Amtrak’s Pacific Surfliner leaves San Diego central heading north at precisely 6:00 am. It’s New Years day and half of the passengers are heading for the Rose Bowl game in Pasadena. We speed along the suburb laden shoreline enroute to LA where I transfer to the train that will deliver me 36 hours later to Seattle. It’s fast, efficient and a great way to see southern California at dawn and on this day to learn the betting odds for Penn State versus USC at the Rose Bowl. North of Santa Barbara the track hugs the wild California coast through a roadless section featuring a colourful visual palate of the invasive ice plant and range wildlife including coyotes, vultures, and deer. The aqua blue pacific mixed with the autumn colours of the ice plant, puffy white clouds and endless sky makes for a memorable stretch of iron highway. I fall asleep somewhere south of San Francisco to an orange sunset and wake up to a snow storm in northern Oregon.
I am anticipating a warm welcome as the friendliest bus driver on earth delivers us to the Canadian border. The last off the bus I am also the last in line from our bus to be interviewed. All the others get whisked through with ease. When I answer that I went to Mexico for a holiday the customs agent quipped, “going by bus to Mexico doesn’t sound like much of a holiday.” I quickly assess that the true explanation wouldn’t wash - that I went by bus because I needed to stay connected to the earth and move on the ground in order to burn through some emotional baggage; baggage which had been obstacle to getting on with my life and which obstructed truly connecting with my inner authority. Yes, it’s fortunate that I held my tongue.
It is rather upsetting when a customs agent leafs through your diary at 12:30 am after you’ve been on bus, train and bus again for 4 days straight, you smell like an Amtrak toilet and your glasses are broken so everything which is normally double because you have double vision is now triple or quadruple. My mind is moving slow but I realize he suspects me of something when he squirts out my toothpaste, reads my hotel and bus receipts, looks at the pictures on my camera and puts his latex gloved hand into my spare socks. When he asks what my wife thinks of me going to Mexico without her by bus I am speechless, but to myself I recall her laughing when I proposed the trip. By the time I am given the OK to proceed my mouth feels as dry as the Baja in August. I feel my stomach turn over as we enter Vancouver. It’s not the graded snow piles heaped up against curb side cars that upsets me, it’s something to do with somebody I don’t know assuming I am being dishonest, that’s what really hurts. I’m so pathetically sensitive.
After a cold wait for the sky train then a bus to get to Kits, I am back in my apartment. Unlocking the door I hear Elizabeth from the bedroom say, “You’re home!,” and I feel warm and welcome. Over the next three days my body completes its cleanse with a full compliment of stomach ache, endless hiccups, diarrhea and other discharge. By the end of it I feel lighter.
What started out as a passing thought during lunch with colleagues in November 2008 turned into a transformational journey. You never know where your thoughts will take you unless you follow them.
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