of the days events. They found it hard to believe. We found it hard to believe. Josh kept carrying on about the snake. Nick was sporting a thousand yard stare. Charlia was nowhere to be seen. It was shaping up to be an interesting season.
Part 19:
There were four rafting companies in the valley. We were one of the smaller ones. The season progressed with its usual range of problems. The main bar in the valley was called the Red Rock. The beer on tap was XXXX, which is an Aussie beer. We thought that was a little weird. There was a giant illuminated XXXX sign on top of the bar which was clearly visible. One of the X’s was burnt out. We called the bar the triple X car-park. Most of our time was spent there. The music was terrible, the beer tasted like crap, and we had no luck with the local girls. We couldn’t talk to them. I’d go up to a girl in the bar, introduce myself, ask her name, ask how she was, and then we’d both stand there like stunned mullets with strained smiles on our faces. Jeno had a bit of luck, but that’s because he had never relied on his gift of the gab. I needed my gift of the gab. It was a big inducement to keep trying to learn Italian.
The work was good though. We were doing around three trips a day, and the pingers were piling up. August is the crazy period. Heaps of work, we averaged five trips a day. At the beginning of August Charlia just left. Apparently he needed to oversee another company he was setting up on another river somewhere. We were left to fend for ourselves. Carla the secretary and I managed to run the show for the insane period. She ran the office, I ran the river. We pulled it off well. No major problems for the whole month. We were all quite pleased with ourselves. At the end of the month, Charlia suddenly reappeared. There was no thanks for the work we’d done, he just came in and started pulling things apart, accusations flying thick and fast. We were all seriously jacked off at this.
There was another smaller company in the valley run by a couple of Argentineans. They approached me with an offer. They needed a guide to see out the rest of the season, which finished close to the end of September. They offered me some good money. The start date was for the 5th of September. I said sure. I worked up until that date and the day before I was going to leave I walked into the office and told Charlia to pay me out. He refused, saying that I had to stay with him until the end of the season. At this point we hadn’t exchanged a civil word for about a week. His English wasn’t very good, but I managed to convince him to pay me. It might have had something to do with the fact that I threatened to throw his computers in the river, drive his vehicles into the river, and burn down the hut containing all the equipment. It took me about ten minutes. I got paid and walked out. Afterwards Carla came into the office and found Charlia looking shell-shocked. She asked him what had happened and he replied that another guide had threatened to kill him. Seems that this was a frequent occurrence.
I worked for the little company for the rest of the month. They were quite strange, but they left me alone, paid me on time, and gave me a luxurious apartment to stay in. I was quite happy. But the season was winding down, the days were getting colder. Snow began to appear on the mountain peaks and the river was getting lower and lower. Finally one morning I told them that I was off, there was no more work. They agreed, paid me out and I packed my bags and took the train to Verona. I had money in my pocket, but no job and no place to stay. I had become friends with a guide who worked for another company called Nonno. Nonno means grandfather in Italian, and he was called that due to the fact that he was so slow to make up his mind, even for an Italian. He took me in and I began the hunt for a new apartment. But the combination of not speaking the language, not having a job and not really having a reason to stay there was defeating me. I couldn’t find a place to live. All I knew was that I didn’t want to go back to Australia. I felt that that would be a step backwards.
Finally with some desperation I contacted the Spanish girl that I’d been seeing in Uganda. She was back in Madrid, but it seemed that things were not cool for me to go and stay with her. One morning I woke up and realized that I had to get home while I still had money to get home. I booked a flight online from London. I hopped a flight the next day to London. On leaving Italy I had some trouble at customs. Apparently I had overstayed my visa. I pleaded ignorance, pretended not to speak a word of Italian and finally they just let me go. So even if I’d managed to stay I would have been illegally in the country. It hadn’t even registered with me to check if I could have stayed or not. I was a little bit distanced from reality. I got to London and raced through the city to get my ticket in time. The plane left that night. I arrived back in Perth with a few hundred dollars in my pocket. I was home, seven years after I’d left. I had a new baby sister that was doing well after her operation, all my friends were glad to see me, and I hadn’t a clue what to do with myself.
Part 20:
This is going to be my last write-up in this thread. I feel that it’s distracting me a bit from what I should be doing, ie working on my book. I also feel that I can’t really better the stuff that I wrote about Africa and I don’t want t o post here feeling that I have to. I just want to thank all of you guys for the support, it’s been a lot of fun writing this up and getting peoples feedback. I thought that I had an ordinary sort of life. Now it appears not.
I just want to add something for the original target audience of this thread – the younger posters who are wondering what to do with their lives and how to go about changing it. When I left Perth all of those years ago my only plan was to get to Sydney. I didn’t know that I’d end up being a rafting guide, and I sure as hell didn’t plan on going to the places that I’ve been to. It’s just one step at a time, but most importantly, keep an eye open for possible options and have the courage to give it a go. That’s all you need. Think about why you can do something, not why you can’t. The luck factor has been brought up in the thread. I don’t believe in it. I think ‘lucky’ people are those who don’t get discouraged by their setbacks. I failed my shotgun guiding test three times in Cairns, but giving up just wasn’t an option. Just plug away.
Writing this thread has put me in contact with a great editor, and we’re now working together. Thanks go to Joe Tall for that. Lots of wine for you if you ever get out to Italy. Thanks to El D for allowing this to take the course that it has, he popped in with the occasional encouragement which was a huge help.
So, what happened next? It’s a long story and all I’ll say is that I alternated between summer in Perth and summer in Italy for a few years until I was able to stay in Italy full time. I’ve been here for five years now. I run the largest rafting base in the valley and this June, hopefully, I’ll be opening a very cool lounge bar here with Uncle Mick, who now lives and works in London. I don’t travel anymore, as the life of living out of a bag no longer appeals to me. I like coming home, opening the door and finding all my stuff. I’m 35, single, and content with my lot. If one person who read this thread gets inspired to go out and change their life then I’ll be very happy. So if you do, please let me know.
Epilogue (4/17/08):
I've had quite a few private messages since this thread got bumped, asking me if I'm writing a book, how long is there to go, etc, etc.
It's very nice to have people enthusiastic about something that is actually very difficult to do. It's given me a little push to move things along. So to show my thanks, here's a little teaser lifted from the first chapter.
(Taken at random cause that's how I roll .... also this is unedited before you give me crap about grammar and spellingz and stuff ....)
I went around to see Lisa and give her the breathtaking news that I was going to chuck everything and go with her. How could she not be pleased? She was delirious with joy, or at least that’s what I remember at the time. She was due to leave in a week but I needed some more time to get my act together, a couple of months at least. The following evening my band was playing a gig and Lisa came along to watch. It was the best gig we had ever played. Musicians from other bands came and told us that we were going to be the real thing. My band-mates were ecstatic. I was the lead singer, guitarist and songwriter. So when I told them that actually I was chucking it all and following my girlfriend off to Sydney the mood of the evening dropped down a few notches. To my surprise they packed it in on the spot. I thought that they’d at least find someone else to take my place. Was it a sign that I shouldn’t leave? I went home and my girlfriend bonked my brains out. The following morning I went into work and gave them two months notice.
I went and saw my girlfriend off at the airport. I don’t remember much, but what I do remember is the two of us deep-throating each other in a 20 minute kiss directly in front of the boarding gate for her flight. We put on quite a scene. Finally the boarding staff managed to unlock the two of us from our death-like grip and my true love walked backwards down the embarkation tunnel with tears in her eyes. I drove back to my home with my escape plan to Sydney and a new life ticking over in my confused and muddled brain. I thus began the process of packing up what I had, sorting out the little details and letting my friends and family know what I was up to. My family were cornerstones of support. I do not remember hearing one argument or even a hint of a reason why I should not be going. At the time I suppose that I took this for granted. Now I know just how rare and precious is that unconditional support. My friends for the most part were amused. I am quite certain that I was the topic for much animated discussion amongst them at the time. A few however, were open in their support and admiration. It was a ballsy move, not diminished by the fact that I wasn’t catching a plane to Sydney. I was going to travel the entire way across Australia on my motor bike.
When you are desperate to be gone, eight weeks can progress with the speed of a car driven by an old man wearing a hat. More so when the aching pain I felt at being separated by my true love was factored into the equation. We spoke on the phone as often as I could afford it. We had long phone sex sessions. It was all quite eye opening. She had moved into a beautiful terrace house in Paddington, an inner-city suburb of Sydney. She had found a job working in a trendy clothing store just around the corner. She loved Sydney, it was the city where anything was possible. We spoke every day.
It was late January 2005 by the time I was ready to leave. A few days before my departure there was the annual staff party for the bar in which I was working. They charted a boat and took the fifty odd staff out to the islands off the coast of Perth. We spent the day diving and swimming with seals, playing cricket on the beach, flirting with abandon, and getting horribly drunk. Towards dusk we pointed the charter boat back to Perth, entered Fremantle harbor and headed slowly up the Swan River for a few kilometers. At last we moored the boat to a little jetty directly in front of a famous tavern called The Left Bank. Our boss stuck a few thousand dollars on the bar for us and we proceeded to defy all known records of human alcohol consumption. At one point I was sitting outside talking with a group of people when I spied a public telephone. In my drunken and lovesick state, I came upon the inspired decision that now was a perfect opportunity to call Lisa and remind her of my unwavering love for her very being. I stumbled over to the phone and after a few attempts I eventually had to ask a member of staff to help me put the coins in the slot.
The phone rang for what seemed a very long time. At last somebody answered. Alas, it was not my true love, merely some horrible flat-mate. They went off to find Lisa. I could hear her footsteps coming nearer towards the phone. The receiver was picked up and finally I heard her silky voice:
“Hello?”
“Mwhagawagbahbahbaba.” My God, I was drunker than I thought.
“What? Who is this?”
How dare she not recognize my voice? Was I not her true love? “This be your true love,” I managed to slur out.
“My what? Is this you, Adam?”
She knew me! It was true love after all! I was so deliriously happy that I dropped the phone. The receiver made a horrible cracking sound as it bounced off the metal stand. I scrambled for it but the damn thing kept slipping out of my fingers. Some bastard must have smeared butter all over the phone handle. I eventually got a grip on things and explained to Lisa that some bastard had smeared invisible butter over the phone handle. She didn’t laugh. Strange, she always laughed at my jokes.
“Adam, are you drunk?” Her tone seemed to be that of a person who is slightly annoyed.
“Maybe just a little bit,” I said with a terrible feeling that perhaps I had made a big mistake. To make up for this big mistake I began to tell her of my undying love for her. I don’t know how long I spoke but I was eloquent, of that I am sure. So there was no excuse for her hanging up the phone without any warning at all. I briefly considered calling her back immediately, but the gods had blessed me by stealing all the change from my pockets. I walked slowly back to the table where I had been sitting. I had the nagging feeling that I had made an error that could turn out decisive in the long term.
I have photos of my departure from Perth. It is a sunny day. I am sitting on my big old Honda CB750K7. The rear of the bike is piled high with saddle bags, tent, sleeping bag etc. I am wearing a black open-faced helmet, my heavy leather jacket, jeans and Blundstone boots. My mother and brother are in the photos at different intervals. My mother looks excited for me. My brother looks like he really couldn’t give a ****. I resemble a very scared guy trying to appear cool. At some point I decided that I had to be going. I kissed my mother goodbye, clapped my brother on the back and rode away down the suburban street. About a half hour later I stopped at the top of the Darling escarpment which looks down over the city of Perth. I got off my bike and leant against it as I stared at the city below me. My stomach had that slight churning, nervous feeling you get when you’re about to walk out to speak in front of a room full of people for the first time. All that I knew in my short life was down there before me. All of my friends, my family, my experiences, my boundaries. Behind me, the only thing I had was a girlfriend who hadn’t answered the phone since that drunken evening a little over a week ago. I could still back out of this. I could get back on my bike, coast down the Great Eastern Highway back to my home, and nobody would think less of me for it. I must have sat there on my bike for a good ten minutes. Long-load semi trailers sped past, almost sweeping me off my feet with the backwash from their passing. The sun beat down. Sweat pooled around my neck where leather touched my bare skin. In the end I got onto my bike, kick started the engine, twisted the throttle a few times while gazing down the hill, and then I let out the clutch, did a long slow turn and headed off towards the East.
Random Question:
There are some things that I've missed out on for sure. The first is financial security. It is difficult to live this life and accue the normal attachments that your peers from school begin to collect. As of yet I do not own a house. I hope to change that next year, but it is just one example. Mind you, most of my school buddies are getting divorced now and losing the house etc, so maybe it was the right decision. haha.
The other thing that you miss out on is being able to prove yourself in an environment like business or law or something similar. I'm a smart guy and sometimes I feel the lack of doing a high-powered job where I can put my talents to their full use. But then, your work environment molds you in a lot of ways, and maybe I wouldn't be the person I am today if I hadn't taken this route. I like who I am, so perhaps it was all for the best.
And this leads on to your next question, would you enjoy this path? I think the question should be, would you be able to handle this path? Literally every day when I'm rafting, somebody will make the comment that they'd kill to have my job. And I smile and nod while all the time I know that they wouldn't stand a hope in hell. Think how much you appreciate walking in your front door tired at the end of a long day, flopping down on your couch, turning on the tv or grabbing a book from the bookshelf behind you. You may not appreciate it now, but when you've been living out of two rucksacks for five years ..... oh baby. It can be very draining.
The grass is always greener. Don't think that you're going to take this path and not have any problems. There are many, just some different ones as well as some of the ones that you are already familiar with.
By the way, we all miss opportunities. I just happened to grab a few of the ones that presented themselves. The only difference is that when you're living a life with few attachments it's not as hard taking a new opportunity and running with it. If you have a family, and commitments, then you're stuck where you are for the most part.
