May 20, 2003

I got home on April 23 from Buenos Aires (yes, a month ago - I've been a little busy getting my life going again since then...)

In total my trip was almost exactly 30,000 miles through 16 countries.

I started June 21 from New York City up to Nova Scotia to Newfoundland, then across Canada to Alaska and up to the Arctic Ocean, arriving there August 6. From there I went down the west coast of Canada, America, and Mexico into Central America, arriving in Panama City on December 13. From there I flew to Quito, Ecuador, and drove down the Peruvian coast and up to Cuzco, getting into town January 26.

When I left there with Ulf and Anke we made an attempt to go down around Lake Titicaca, through Copacabana, Bolivia and into La Paz and central Bolivia, but ended up turning around because of the fighting there and went through the Andes again to Moquegua and then down the coast to Arica in Chile, and onto Santiago. My route from there to Ushuaia went down the main autopista in Chile to the Lake District, and after a few days there across to the Argentine coast at Rivadavia and down route 3 all the way to Ushuaia.

I arrived in Ushuaia at the southern tip of South America on March 14. After that stuff happening back home pushed me to bring the trip to a close, and I spent a month going back up to Santiago and then to Buenos Aires.

An entry in my journal, about a week after I left home...

[This turned out to be one of the strangest moments in the course of my trip....]

I get asked sometimes why I am doing this trip. I walked into the hostal today in Prince Edward Island, and the TV was on. I ignored it, unpacked, and decided to head into town. Then I noticed the TV was on the local public broadcasting station.

I found myself watching the interview between Bill Moyers and Joseph Campbell called the Power of Myth. One of the things they are talking about is the experience of being, and Campbell said in this interview that there "is something inside of you that knows when you are on the beam, and when you are off of it. And sometimes people get off of it to make money, and that's when they've given up the experience of living..." He also talks about the perfect courage of a warrior going into battle, and the idea that if you are following that experience it transcends you. Another thing he mentions is "when you are on a journey, and the journey's end gets extended, and then gets extended again, you realize that the journey is the end."

[More from this interview that I didn't have time to write down...]
MOYERS: But aren’t many visionaries and even leaders and heroes close to the edge of neuroticism?
CAMPBELL: Yes, they are.
MOYERS: How do you explain that?
CAMPBELL: They’ve moved out of the society that would have protected them, and into the dark forest, into the world of fire, of original experience. Original experience has not been interpreted for you, and so you’ve got to work out your life for yourself. Either you can take it or you can’t. You don’t have to go far off the interpreted path to find yourself in very difficult situations. The courage to face the trials and to bring a whole new body of possibilities into the field of interpreted experience for other people to experience – that is the hero’s deed.

[BTW - by quoting this here I'm not trying to suggest there is anything especially heroic about riding a motorcycle for a few months, but hey, I live in 21st century America, so I take what I can get... the heroism he's talking about is relative to the experiences of your own life. Getting off the path is the important thing. - Tim]

The most interesting idea that Campbell mentions is one that he gets from (I think it was) Schopenhauer, that when you get to a certain age you realize that there was a design to your life and that random things or things that seemed random become part of that design. When asked by Moyers who is doing that design, Campbell answers "We are... that's the power of our unconscious."

Random indeed. Thanks Joe.

My trip is not really well thought out on purpose. It started as an idea in a bar mentioned to a friend ten years ago, but I realized that where I journeyed was not as important as setting out on a travel of this kind, and any randomly chosen mission of this kind is ultimately good if you make it mean something to yourself. The important thing is that the trip be long enough, and North America just isn't that big these days.