Match yourself

I haven’t been inactive since my return to Florida. The stimulating trip I took helped me to sense the non-sense of the life I was living. The world is full of people that give up and disguise its inertia as prudence. It’s nothing but cowardice.

Some visits to my family got me extra pounds, so the next step was to lose weight.

Every time I need to wrestle with my own body I find a hall of reality that I can’t full. My body will react to effective measures, nothing else. Good intentions and dreams have not the slightest effect on my waist line. But long term results are the product of self-knowledge more than bare effort.

From many years now I have been trying to find my formula to control weight. Since I was in my twenties I ran into the error of explosive training and demoralizing crashing. Then I tried long tern discipline, just to crash in several episodes instead of one.

My error was seeing my body like a separate project of my existence. A lazy mind can’t wear a strong body. You can’t have a body that doesn’t match your mentality for too long, the same way you can’t wear that Halloween custom every day to the office.

First thing, my goal couldn’t be been attractive (external reward) but been worthy (internal stimulus). I love the image of that old man that wears a tie even when retired. He’s not trying to follow anybody’s dressing code but his own. If you shower and shave just when there is somebody watching, then you are really a beggar in disguise. The ONLY person who cares is watching all the time, yourself.

Once you understand that simple factor is when discipline starts to boil in your hart.

Romans had a word for this: “Dignitas”. It’s the root of the modern “dignity” but for romans it was deeply personal. Having “dignitas” was to behave, look and match the way that person conceived a worthy life. When you find your “dignitas”, the rest of your physical manifestations follow, including your body.

That clears the path between the mind and the body, but still you need to go through the technicalities of known yourself. Your body is unique and there is a distinctive way in which it reacts to different combinations of nutrients, tasks and circumstances. At some point you need to stop listening to diet experts and taking note of those things that have a real and measurable effect on your system. You will be surprise who far you may be from the statistic average.

The good news (great news in deed) is that controlling your body is not a challenge of will but one of self-knowledge. I got rid of sixteen pounds with a mild cardio workout of 40 minutes every other day and I feel better than when I was a teenager. 

 I’m not doing this to impress anybody but the guy in the mirror.

Road Trip Benefits

I want to wrap up the experience of the last road trip in a practical way.  What is in for you?

First, your job may have you trap in a vicious cycle.  The cycle takes your time and gives you money.  With that money you buy things that consume the rest of your time and, sometimes, demand even more money.   A road trip not only cuts the cycle, but also shows you that:

• The world is big.
• There is thousands of ways to make money, some of them more profitable and less stressful than the path you have chosen.
• People are really happy with very little IF their social capital is big enough.
• None of the adversities you have encounter compares with the adversities of the people that made the places you will see.
• You will feel the obligation to match the beauty and the majesty of the landscape.
• You will fall in love again… several times.
• You’ll feel the urge of handwriting.
• You lost weight, especially in cold weather.
• For some reason you never get sick.
• You’ll not want to be anybody else on Earth.
• You feel (not just understand) that life can be lived in many ways other than the half dozen you ever considered. 
• You realize how useless pictures are to grasp experience.   
• You feel the distance.
• You feel the silence.
• You feel time.

Feeling is the missed piece of this Google generation.  It’s not enough to see the numbers and say wow!

I circled the whole country and the distance I covered was less than the one I used to drive from home to the office in one year.  So I was already covering the distance, but with a boring path.

Ok, yes, I’m single.  But having a family makes the trip even more enduring.   Remember this:  a relationship is a collection of common experiences.  So don’t use your family as a supporting pretext for inaction, make it a point in behalf of the action.

If you are happy, ignore me.  You are there.  But most of the people I have met know deep inside that there is something else in life.  They are just afraid to lose the little piece of bread they have if they go for the oven.  If you are in that state I have good news for your heart and bad news for your guts: you are wrong.  Yes, life is a miracle, one that is worth to be repeated and propagated.

You know that you are really happy when you don't want to have sex, you want to impregnate directly.  It’s an urge for giving.  Is this assurance that the source of your happiness can never be exhausted because it falls all over like rain.

Cities are not another choice of living.  They are the bad choice.  They generate humans alienated of their own nature, cynic as Scrooge, sarcastic as teenagers, indifferent as portraits, and bitter as bus drivers. 

We can confidently demolish all the existing cities and start from scratch.  There is so much arid space that it’s unnecessary to knock down a single tree.  A healthy city must expose the inhabitants to light, water, plants and animals.   Public transportation should not be crowded by losers.  Affordable facilities should be the reward for good character, not lame performance.

So, if you suffer from chronic depression, you may be mirroring the mood of the city.   You can’t pretend health with an unhealthy baseline.

But you don’t need to wait for the creation of the perfect town.  You can give yourself a good dose of city at some point of your life and then move to a more natural environment.  That requires a disposition for change that is rare in city rats.  Road trips are just a mild exercise to build that disposition; to remind you over and over again that your world is not THE world.

You don’t have to wait until 65 to retire.  You can retire from your past life and start a new one every 7 years or so.  Don’t commit the sin of getting stuck in the same routine.  That would be like living in Paris and having lunch every day in McDonalds.  Don’t pass on the stimulating resources of life.

What A Mountain Can Do For You?

I’m back to the starting point; back in South Florida, where everything started.

12871 miles and 583.49 gallons of gas later, I’m here to evaluate the products of my journey.

The first think that happens to you after a long trip like this is that you can’t see home the same way.  This place looks different.  It hasn’t change much, it was me who changed.

After traveling through the best and the worst of US, I have to admit that Pompano Beach is ghetto.  I walk with ease here just because I come from Central America, but for USA standards, South Florida is not one of the best places.

I saw that they are making pathetic robberies like grabbing your cell phone and running away.  That’s revolting.  It’s even better to have a gang of Colombians storming a bank with high caliber weapons.  For that you need to have two things: be organized and have ambition.  These criminals are just picking the wrong venue.  With two more ounces of brain they may get into politics and rob in an order of magnitude of thousands of times more, all while attending social events and been applauded in the red carpet.  But that you get with courage and organization.  The kid that runs frenetically with that purse will never get there because he is already thinking too small.

And you may tell me: well, the damage is small too.  No, it’s not.  A raving dog can be spot, vaccinated, trained, caged or ultimately killed.  Small bugs instead are everywhere and infest the whole place beyond repair.  If the mayor of Evergreen City makes headlines because he was caught cutting red tape for his fellow contractors, does that keep you from buying a house in there?  But if the windshields of the cars are constantly crashed by bandits looking to steal CDs in your neighborhood, can you sleep well?

The face value of the damage is not the only variable in the equation.   Big conglomerates of anything can be identified, controlled or eliminated; while small amounts spread as viruses and demand many times more resources in order to be controlled and eradicated.  The big fish can be articulated within the system and even contribute for a while.  The virus has nothing but the small goal of survive.

If you change the goals of a brave criminal, you get a brave entrepreneur.  That’s easier and more rewarding than trying to infuse ambition in a coward.  Even when the coward changes his ways, he lacks the drive to accomplish anything, no matter how noble the goal.

And that’s what mountains will do for you.  They will call the giant within.  They will filter the petty calculation that ties you to a salary.   This city is full of sickness: an endemic testosterone deficit.  Too many men giving too much and trembling for too little: “Yes sir, no sir…” what kind of man is that?  You give that level of submission on battle, no at the office.  If you are right, you are right and bleed all the way through.  If the corporation can’t share your principles you make the move; you convince others of your principles.  If still they don’t get it, go where others bright like you, or bright for your own. 

Oh, morality; you will find those questions in the road.  Just be sure to make it big. Don’t be like the petty teen that runs with the lady’s purse.  It’s never wrong when you win, just after you die and your enemies tell the story. 

Saint Augustine - The Joy of Created History

I’m finally back in Florida, but instead of driving all the way south I decided to stay a couple of days in Saint Augustine.  I visited this town a couple of years ago, so I was not expecting to be impress, but I was.  The place is even better, or maybe I’m carrying with me a new standard that makes me appreciate it that way.  The weather was the one you would expect in paradise.  Those narrow streets with colorful shops makes you feel like in a doll house.  And the dolls were walking around too.

Now, I don’t fall for the historic claims of the city.  Yes, it’s the oldest continuously populated settlement in the US from the time it was founded, but that doesn’t implies that you are going to find anything that old.  I mean, the place was burn to the ground by pirates… twice.  So when they point out things like “the oldest school in the country” what they really mean is the place where the oldest school has been rebuilt over and over again. 

But that’s ok.  This town had no the intention to be a touristic attraction when it was created and none of the buildings would survive anyway.  The last time I came, they were holding one single store house with the original material and the place was clearly collapsing.  This time I saw construction workers putting it together again and replacing 80% of the material.  After all, history is our present fantasy of the past.

In “Castillo de San Marcos”, a really impressive fortress, they have actors in Spaniard uniforms making tours and demos on how the artillery was used.  They try to mimic Spanish, but you can’t understand a single world even if that is your first language.  It’s a nice caricature, but Spain tourists roll their eyes in indignation.

The scripts are written for kids and they try to portrait pirates as something very Disney and funny, no as the scum they really was.   Every time I visit a city surrounded by walls I just try to imagine the nightmare of having to go to bed without knowing if in the middle of the night a group of bandits will come alongside, stole your goods, kill your children, rape your wife and burn your house.  Certainly, lawyers are a drag, but I prefer that over the steel law that even now rules other countries.  I just think that by ignoring misery in the past we lost the opportunity to stimulate gratitude for the present.

If you have a chance to visit this fortress you will never regret it.  The second level has walls at the level of the hip, so it’s a matter of time for an idiot to fall and make the city ruin the architecture with plastic panels or any measure like that. So go now that it’s pristine.

Ok, but the fact that history is used to put up the show doesn’t diminish my experience, the same way that knowing the real name of the actors doesn’t ruin a movie.  The place glows at night, especially now with all the Christmas lights and the horses making rides in shiny carriages.  The alleys are so lovely that people in trolleys practically high-five those sitting in the bars along the street.  The beauty in architecture of the surrounding neighborhoods makes it worthy to walk every block from corner to corner.   

There is no place for “clubbing” and that’s a good thing because the atmosphere is more for dinning, walking and having drinks with live music.  I found a couple of lovely red-neck places where I spent the nights.  People always look at me strange when I get in, first when they notice my accent and second when I order vodka instead of beer.  But I always end up shaking hands and sharing interesting conversations.  I prefer to target old people, first because I always learn something and second because I don’t have to compete with annoying smart phones.  The last night I had a conversation with a 70 years old woman that lived a block away from the bar.  She seemed to be in the ideal retirement: a couple of hours from the house of her daughter, living in a nice safe neighborhood and making new friends every day.  The muscles in her face seemed to default smiling, even when relaxed.

The hostel I used was ok, but I got a rash for bedbugs.  This thing of hostels has its charm, but after a while you can grow tired of the drawbacks.  It’s lovely to wake up surrounded by twenty years old European girls in pink t-shirts, but you may also get a group of snoring bikers.

The good thing is that our minds work like history:  over time I’ll start to forget the struggle and I’ll gradually romanticize the beautiful details.  At the end we end up with memories of very little factual value but huge entertainment weight.

Savannah

Last Tuesday I arrived to Savannah, Georgia.  You never hear about this place but I was curious to step down since one of the road trip books I checked was recommending it as the most beautiful city in the US.  The editor was quoting a European source and once I drove in I understood immediately why.  Savannah is old, but not artificially old as other tourist destinations.  The neighborhoods are authentically in disarray since the 18^th century.  But the level of disarray is just enough to make the view romantic.  There are people having real lives into those two store Victorian homes with balconies cover by vines. 

The hotel I picked looked as an abandoned house.  I got closer, looking for the “no trespassing” sign and opened a thin wood door leaf.  In the other side there was an office in place of the original living room.   A shy guy with shifting personality told me to come back at office hours (twenty minutes later).  I wanted to see that house from inside, so I came back and he showed me upstairs.  Inside it looks like another place, perfectly well maintained and with this characteristic smell of old wood that transports you on time.  All the secretive doors and cabinets were there.  There was a cover fireplace, high closets embedded into the walls and a door to a creepy dark attic.  I loved it.  I was the only one asking for a room that night, so the whole place was mine.

The rooms are separated by glass windows and just darkness can be seen in the other side.  The rooms are secured with big metallic keys, so heavy that they can be used as weapons.  You need to close two windows before going to the restroom, one of them facing an old white bathtub.  To complement all this, a dark fluffy cat was walking through the cornices and glazing inside now and then.

I stood there two nights but unfortunately I didn’t see any old lady holding a candle or something like that.  All the creepiness belonged to this world.

The downtown itself is full of small impractical parks, some of them with the remains of political figures underground.  It was very usual to fertilize public parks with the flesh of municipal celebrities.  Again, the disarray is just enough to make the place interesting.  The trees where people were hanged are still there to tell the story; but those killed by law and no for the law were left to rot for several days and then tossed away.  That was the fate of an Irish immigrant woman.  Her sentence was postponed eight months to allow her to deliver a baby.  She was with child when she assassinated her master by drowning.

I also visited the Bonaventure cemetery, and it’s lovely.  Crypts dated at the mid 18^th century completely abandoned, eroded and gray, with terrifying virgins rolling their eyes to the heavens covered by a thick layer of smog.  A paradise for photographers.

But Savannah is more than an American Transylvania.  The River Side offers a mile of bars, restaurants and candy shops in front of a rocky street that nevertheless is open for regular traffic, but you have to be carefully in this speed reducer road.   The brick buildings follow the standard of old looking alleys, and intentionally unattended painting.

I loved the place.  Definitely I plan to come back, maybe after passing away.  Ghosts must have such fun scaring people at night and spying showers in the morning.

Small towns

On this trip I had to stop in several small towns just because it was getting dark.  Some of those places are so isolated and boring that I don’t even mention them.  Like Mount Airy, North Carolina.   That was the town were Andy Griffith was born, so there is a road with his name and even a museum of memorabilia.  But nothing else ever happened there.  For me it was too much rurality. 

Before that I ended in Charlottesville, Virginia, after tossing a coin at the end of Skyline drive.  That place has a perfect balance between rural landscapes and city facilities.  The University of Virginia is there and I always love what colleges do to the city plan.  Open spaces, plenty of walking friendly miles and just enough commerce.

 

I also visited Monticello, the iconic house of Thomas Jefferson that appears in the nickel coins.  The place is certainly a peaceful spot on Earth, and Jefferson made the best of it by architecting and designing his own home.  You can tell he may have done better with a second chance, but is admirable taking into account this was just a hobby.  He inherited this land and bought much more acres directly from the crown of England, including the land where the Natural Bridge is located.

 

It’s also remarkable how many slaves lived in Monticello.  Only two were granted freedom, and that was because they were sons of Jefferson himself.  That may sound standard for the times but this comes from the man who printed the phrase “all man are created equal” in the declaration of independence. 

History, where it actually exists, is certainly enlightening.

Even three miles from Monticello, the Court Square is so beautiful, simple and peaceful that just sitting down in a bench is a relaxing experience.  I’ve never seen the light falling as it does in Virginia.  There are places that just have an indescribable atmosphere that invites thoughts and this small town has it.  The little boulevard on Main Street will give you that dinning and walk experience, not as hectic as a city but not as boring as a town.   Jefferson knew it better, and that is why he’s still resting his back in this place.  

Atlanta

I spent a couple of nights in a solitary hostel in downtown Atlanta.  It’s a strange city with two mayor highways cutting it by the middle.  The distribution of businesses is odd too.  You may have to walk ten blocks of administrative buildings and vacant lots to find a single convenient store.   But the driving is not a nightmare as in other cities.  I actually parked for free in front of my room.  Locals complain about how unfriendly the city is for walkers.  But it’s possible to walk, even with the homeless infestation; it’s not as bad as in the West.  The problem is that the walking is not that appealing unless you go to the suburbs or the Martin Luther King Jr. memorial.

The most fascinating thing of the city turned out to be a couple of acquaintances I made in the hostel.  One was a brilliant TV producer, book writer and human rights advocate that were alternating residences between Washington DC and Atlanta.  After a brief introduction in the hostel living room we got involved into an interesting conversation about socio-politics that extended up to one in the morning.  We stopped because a lady upstairs complained about the noise.  This guy has an almost encyclopedic knowledge on every topic he engages, and quickly I resolved to make questions instead of arguments, since I was getting beaten.  The fact of having to do actual research for journalistic work gave him the proficiency of a History professor.  I checked one of his books and he has reasons to suspect the FBI is not very happy with his inquiries.

The other character was actually the manager of the hostel, a Jewish-American that claimed to have had a Nazi armband stained with the very blood of Adolf Hitler.  The whole story was fascinating, and he claims to have been burglarized by neo-Nazis in quest for the item.  He actually changed his name as per his own account.  I have no way to know if that’s real or fiction, but how many times you have a guy across the table telling such stories without drinks?

Those two characters and the attractive mature redhead upstairs where the only humans in the building; a Victorian wood house one hundred fifty years old that cracked at every step.   You have no idea what conversations are taking place in the air if your only source of information is Internet.

So, close this page and go to your local bar.  Find a veteran, a journalist, a holocaust survivor descendant, a priest reject...  You may buy or not their stories, that’s not the point.  It’s not a quest for information, it's a search for stimulating human stories.