The Rejects Museum (14 days until departure)

The next logical step was to begin informing others of my scheme to skip town and head across the pond for a spell. For their part, my friends and family were supportive if not somewhat confused about the motivations.

"Oh, really?" my mother had said to me when told what I was planning. "Isn't that something."

She was nodding her head the way you might nod to a homeless man at the gas station who takes a break from screaming at the light pole to inform you he was once the president of Tarjickistan.

"I think so," I said.

"So, what are you going for?"

"Just to travel around I guess."

"I mean, what do you want to do when you're there?"

"I just want to see things. Experience something different. Just figure it out as I go really."

"Oh, I see. Well, what do you need to figure out? What are you looking for? When was the last time you went to church?"

"No, Just figure out the details of the trip as I go is all. Not me as a person. Well, maybe to figure out something about myself as well I suppose."

"You're haven't been going to church have you?"

Each person I told's initial interest in the trip itself was nearly always bookended with another question. They wanted to know with whom I would be braving this endeavor.

When I said no one, I was met universally with the kind of look a person gives when they have farted at work, but suspect they may have shit their pants a bit.

It was difficult for them understand or possibly imagine themselves striking out in an unknown country where they could not speak the language and did not know where to get their morning coffee without someone alongside to blame the whole jumbled mess on.

I do not pass along their dismay as a point of pride in my own bravery. Quite the opposite. Instead of feeling like Bear Grylls ready to pee on my shirt and wear it as a hat should the situation arise, I began to wonder if I wasn't more like Mr. Bean foolishly floundering in the deep end of natural selection.

Was their worry for me traveling alone just a thoughtful concern or was I in for legitimate danger? I wouldn't really know until I went.

The other avenue this conversation usually traveled was that of suggestion. Everyone had some place in Europe they have planned to journey to since they saw it on the Travel Channel in college while taking a break from assembling their mail-order futon and somehow me stopping over there would help alleviate their own pang of wanderlust.

"What parts?" my friend Dave asked when he learned of my trip.

"I'm going to start in Ireland and then bounce around the U.K. a bit. After that, I'm not so sure," I said.

"But, like, where else?"

"Oh, like I said I don't know really. Paris I'd imagine. Then maybe pull out the map and see what train's headed where and what I feel like."

"Aw man, you know where you should go? Fucking Amsterdam, man. You should go to fucking Amsterdam."

"Yeah I heard the Rijksmuseum is worth the trip itself."

"What's the Rejectsmuseum?"

"The Rijksmuseum. It's the Dutch national museum. It's in Amsterdam. The Night Watch is kept there and also some paintings by Rembrandt and a couple by..."

"No, no, no. That's not why I said you should go to Amsterdam. You should..."

"Yeah Dave, I got it. I know that's not why you suggested it. Somewhere between the Grateful Dead sticker on the back of your van and your love of frisbee, I could venture the intent behind your pitch for Amsterdam was more due to it's looser legal interests."

"Oh. Uh, yeah," Dave responded, apparently studying some point beyond the wall on the far side of the room. "I think that's what I meant."

A typical "coffee shop" in Amsterdam. A place Dave might never leave
if he happened ever make it the the Netherlands.

The other thing I would have to consider would be what to bring along. My recent alarm at traveling solo caused me to consider first which weapons I thought could most easily be smuggled through airport security. After I briefly pondered the legal ramifications of mailing myself a machete to retrieve when I arrived in Ireland, I decided to take my chances unarmed.

Because I don't like lists and the people who create them to explain things, I'll be brief but paragraphic.

I settled on taking a mid-sized GoLite hiking pack that weighed just over two pounds, about three days worth of clothes (breathable hiking shirts and pants), a couple of guidebooks, a map, a nifty travel towel that could be wrung dry each day with ease or so the delightful traveler on the packaging made it appear, a camera, flip-flops, three empty composition journals, a passport, a travel wallet that can be looped through a belt and flipped inside your pants to prevent pick-pocketing (something that was apparently a more prevalent danger in Europe than quicksand was in Saturday morning cartoons), sunglasses, a rain jacket, a credit card, and assorted toiletries.

I write that to write this - there was simply no room for the machete.

So I Booked My Trip ... Now What?

Dublin seemed like a fine starting point. I guess it would have to be since I'd booked the ticket already and had not bothered myself with mundane considerations like where I would be landing, if this was in any sense a logical starting point, or was this country currently being ripped apart by civil war?

Dublin would have to be fine because there was no way to change my flight itinerary now, not without further cost. I was Irish after all. 

Or someone on my mother's side of the family was Irish. Their surname was Mullins which supposedly came from McMullin or McMullen or McSomethingIrishSounding, no one elderly enough to trust in my family is really very certain. 

We had definitely always said we were Irish, though. Or maybe we just thought we were. The more I thought about it, my great aunt Jean partook a bit too often of a particular Irish creme whiskey in her morning coffee and we had often joked she was Irish. Perhaps this was the extent of my Irish family roots - a little extra libation in Aunt Jeannie's morning brew. My Irish heritage being of indeterminate validity, I was going to set off undaunted on my great European backpacking adventure using my potential motherland as a launching pad.

The next decision after Dublin was, "Where to after that?" And that quickly brought me to another, more important question, "Do I really want to know?"

I scanned a map of the continent and began to get my first understanding as to the scale of the undertaking laid out before me. 

From Dublin I had a very general idea that I'd like to see Scotland. This was based mostly on my love of kilts, bagpipes, and the movie Braveheart. Besides, it was right next door to Ireland. At least on the map they seemed very close. I also wanted to spend time in London of course. (London, like Paris and Rome, were cities that seemed to include themselves on any European adventurers itenarary. To skip one of them would be akin to vacationing in New York City and neglecting to visit Manhattan). 

From there I could jump to the mainland. Perhaps Paris or Amsterdam. This might not be so difficult after all, I thought. I had already loosely planned the first couple weeks of my journey.

From there, however, I came to realize that no logical order exists. Europe is an amalgamation of countries, districts, and provinces. Some were flattened by war 70 years ago. Others were destroyed by war centuries ago. Some towns have changed allegiances some seven times since the Roman Empire. There are plenty of big cities to see, but shouldn't I try to experience the culture of a quaint European village tucked somewhere away from skyscrapers and taxis and wifi as well? 

A traveler could stay in Paris and then take side trips to the countryside perhaps. How long would I want to stay in Paris? Two days? A week? How could I know if I'd never been. 

And what of Amsterdam? I felt like this was a place where my plans might not matter as much after a couple days. What I needed was some flexibility. I hopped on the Eurail website and after a bit of wandering discovered a train pass that I thought might be the answer. For a fee I could purchase a pass that could be used as much or as little as I would like. I could plop down in some Western European hamlet and stay for a week or just for lunch. There was no limit the range and frequency at which I could travel. I was buzzing thinking of the potential of it all.

To me this idea of jumping on a train in some foggy station just after breakfast and rolling on to the next mysterious and yet to be determined destination seemed irresistable. It barked of adventure, spontaneity, and perhaps most paramount - an excuse not to plan. This always tantalized my lazier nature.

So Dublin would be my starting point, I would see a bit of the United Kingdom and then I could throw darts if I so chose.

A small point of information here for the traveler on a budget: the comfort and affability of a universal train pass  is not lost on the folks who price these sorts of things. I found rather quickly that it is costly to decide your travel plans off-the-cuff.

The Genesis

Somewhere I read once the most precarious balancing act humans perform is between the need for companionship and community and the nearly overwhelming desire to pack a bag full of your shit, cancel your cable, and blow town with no plan for return.

That may not have been the exact language I conceed, but the basic idea stayed with me. It helped make sense of the pull I've always felt to abandon the "normal" life. The 40-hours-a-week-at-the-office life. The mortgage and dog and nice silverware and sarcastic-but-cute-doormat life. I believed these things were important and everyone else seemed to agree, or else why would they be working so damned hard for them? 

In my spare time I would read about other people taking on great adventures hiking across whole continents, sailing around the world alone, and bushwhacking their way through the South American rainforest to discover lost civilizations. 

I wanted to be there. I wanted to work the ropes of a swift sailboat as it wrapped around the Cape of Good Hope with saltwater spraying my face. I wanted to beat my way through the vines and bushes, machete in hand while wearing a hat you might find laying around the wardrobe trailer of an Indiana Jones set. I wanted not to die though. This was crucial. I also hate mosquitos in the way a chubby children tend to hate pool parties and would like to avoid any undue contact with those miniature disease-carrying vampires, so maybe the rainforest was out. 

Probably the sailing, too. I discovered my propensity for seasickness during a poorly thought out deep sea fishing trip in Florida when I was 12. My significantly younger sister caught two grouper and a flounder while I shared our hotel's continental breakfast with the rest of the ocean.

My urge to skip town was undaunted, however. The desire never subsided and at some point it should have, right? That's what I began to ask myself as I turned 30. What I once considered youthful restlessness had grown into an unfulfilled ambition. 

It was a new idea that finally moved me to action. I happened upon it one morning while rolling my trash bin down to the street while simultaneously attempting to shove an empty pizza box deep enough inside so that I might close the lid and keep my neighbors from obtaining visual evidence of my poor eating habits. 

The thought which finally spurred me to pack a bag and head off to points yet to be determined was simply the realization that I would always feel like this. If I didn't do something to quench this need for adventure, this longing for a journey, then one day it would morph into an old man's regret.

I could either spend my life burning the roof of my mouth with ambitiously microwaved pizza bites while reading of other people's adventures, or I could go on one of my own. 

So I did.

It is of course not that simple. There was a trifle more to do as I would find out soon enough, but that remains the hardest decision I had to make - the decision to do something.

I had been saving money for years like any God-fearing Methodist worth his seersucker Easter pants should. I wasn't quite sure what it was for though. I think that was the point actually. It's why everyone I knew saved their money - just in case. For emergencies I'd assumed. I began to view these funds as potential bail money as that had been their frequent purpose in my college years. Not just for me mind you, but also for friends who had overestimated their ability to violate the law undetected. 

I was working at a 50-hour-a-week job, making less money than I thought I deserved, and putting a noticeable portion of that money into a savings account for no pressing reason. Now I had my reason and more importantly no one of significance required my help in meeting their financial responsibilities to the court. 

The only important question left was where to go, but this answer came easy enough. I knew I wouldn't cut it in the wilderness for longer than a bottle of bug spray might last and the type of adventure I was looking for wasn't a plunge into the middle of nowhere anyway. I wanted to experience intriguing  cultures, meet strange people, and, perhaps most paramount, drink new beers. A person could find no more variety in these ventures than in Europe, I reasoned. 

A quick search for flights to some of the continent's major airports during my lunch break that day revealed the cost for such adventure, or at least part of it. It was a Wednesday afternoon. I know this because Wednesdays where I worked were referred to as "Well-dressed Wednesdays" and we were encouraged to dress in the kind of clothes that get your cheek pinched by your grandmother when you arrive for Thanksgiving dinner. I always felt a bit of guilt for not participating and it was just as I was overcoming this weekly failing that I began my hunt for a plane ticket. 

The search results showed a flight from my hometown of Memphis to Dublin, Ireland by way of Chicago to be most affordable. A few minutes and several attempts at correctly entering my credit card information later and I had booked a ticket for just under $1,000. 

I took a sip of a stale highly-caffenated beverage, leaned back in my chair, and in impeccable harmony, gave way to panic attack.