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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?
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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.
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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.
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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.
