Tuesday 5 May 2009

Monday 4th May 2009 – Plans? What Plans?

I remember, many years ago, standing at the top of Kill Devil Hill, beside a hang-glider which was preparing to take off.  Kill Devil Hill is on the Outer Banks of North Carolina, facing out into the Atlantic.  You might know it better as Kitty Hawk, where the Wright Brothers made the first flight.  It's an obvious place for fragile flying, or at least fragile taking-off: it's a huge soft sand dune, sloping down to the sea, with strong winds blowing straight off the ocean.  The way it seemed to me, the hang-glider pilot kept the nose pointed firmly towards the ground until he was ready to go, and when he felt ready, he lifted the nose and was whisked up and away by the powerful winds.  What stuck in my mind over all these years was the similarity to a cat about to pounce: the pilot was constantly flexing and swaying, working up a commitment that synchronised with the conditions.  It was almost as exciting as doing it myself. 

Opening a bank account, sorting out a visa application, buying a vehicle, is not like that at all.  The big difference is that there is no wind: I can get myself ready, I can observe the conditions, but when I lift the nose, nothing at all happens.

If this was Africa, or Asia, or the South Pole, I would be writing letters home bemoaning the fact that I'm stuck in base camp because my agents have not completed the necessary details to equip the expedition; claiming how frustrating it was not to be tackling Everest, or the Limpopo, or the breaking ice, or whatever.

Fact is, I should have my first Glasgow under my belt by now.  But I'm still stuck in the comfort of Minneapolis, having quite a good time.  And I'll be here for about another week, continuing to have  quite a good time.  Money is nearly organised; the visa thing will just take time, but is not on the critical path any more; and I may have a van organised by tomorrow.  If so, I will probably be on my way early next week, provided I can organise payments and insurance.

What I'm seeing may be light, and it may be the end of the tunnel.  We're certainly approaching the end of the beginning.

 

Reality is disappointingly different from the plan.  I would really like to have gone to Montana, Oregon and California on the train, but it would have left me stranded in various places with problems I would have to throw money at.  And I would still have left these big problems behind, to be solved later.  This seems to be a much better structure.  It's just going on a bit, isn't it?  But doing it myself means doing it this slowly.  It's part of the fun.

Of course, it will be difficult to remember all this at the end.  Although, in a sense, all this is what it is really about.  The adventure was never to slip smoothly from Thomas-Cook-point to Thomas-Cook-point, with couriers waving me past every difficulty.  The adventure was to sort everything out and get to the end by myself.  Just to prove I can.

 

But I am glad I didn't choose Everest, or the Limpopo, or, God help me, the South Pole.  At least the plan had some sense of my limitations.  And I'm getting there.

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