5/22- Todd's Return

Errands were on the agenda this day. At first I wasn't planning on accompanying Gus as he roved about town, but then I heard part of his day would take him down to Hartford where the closest REI is located. In general, when I looked at the details of his day, it looked like a good time for hanging out with him anyway.

First stop was to pick up his Mom to take her grocery shopping. Being an old friend of his I, of course, was quite pleased to be able to see his Mom again as well. I got to fill her in on my goings on as we picked out her items, and I was also able to pick up some more food for myself which was sorely needed. Once we dropped her back at home, we ran down to Hartford, picked up Gus' check and made our way to REI so I could trade in my Alpine bivy for the Aurora bivy that Todd took back to Santa Fe to trade away.

I should probably take this time to address what a bivy is, since both of us keeping getting questions on it. A bivy is essentially a waterproof shell for your sleeping bag. Its small and much lighter than hauling around a tent, but more importantly to my specific needs, its much more concealable when ducking into the roadside woods. My beef with the Alpine is that there is a wire that runs through the mouth of it to help keep its form or something, but it makes it horribly annoying to deal with when stuffing it away in my little compression pack. The Aurora is the same exact thing as the Alpine except that it has no wire making it a hair cheaper. Checking in now at REI I was bummed out to discover that they don't carry the Aurora.

I browsed about the store anyway with Gus and managed to find a nice hat, since I'd liked Todd's so much, and picked up a few other odds and ends. We then returned back to Mass to pick up Gus' daughter, Aenea. She was another I really didn't want to miss on my visit here, and was a main reason that I decided to tag along for the day.

Aenea I first met when she was two weeks old and still was very reminicent of Yoda. Since then, given my physical distance, I've adopted the role of Godfather to her and make sure to send her something every year for her birthday. Last year it was a bad ass set of goggles. Anyway, this vague "Godfather" role is important to me, despite that Gus keeps reminding me that I'm not her Godfather since she doesn't have one, and I like to make sure I check in with her as often as I can so I'm at least remembered in her life, and hopefully fondly.

We spent the rest of the afternoon milling about together. Gus ran his banking errands while I ran around with Aenea exploring pet shops and town monuments. I know I'll never live in the area, and that Gus will never live around me, especially with her, so my only hope of having any type of relationship with her is to try and carve out a memory niche in her of that fun family friend guy who used to play with me as a kid. Small dreams, but grand at the same time.

After getting some coffee, and razberry iced tea for Aenea, Gus dropped me off at train station to pick up Todd. The car was full of his DJ equipment so they drove off, and I awaited Todd to walk him back to Gus' a few miles away. The train pulled in a little while later, he sauntered out pack, hat, and all, and we caught up on each other's business as he reorchestrated his pack for forty five minutes.

It was good to have him back. Particularly with everything going on around town and the things I was processing, it was great to be able to have him back to bounce these thoughts off of. It was only a three or four mile walk to Gus' so we set off through the boarded up streets of the North End expounding on the details of what was happening. Amid this we were plunged headlong into a fascinating detour.

Walking along, deeply mulling over what was going on with my Dad and I, how it was to see my old friend Dave after his brother's recent death, and reconnecting with Gus again we were suddenly approached by a young circus lad, clad in red, peddling a unicycle. He was quite enthusiastic to see backpackers in the area, as that's a rarity, and wanted to hear our tale. As he was asking us all this I was trying to figure out if I was actually hearing a genuine Cockney accent coming out of his mouth, or if I was tired and he was slurring or something. Having spent 17 years of my life in the area the notion of some Eastender from London even finding, much less living in, my podunk industrial town was completely surreal to me. Sure enough, though, there he was, unicycle and all.

Popping off his cycle he walked with us to the crossroad we were looking for to continue on toward Gus' explaining to us that he and his family traveled the world doing circus acts. When we hit said crossroads he invited us back to his family's place around the corner for a beer or a joint. Neither one of us could fathom passing this opportunity up, being quite tuned in to the fact that this occured within an hour of remeeting up, so we promptly jumped on the offer.

This visit became a huge focus for the days to come as a mental bitch slapping upside the back of the head. Alex, the unicyclist, guided us to the arrangement of trailers set up in his sister's husbands drive before running off to grab us a few forties to kick back to. His Mum welcomed us in with hot plates of beef stew and we sat around with his Dad, girlfriend Amber, brother, and several others who roamed in and out to get a peek at what was going on. Stories started flying and Alex, on his return with the forties, looked at us expectantly with hopes of finally being the listener to grand tales, rather than the teller. Sorely I fear we failed him badly.

Here Todd and I were, roaming about the countryside feeling all bad ass that we've "escaped the constrictions of society", evaded the lock down of 9 to 5, and could brave the roadside wilds with such simplicity of backpack living, but we couldn't think of a single tale worthy of telling to Alex and his circus family. I made the dumbfounding attempt of trying to tell such grand favorites as the great Tennessee drug raid, being lost in the deserts of Wyoming, jumping over a rattle snake, climbing the Brooklyn Bridge in a drunken stupor. Suddenly I had the story telling power of the history teacher in Ferris Bueller's Day Off. Alex sat baited but unimpressed waiting for the good part to come as I concluded each telling. Then he would, in kind, spout out his own related tales of evading a drug raid in Spain by putting on a juggling act with some discovered hash after snatching it from the policeman's palm, or flying various planes across the country and trying not to fall asleep at the wheel because the hum of the engine brought him back to the calming childhood memories of sleeping to the same engine hum in their roving circus trailer.

All of this was just the beginning. After a bit I was getting the impression we were being interviewed to a greater purpose. He asked us often what our skills were, what did we do to survive. Sheepishly we said we didn't know, thus far we'd been living off savings from a tax return and hoping that my rent deposit comes back sometime soon. Do you hunt? No. Fish? Don't know how. Trap? Forage? Street shows? No. No. No. We haven't even practiced putting a functional shelter together yet... but we have grand notions of traveling the world. We were the Keystone Cops of thrifty adventurers and we were being shown exactly who we weren't.

Alex then proceeded to show us around their compound in the back. Not only had the guy been performing death defying feats since he was an infant, but he'd found someone to teach him how to fly any variety of machines, figured out how to get dirt bikes/motorcycles declared officially dead for the price of a few found tires and repair them to a state superceding their pristine days, and was hand making practical longbows from such items as trashed guitars and swiped snow measuring rulers. Where was the "interviewing" going? His higher plans were much grander than this self made achievements.

Somehow he had secured 24 military trucks out of Germany from the fall of the Soviet Union. He had procurred a whole list of other various items to put in these trucks for an eventual drive out of Europe and into Africa. Once in Africa he hoped to find a nice spot away from the politics and conflicts, essentially removed from everyone, to build his own village. Having now met the kid and everything he's taught himself to do and is capable of, I had no doubts that he's dead serious about the whole thing. What I think was our interview was to see if we'd be of any help.

By now we'd been hanging out drinking for about 2 hours or so and it was time to let them get to sleep and for us to get to Gus'. He had also gotten quite inspired to bring Todd and I to Boston on Tuesday to teach us how to be cowboy human statues and make money off the street that way, so we swapped numbers for that. Our assignment was to dig up some costumes for ourselves out of the Dollar store.

With the snap of a picture and some goodbyes we shoved off again continuing toward Gus', now with an extra pep in our step for being shown just how lame we actually are with the hope of it opening a road to us over coming our lameness. This inspired us to call Gus and take him up on an offer for a night of a 30 pack of beer so that we could geek out over this peek into a completely new world of living.

Thankfully Gus only picked up a 20 pack. This was Gus and Todd's long awaited meeting that I was looking forward to. I figured with both of their politics, penchant for philosophizing well into the night, and DJing backgrounds they would get along quite well. I was correct and by the end of that pack of what ever it was we were drinking they were nicely forging a new friendship, but we were also quite liquored by then.

Click here for Todd's perspective.