Bartering Mountains for Sushi

And so it begins. Tomorrow a plan that's been over a year in the making invades my world with the fierce unfamiliarity of seriousness. This strange territory of responsibility and obligation bare the title of "my first real job" and I can only hope that its ominous nature doesn't mean the death of the 24 year childhood I've so passionately adored. My first instinct is to approach it with the same attitude I approach everything else in my life; not to take it too seriously. How could I with it having such a comical birth site?

To elaborate, just over 13 months ago I was sitting in a mangy hostel in Mendoza, Argentina. The cheap plastic picnic tables were sighing not only because of an ant infestation but also because this particular night, they'd drawn the unlucky lot of a beer bottle infestation. I remember my face was warm, probably a combination of a beard that matched the hostel decor and having personally hugged half of the bottles cluttering the tables. My drinking companion was a man that I had initially pegged as an impractical traveler. He'd shown up at the hostel lugging a large suitcase, fighting it all the way up the stairs, where as all the rest of the guests simply slid into the straps of their camping backpacks and negotiated the passage to the second floor with ease. As the beers went down this fact began to itch at me so when a stoppage in the flow of conversation occurred, I quizzed him on it. He was quiet for a bit and I wasn't sure he'd heard me until a wry smile crossed his face. I now know he was pausing for dramatic effect, he'd told the story a fair number of times. The lead in hook statement: "well, that's just how it's been for the past 2 years."

Traveling for two years?!?! My holier than thou tone melted into admiration, it was as though we had just whipped it out to see whose was bigger and my epic six month journey was recast as a weekend at the seaside. "How do you finance something like that?" I queried.

"That's' the best part" he replied. "I was on the road when I was working for it."

He went on to tell me how he'd taught English in Japan for two straight years subsisting on little more than rice and traveling all over the Asian isle. He had a bottomless trove of stories and could swear proficiently in 7 different languages. By the end of the night I was piggy-backing the residual wave of elation. That's something I could do...