Embrace the Suck

A butterfly flaps its wings in New York and causes a hurricane in China. You’ve probably heard of The Butterfly Effect and the various exaggerated examples of its power. I’m sure you’ve taken them with a pinch of salt too.

The closer you look at your own life however, the more you can trace it back to some seemingly insignificant moment that started you down this specific branch of the myriad of ways in which your life might have gone.

In Sacramento with the rain driving down, walking amidst the characterless concrete surrounding the Greyhound station, I wonder. Can any good come of tracing things back like this? Will it simply make you obsess over your “poor life choices” as my friend from the bus station limbo puts it? Or can it be seen both ways – a catalyst for the good, bad and just plain unexpected? Things that might be considered the real, but less glamorous adventure.

As Benji goes “full hobo” and climbs in to his sleeping bag on the cold station floor he turns and reminds me of a motto he learnt serving in the armed forces. “Embrace the suck man. Embrace the suck.” He laughs.

The Suck

Attributed to what I have termed my occasional “common sense blackouts” there was about 15 seconds in which I flapped those dreaded cotton wings and formed a hurricane in the path of my future. Perhaps through believing we’d entered a digital era, or perhaps just sheer dumb absent-mindedness, I removed my driver’s licence from my wallet thinking “I wont need it, I’ll probably just lose it”.

Despite my good friend posting it out to me in Vancouver, fate it seemed had other plans for me. As I left for Seattle on the bus I learnt my licence was stuck in a depot in Richmond due to unclear postal bloopers. It might eventually make it back to the UK. I didn’t care at this point. I had food poisoning, the start of a chest infection and my travel buddy had left. I’d never felt so alone.

A chain of events had been set in motion that would see me give up my dream of seeing Mount St Helens and Cannon Beach, fall off a bike in Portland, break my camera, pay for a room I would have no chance of staying in and taking the worst bus journey of my life.

Two hours delay in departing and fourteen to Sacramento. As I write this the announcer brings news of snow, making our forecast lay over another six hours before we get the final three hour leg of our journey. In less time than this one bus journey I’d flown half way around the globe.

That’s plenty of time it turns out, to completely re-type this post after what seemed like an inevitable power cut and then as the power came back on a blue screen of death !

The Wake

Clearly, there were large tides of suck flowing in to my life. The moment I realised I’d booked the wrong accommodation back in Portland for example. About to tuck in to a bacon and blue cheese burger in the stylish Kelly’s Olympian, one such wave crashed over my thoughts creating an awful inception, ruining my lunch.

“Maybe I’m just a loser?” I thought. In truth this thought had bubbled up a few times in recent years. Underachievement, bad luck, mistakes and mishaps. In spite of all my gifts things would often not work out in one way or another. Could some people end up losing while others inexplicably land on their feet? Was I the unfortunate balance to the off-tilt scales of fate?

I know I can be very focused on the negative sometimes. This could just all be part of my own neurosis. So I forced myself to find the positive things that had arrived in the wake of these waves of suck. That’s when I started to realise that as much good had found its way into my path as bad. Some that I would never have seen on my original trajectory, some simply made better by the relative suck of the previous days. How many could I name I wonder?

Off the Itinerary

At least two places I loved were a direct result of my karmic debt being collected in full the day I left Japan. I’d had no travel mishaps so far so when the last Gyoza hit my stomach and the cramps begun I knew it was going to be a tough time. It was so bad that even after two days of not doing a whole lot in Vancouver we decided to retreat to the mountains in Squamish and splash out on our own apartment with hot tub, cinema room and mountain views. Without my stomach bug I’d maybe have never seen Squamish or Whistler. I’d almost certainly have not enjoyed a blissful Netflix and hot tub regime!

When I realised my licence was not going to find me in Canada, I needed an alternate itinerary quick. Portland had never been on my radar since I had been thinking of wilderness and camping. But this city was so much fun for me I told at least four people I would move there one day. I hiked and ran, saw mountains, and humming birds, watched live music and my first ice hockey game. This place was full of life and without the suck, I likely would have driven right past it.

Off the Wall

Staying in cities for extended lengths of time makes you seek out things you might not normally look for. Thanksgiving dinner in the hostel in Seattle was just such a thing for me. A large plate of small talk to go with my side of turkey would usually be a definite no. Instead I went for it, found a girl who really needed a friend and sipped Naughty Nellie while praising the notion of “to have loved and lost”. We watched the happy faces of the Macy’s parade the following morning and found ourselves smiling too.

A museum could never normally be considered “off the wall”. But I had a good feeling about Seattle’s Pinball museum from the moment I stepped through the door to be meet the resident greeter Buddy the Golden Retriever. There I found machines from 30 or 40 years ago as well as two of my all time favourites, Fun House and Arabian Nights. Who knew for $15 I would be playing on machines worth $10,000 and upwards.

Off the Chart

It’s every traveller’s hope that their dreams are fulfilled by the places they travel. To feel that elation that where they are in the world is exactly where they want to be. Turns out that feeling gets amplified when you’ve had such a run of bad luck. In Sacramento, in the 5th hour of delay, during the first power cut, coughing uncontrollably I was suffering an off the chart low. Within an hour of that moment we’d escaped in our own rental car and were cruising out into view of the San Francisco skyline. The rain had given way to a glorious sunset, the concrete swapped for sea, sky and painted houses. We both instantly hit off the chart happiness. This place would be special, made all the more so because of the lingering suck.

Back in BC, I couldn’t really see a future for this trip. I imagined being sat in some smokey city on my birthday resenting the obstacles that had prevented me getting out to places like Yosemite. In Portland I’d watched a film about a man climbing all 3000 feet of El Capitan without ropes.

If only I’d remembered my licence, if only it hadn’t been lost in the post. If only a million other things that made me lose this goal like all the others.

It’s my birthday in a few hours so I bought myself a present. A tour to Yosemite. Something I know I’ll appreciate just a little bit more because of the totally unplanned way it has come about.