I would suppose the hardest part about maintaining a journal is attempting to turn one’s constant adventures into literature on a daily basis. I wouldn’t think there’s a whole lot that happens to us in our lives, good nor bad, that we don’t want to remember for the rest of our lives. We write to remember, and what we don’t write loses its shot at immortality. Therefore, for those that find their lives in such a jumbled mess of spontaneity, it becomes hard to immortalize those wonderful experiences when other experiences seem all too interesting in comparison to writing down those that we’ve already had.
However difficult it all may result, I am determined to keep some form of a daily record of the experiences I have throughout this next year.
These past few days have been filled with empty stomachs, bloodshot eyes, sore rear ends, and endless frustrations with a hyper and confused beagle suffering from a debilitating case of travelitis. The original plan was for my brother Alex to buy a trailer, load it up with his gear, put my bike on it, and attach it to the jeep; then his dog and us all drive away blissfully all the way to New York laughing and kicking the whole way there. It’s strange how things tend to pan out a bit differently in our heads than they do on paper. In a few words, everything in the original plan went entirely differently.
We probably should have been suspicious as Alex’s newly bought trailer heavily weighed down the jeep without anything on it. That there was enough reason to find alternative means of hauling all his things out to New York for school, but our ambition and excitement blinded us entirely. After several days of loading and packing that trailer in the blistering midday heat of Southern Utah we had finally come to an end. The trailer was ready. We were more than ready. We hooked up the trailer and quickly realized the trip out would be a bit more of an adventure than we had previously imagined. With a fully loaded trailer at the hitch, the jeep now sat uncomfortably weighed back.
Once again our ambition blinded us, and we resolved to take it around the block for a test drive. It seemed to handle just fine if you kept your speed under 13 mph and didn’t take on any bumps of any kind. Once we got back to my brother’s house we realized that with so much weight, the jeep sat lazily no more than a centimeter above the back tire. I guess our biggest concern came when we realized we couldn’t even fit our fingers in there between the wheel hub and the tire. Ambition and excitement couldn’t blind this one.
Rather than leaving Sunday evening we had to call off the trip entirely until a better idea was resolved. The next morning Alex called with the plan to reload the entire trailer (once again in the blistering Southern Utah heat) onto a UHAUL and make way to New York by that evening. After hours of reloading we had finally gotten everything in, on, and hooked to the UHAUL. The trip that had taken so long to get started was finally about to begin! Looking back now, it’s amazing to see how much has gone into a trip such as this- both moving out to New York, and the trip I’m about to begin soon.
The idea to travel across the world visiting all the temples, staying with local members, and photographing each was one that was given to me by my older brother when I returned home from the mission in Argentina early June of 2010. It was an idea he had had years earlier during his mission in Honduras, but had never gotten to pursue. He had the ambition to think it, and I had the means to make it. I adopted the idea and fell in love with it immediately. From the moment I heard about it until now, I haven’t been able to forget about it. In all honesty, I’ve tried- on various occasions. I’m in a very pivotal moment of my life, where the decisions I make now will affect the rest of my life. The church urges those of my age to eagerly pursue education and a career as well as a beautiful girl and a family. I understand completely their urging to do so, but when a boy’s dream can’t be forgotten, I can’t think of anything else to do but live it. I don’t fear failing in any attempt I make to pursue this dream, rather I fear not pursuing it. I can’t stand to even think of the regret I would feel one day when I honestly can no longer do something like this, and realize that I didn’t do it when I was young and able. I have goals and dreams as far as a career and wife goes, but as much as I’ve tried to pursue the two, I can’t help but feel that it’s just not time to have those things just yet.
So call me crazy or young, but I’m putting the two aside for a bit and trying something else out. So throughout this past year since the mission, I’ve made various attempts to bury this idea in the back of my head and move on to something more secure- but when every moment you see the temple, or go to church, or see a plane or bike or almost anything else and you’ve got a dream come to your mind- then why not pursue it? I resolved to have a firm decision made on whether or not I would do this trip by June 18th of this year. On that date, I had made up my mind; and the months since then I’ve been running around like a greased up piglet trying to get a grip on this trip.
If there’s one thing I’ve learned in the past bit, it’s that truthfulness in a quote relayed to me by a close friend. “Once you make a decision the universe conspires to make it happen.” I can honestly say, that from the moment I had made my firm decision to pursue this trip, everything began to fall into place. The fears I felt about everything from spending large quantities of my hard earned money to get a bike and gear to travel all the way to fears of spending nights alone all began to become weak and small in comparison to the excitement and anticipation I had for this trip.
I remember in the midst of preparing for the trip financially I began to realize that my necessary spending would eventually deplete my funding and I would be left with nothing more than a bike and gear and not even a full tank of gas to begin. Immediately members began making donations for a fundraiser I would have two weeks later. Several members made hefty donations; everything from cash to clothes, to furniture, and all sorts of random items. There was one particular member that I had never even met before, who was well acquainted with my dad- that came to my front porch one evening after work and handed me two old guns, a rifle and revolver, and left. I was instantly amazed at the generous contribution from a member I did not even know. After looking online I came to see that the guns together could acquire me easily over $500 when sold.
I still feel so humbled by that situation. I thought for the previous few weeks that I would be doing this alone, and I felt weak in my attempt to do so. God has a way of teaching us that even in our best effort to acquire something we want, he can provide us with more help than we can imagine. After my best attempts to save money, he showed me that I wouldn’t be doing this alone. I felt so humbled and grateful and have ever since the help began to flood in.
About that same time I had managed to gather together money from a couple months of pay at my job with the Forest Service, and had a hefty sum of money that I needed to pay in tithing. It’s strange that I tend to always remember to pay my tithing just about the time that I really would love to pocket that cash instead for some needed items. Obviously I paid the tithing, and the blessings were immediate. I was informed that within the next couple weeks of work I would have several opportunities to work full extra days with overtime pay- oh how I needed that money!
I was blessed to grow up with an amazing bishop that quickly became a close friend to me. He’s been my bishop, friend, and boss over the years. Just before packing up and heading to New York, I asked him to give me a blessing as my dad has been deployed and gone for most of the year. Many people think my motives for doing this trip are just to run away from the realities of life, or just sightsee and explore only. I have my own motives for doing this, the primary one being that I feel like I should do it. But as much as I thought I knew about this trip, I was amazed at the wonderful and caring blessing given to me by my old bishop (who didn’t know much of anything about this trip) that shed more light on this trip, and what it entailed and what I was to be weary of than anything I had previously thought. I will always be grateful for the tender blessings of the priesthood.
Then there was a mother’s love. I can’t begin to explain the strain that we boys have put on my mom’s heart- but through it all she was able to support me from the minute I told her of my plans to once again leave home and travel the world alone. For those that do not know, she’s been both blessed and cursed to have four crazy boys. The oldest is a marine infantry officer, the next is in the one I came out with to his new home in Syracuse New York for Law School, then there’s me, and my little brother on his mission in Germany. Her life raising us has been all but dull. Many others were slower to accept my plans, but she never wavered even once. In fact, in my moments of hesitation and doubt, she pushed me forward. I cannot explain the gratitude I have for her help in everything that has been preparing for this trip.
I was amazed as well to see the support that flooded from local members as I told them of the different places I would be staying while visiting temples on the first leg of the trip. Instantly contacts were given and doors were opened. Connections were made and I was provided with some places to stay in different cities. The serviceable nature of the members of our church amazes me, as people that do not even know who I am open their doors for a crazy kid on a trip.
As crazy and long as the preparation and trip out here has been, I can say that we made it. After a 48 hour straight shot drive all the way across the country, we had finally made it to Syracuse. You can imagine how excited we were to get out of that car and make our way into his new home. Alex had bought a home several months ago that had been foreclosed on by the government, providing him with awesomely low price- less than what he would pay for the next three years of rent in a normal apartment. He bought it, and we planned to fix it up.
Let’s just say that my immediate thought after we walked in the front door was- there’s probably a dead guy in the basement. The front door looked as though the Hulk had kicked it in, breaking all the locks, and ran recklessly all the way out the back door, where actually- there was no back door. Just a beautiful vista of the backyard.
The basement had apparently become the local dance floor and bar for the 8,000 local monster crickets. The kitchen floor tilted from the age of the home, and the basement windows were broken and shattered probably as one of those monster crickets kicked it in on his way down to the bar. Me and Alex went on a Call of Duty mission in the basement with insecticide wrecking genocide on their cricket colony.After a week of working on the home, and watching my brother and mother run around frantically trying to get that house situated and ready to live as well as get ready for law school- I am ready to begin the trip! It’s been a long week of stress and preparation. But it has been some much needed time with my family before I go. Tomorrow morning I will have the bike ready and packed up. First stop- Palmyra.
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