Last night (and by "last night" I mean Wednesday, December 17th) I met up with my friend Jason for some black-and-tans and travel talk. Jason did a solo cross-country trip earlier this year and is a much better blogger than I am (start on this page and go from there), as well as an old friend who I don't see often. So we needed to talk.
Over beers at the Wheeltapper Pub near Grand Central, we covered quite a bit of ground. Jay supplied a recommended pre-trip reading list (I'll edit this post with the titles and URLs when I get home). We talked strategy. Discussed dealing with the inevitable bouts of loneliness on a long solo trip and his experience with the remarkable friendliness and openness of strangers on the road. His recommendation to try to avoid getting too many hours away from a city or a friend in case you just need to be around people at some point. Talked about the challenge of striking a balance between living and experiencing the trip while finding time to document it in a blog. Went over the must-see destinations, the importance of leaving plenty of time to take in the miscellaneous and the local en route from one featured stop to the next. The necessity of staying flexible and accommodating all of the unexpected. His finding (and that of the long-distance motorcyclists he met along the way) that people are especially fascinated by bikes with license plates from several states away and get really curious to know what they're doing and where they're going.
The topic of our discussion that I've spent the most time tossing around in my head is that of Couch Surfing (not sure if it's truly a Proper Noun or not). CouchSurfing.com is a website that brings travelers and couches together. Registered members of the site act as both hosts and guests. When you're at home, you open your home to travelers needing a place to stay when they pass through your town. In exchange, other members provide you with a place to crash when you're in their area. This form of social networking has been catching on over the last couple of years and has created a bit of a media buzz. The New York Times, which we know has impeccable judgment when it comes to identifying What the People Want to Know About, did a nice (if inferior to the one about me) article on Couch Surfing way back in 2007.
As you probably know, I love camping. But "camping" and "sleeping on the ground" are not quite the same thing. To me, camping means building the biggest, hottest fire that particular campground has ever seen; sitting around drinking beer with my friends; trying to get close enough to the inferno that we can put food on it without burning ourselves; drinking more beer while eating better food than I make at home; eventually moving on to some whiskey, a cigar, and drunken discussion of work, women, and whether nearby trees are at risk for fire damage; an even drunker review of overly ambitious life goals that we'll never achieve; and then passing out in a tent to sleep on the ground. On the other hand, sleeping on the ground is just not having a bed. Like a homeless person.
So, I'm toying with the idea of joining the Couch Surfing community. I will have friends and family to stay with along both coasts, but not too many in between. I like the idea of being able to find a spare bed in a friendly stranger's home if I'm sick of sleeping on the ground. In order to open up that possibility, I'd have to do some hosting in the meantime to get some good feedback, build up a little reputation equity. Put something into the Surfing community in order to get something back from it.
The idea of letting a stranger sleep at my joint is becoming less weird to me as I spend more time thinking about it. I usually like to meet new people, especially if they're interesting and if it's on my turf. Most meetings with Couch Surfers would meet these criteria. And I like to have people over to my place, give 'em a drink, make 'em something to eat, show 'em around Park Slope a little bit. So I am weighing all of that plus the expected benefit of less nights sleeping on the ground in 2010 against my territorialism and my distaste for douchebags, especially dirty ones (I would have had no problem with dirty hippies sleeping on my nasty old futon but am more protective of my seven month old grown-up sofa; hopefully Couch Surfers aren't offended when hosts put a sheet over the sofa before letting them go to bed).
Since one of the goals of the trip is to broaden my horizons/try new things/live more freely/expand my comfort zone (that might be four goals), I'll probably end up going for it. If the first guest sucks, I'll chalk it up to bad luck and try again. If the second guest also sucks, I'll chalk it up to Couch Surfing not being my thing and hope that my two hostings land me a night or two of lodging (and that that doesn't suck also). If I host someone and find that it's fun, then that'll be gravy.
Finally: You're right: I should have a picture of "Not My Best Ride" and I apologize for not having one. I did have my camera with me that day. At the time of the breakdown, I felt like the cops were already doing enough for me and that they'd think I was an even bigger and more annoying retard if I asked them to stop while I put down my kickstand in the middle of the right lane and walked away from the bike to get a photo of their car with my bike in front of it. Now that some time has passed, I know (hope) that I'll never see them again and it doesn't matter if they remember me as a retard or a huge retard; I just wish I had a picture from that day.
Going forward, I will try to be more shameless.
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1 comment:
Thanks for the digital ink. I do take issue with one fact, but it would be lame to belabor it. I am not a better blogger than you. There I said it. I will, however, take the embellished complement to inspire additional effort as I undertake a new project- outfitting the coolest brownstone apartment in the Slope.
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