The Call of the Road

I find myself back on the road again, and though travel takes me away from those things I hold most dear, it does give me the opportunity to get unfettered internet access.  I also find that travel affords the opportunity for adventure, a chance to meet new people, and, almost without exception,  a time to see the world from a slightly different angle.

Travel is a time to reset...a recreation, as it were, even if the time on the road is largely dictated by the constraints of the day job.

I like it.  I like it a lot.

Parking Lot Sunrise - Baltimore Washington International Airport

Today started off early with a trip to the airport. As I was waiting on the shuttle from the long term parking lot, the sun peeked up over the horizon and, as seen through the chain link fence, offered a pretty striking vista to start the day.  

I got in the aluminum tube, and a little less than twelve hours later, I was blessed with experiencing the sunset in Fairhope, Alabama during my evening training walk for the N2N-TCP.  

Heron at Sunset - Fairhope, AL

There were moments of terminal terror as I hustled to make a connection and a day job email or two in between, but the bookmarks on each end of the day seemed to make it all worthwhile.

Fairhope's On Fire

As I told Rory (Conlan) during the walk, "We really should be doing this sort of thing full time."

Soon.  Very soon.

I'm not sure what tomorrow holds, but I sure hope it's more of the same sorts of experience.  I'm optimistic.

Every Now and Then...

You get an opportunity to experience something spectacular. Today has been one of those days where event after event proved more fulfilling than the last one. Take those chances. I think you'll find that if you're awake, aware, and participating, days like the one I had today roll around more often than you've come to expect.

Back at BWI - Headed out on the road again

Today started off right with a quick hop skip and a jump on Southwest Airlines down to make my connection in Atlanta. The air was warm, but the sky was clear. I'd even remembered to check in yesterday just a little after the twenty four hour mark hit. For those of you who fly Southwest know, your seating will largely depend on getting checked in just as soon as possible. I was a little late, so I ended up in a middle seat. I did have room in the overhead bin for my backpack so that was a plus. I also had plenty of relatively svelte folks to choose to sit between during the flight. A good start to the day all in all.

Art on Display at Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport
Atlanta, GA

My layover in Atlanta was characterized by a walk a little over a mile long through the tunnels connecting the terminals. I've found that airports are pretty good places to see emerging contemporary art, and Atlanta proved to be the rule rather than the exception.

Leaving Atlanta - Bound for Florida

The typical afternoon thunderstorms were just getting started when we left Atlanta headed for Florida. The embryonic cumulous clouds were shaking awake and marching together to form the cumulonimbus playground of giants.

Thunderstorm Breaking on Final Approach

Thunderstorms have an untamed and wild beauty about them. Rain crashes out of the heavens and lightning smites the earth like a hammer. The legends of giants in the clouds seem well earned. These gods of the southern afternoon dwarfed our three hundred foot airliner and forced us to change our course a number of times in the short hop to Florida.

Lighthouse - Mayport, FL

I didn't really know where I was going, and got sidetracked quite a ways out of the way, and in the process I stumbled upon the St. Johns River Lighthouse in Mayport, FL. Originally constructed in 1890, the lighthouse has been out of commission for some time, but I'm grateful that it's still around. It turned an unfortunate sidetrack into an interesting drive.

Destroyer Sunset - Naval Station Mayport

I wrapped up the day with a spectacular sunset and a three mile walk on the beach. Today was a great day full of quite a few little adventures, and I'm grateful that I took the opportunity to experience them all. As always, I'm looking forward to see what tomorrow's adventure may hold in store for me.

Glideslope Sunset

After a productive week in the south, I am home. The gifts that technology have bestowed on my generation are truly spectacular. I'm not at all convinced we're using this unique time in history to its greatest advantage. I'm struck by the wealth that is manifest all around me, and it makes me a little somber. With great opportunity comes great responsibility. It's hard to argue that we don't have great opportunity.

Sunset on the final approach to BWI

I am grateful for today and all that it's brought into my path, and I'm looking forward to tomorrow where I hope to live up to the challenges.

Back in the Mid-Atlantic for a Little While

Successfully made it back to the Mid-Atlantic states. Travel will continue until morale improves, and as such this is about a fifty two hour stopover, some relatively local travel, and then we'll see what shakes out.

I took to opportunity to get in some much needed rest this afternoon. As I get a little older and wiser, I believe I'm getting better at listening to the body tell me when I'm pushing too hard and adjusting accordingly. To a degree, I wish I'd learned this a little sooner.

Departing CLT

Nothing to terribly exciting on the picture front, although I caught the above gem on the window of the A320 hauling me to Baltimore after a quick trot through the airport to catch this connecting flight. It's good to be back and I'm grateful I managed to basically keep up with all aspects of the daily practice in one form or another during a relatively challenging time from a schedule and sleep perspective.

I read a quote on a running website the other day that I think has some real applicability. It said, "Motivation gets you started, Habits keep you going." That's speaking with Big Medicine  from my perspective, and it's more than a bit heartening to realize that I've managed to develop some of those more positive habits over the last couple of years. It's been quite a trip.

Looking forward to what tomorrow's sunrise will reveal.

Confronting Change

The truth of the matter is that no matter how hard we might try, avoiding change is impossible. The seemingly never ending stream of unique sunrises and sunsets, often of the same general geographic area, that I bombard my audience of almost no readers with every day should act as a testament to the fact that every month we endure, every week we put in the record books, every day that we face, and every moment that we live is a unique creative event.

Sunrise - Daphne, AL

Our brains seem to be wired to gloss over these vast differences and constant churn of ever changing events by finding patterns that give us comfort in the illusion of habit and stability, but the fact of the matter is that sense of stability is a fiction of our own making.

I got a book for Christmas last year titled Everything that Remains by Joshua Fields Millburn (with interruptions by Ryan Nicodemus) that I've been putting off reading since the moment I unwrapped it. The subtitles is "A Memoir by The Minimalists," and I put off reading the book because I was fairly certain that the story that they lay out regarding the value of minimalism would hit too close to home for comfort.

I was not wrong in that assumption.

Even though change is constant, and its definitively observable in the spectacular differences that I seem to be less and less able to dismiss at a whim, deliberate change is more difficult for me. The challenge for me is to heed the call that I've been building toward for more than a year now. My walking has been part of that path toward a less consumer driven existence. I first started the practice because I could not get the thought of how good it would be to slow down a little and live in each moment a little more out of my head.

The walking was a mechanism to address a sense of grown unsettledness in my life. Walking was the mechanism by which I literally took the first steps that have led me to this point.

Clouds - The Manifestation of Change - Mobile, AL

It is a point where my discomfort with maintaining the status quo has been balanced with my discomfort in pursuing a more deliberate path. The scaling back of materialism is something that I know in the very pit of my stomach that I'm going to have to try. At the same time, it was painfully difficult to leave the hardcover of David and Goliath by Malcolm Gladwell laying on a chair in the passenger terminal at BWI Airport after I finished reading it on my flight in to Charlotte, NC today. I wanted to save the book because it had impacted the way I viewed the world, but I know that I was unlikely to ever read it again.

The desire to keep a piece of that experience near me by keeping the book led me to carry it another 800 miles from where I'd finished receiving the benefit of reading the words.

If you want a copy of the book, I left it laying on a chair in the airport where it might change the way someone else views the world. I did what I knew was right but still felt like a difficult thing to complete. It felt good walking away from the book. Much better than walking up to the chair to set it down.

With the release of the book, I took another step on a journey where the path seems to be finding me. It's a different experience, and I look forward to seeing what road rises up to meet me tomorrow.