Reality Sucks

The Victoria Parliament Buildings.  No Reality here!

Reality sucks.

I know I have said this before and I will say it again…  Reality sucks.

Reality has this annoying tendency to raise its bleak, ugly head dripping with putrid annoyances from the slime of details and pettiness to fix you with its cold light of day stare and make you face it.  Who wants to do that?

We decided to take some time off our year of escape and come home to do the reality thingy before the final 2 months of our journey.  In Reality we had to be home to re-sort our bags, do our taxes, check up on things etc.   Both of us took the cold plunge and actually did a little work while we were here.  Just a foretaste of what to expect when our journey is over. 

That was the wrong thing to do.

You know how when you go on vacation you come back all mellow and relaxed with a silly grin on your face as you saunter casually into work?   Do you remember how that vacation feeling gradually fades away over the course of a minute?  The shoulders climb up, the teeth clench and that grin turns into a grim.  Why do we subject ourselves to that?

Cycling in Victoria.  

 Welcome to Reality!

In Reality it felt nice to see all my co-workers and my clients whom I really like.  It was nice to see friends and share some hot caffeine and, of course, my family.  I cannot speak for them as to whether the feeling was reciprocal.  There was some screaming, running and sobbing when I went into work - but that is pretty normal, right?  As far as the family goes it is always nice to get together and traumatize one another all over again.  It is also nice to stay in one place for a prolonged period of time and not pack up every few days.  So, buried under that cold bleak exterior, Reality does have a nicer, sunnier spot.  It is not easy to find, but it is there.

Grey and greyer

Everyone we meet wants to hear about our trip.  So many people have said “Is a year up already?”  We tell them we still have two months to go.  It kind of feels like sitting in the dentist office and looking at the clock and thinking, “My appointment is at 9 o’clock and it is 8:59 – I still have a whole minute to go!”  Strangely, no one seems to sympathize with that sentiment. 

The weather sucked.  It actually snowed on me a little on my way to work one morning.  I think God was playing her usual nasty little jokes.  It is hard to believe that she invented humour.  I guess we have to realize that she invented juvenile humour too.

We have been chasing the sun around since June of 2012 and we pretty much avoided winter except for a small taste in November and, now, March.  Reality means long pants, shoes, shirts, and warm jackets.  We have been in shorts and sandals for so long these warm clothes thingys feel restraining and constrictive.  Going to work means wearing “decent” clothes.  Apparently when I wear shorts and a tank top it is considered, in most cultures, indecent if not downright nauseating.

Victoria at night

We have to reconfigure our heads.  We did the circle North America trip and the circle Pacific trip and now we are off to do the Europe trip.  North America was not difficult since we knew the culture (at least in Canada – and we could extrapolate to a certain extent to the US) and the language. Southeast Asia was a culture shock – we knew neither the culture nor the language but took great pleasure in learning some of it.  Australia and New Zealand was all about the natural wonders.  Hawaii was all about the beach.  Now we are off to Europe and we don’t know the languages, we don’t know the cultures and there are enough man-made wonders to last a lifetime.  We have to pack for different climate and different experiences. 

So much better than Reality on so many levels!!!

Not long now and we will be heading off on our journey - to travel to new worlds seek, out new civilizations - to go where no one has gone before!!! 

Geeze, how geeky was that!!!

We are heading off to Europe and we will be back when someone gets the weather straightened up here.