The Road Home (via Kerouac's 'White City')

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After arriving in Sydney I embarked on a mad two weeks of running around bars with Jonas getting drunk and high and looking for girls. By day we slept in the van we were despondently trying to sell. There were long stints without showers or clean clothes and we fed ourselves in the style of Remi Bonceur by “reducing our costs of living”. We parked on one street in Kings Cross with a handful of other hopefuls looking to offload their beaten hunks of rust where we very quickly got to know our neighbours – the corner shop owner who we went and had morning conversations with, some of the other backpackers and a wizened old dutch lady who shuffled up and down the road in the morning and evenings stretching her little poodle's legs while her green and yellow parakeet perched on her shoulder (you can stroke the dog but the bird bites, she told us). Time flew and it was good to be back at Jonas' side and going along for the mad ride that is everything he does. We were shameless and cared not one cent what anyone within smelling distance thought of us. For the sake of censorship I've decided not to go into great length over the events of those two weeks (I don't want to get Jonas into any trouble), but needless to say a lot of fun was had and we even ended up selling the van, albeit for a token $300. Jonas is among the best friends I've made during my travels, my Dean Moriarty, and although he can be difficult to get along with (he's so damn opinionated and stubborn, and there are few worse combinations!) we had a great time together and apart from one argument (the one where we argued about the definition of arguing) I will always remember the laughs. And although he'd be loathe to admit it, I KNOW he enjoyed our time together too, because I followed him, I wasn't afraid to be a bum like him and join him in his stinking pit of hobo shamelessness. We said goodbye on the road to the highway, he was hitching to Melbourne while I had to stay a couple more days in Sydney before my flight to Auckland. Now my luck over the last year, as I've mentioned in previous posts, has been nothing short of spectacular and I guess I knew that at some point it was going to have to turn. I walked to a hostel, checked in and fell asleep almost straight away with my laptop and iPod laying next to me on my bed playing music. I really regret this. I should have just fallen asleep with my iPod rather than my laptop. The cut of it is that whilst I slept someone broke into the room and stole a bunch of stuff including my laptop and iPod. They weren't particularly valuable in themselves but the files on them were priceless. I lost 70GB of my favourite music, some photos and most importantly two years worth of writing which I was proud of – every significant thought or expression I'd had in the past two years was on that laptop. When the police arrived and showed no interest I refused to give my laptop up as lost as they seemed to and rang all the pawnbrokers in the city describing my laptop to them and asking them to contact me if they had anyone try and sell it to them. I also retraced the thief's steps back down the fire exit to see if there was a street camera where he would have come out onto he street. There wasn't. It took a couple of days to truly accept everything on there as lost. The first thing I did was buy a bunch of notepads and started re-writing what I could remember, but of course it was no good. I was going to have to start again.
A few days later I flew to Auckland and my run of bad luck continued as I arrived safely in Auckland but my luggage did not. I wasn't too affected by this, it was unfortunate but I'd already lost everything of value. I was staying with a girl called Talia from couch-surfing (a website community that brings travellers into contact with open minded people who offer their spare rooms or sofas as free accommodation), I had her address and just needed to get there. I enquired about buses but didn't want to pay the extortionate $40 so instead walked out of the airport to the main road and hitched. I got a ride almost immediately with a couple just back from a trip to Adelaide and they kindly drove me all the way to the front door. To continue my run of bad things happening to me, though this time it was self inflicted, I left my passport in their car along with some other important documents in a small (and easily forgettable) plastic bag. Luckily they'd invited me to dinner and given me their number but it still took an hour before I got hold of them. When I arrived at the house Talia was out but had left a plate of food to heat up and a kind note inviting me to make myself at home. I met her not long after and we sat down a while and talked. She was a very interesting girl with a bright curious mind, twenty-two, just out of university, and all plans and ideas for places to go. I enjoyed my two days at her house with her makeshift family of pets, South American home-stays, friends and family (mother and brother) but like always it wasn't long before I was saying goodbyes again and I was on my way to San Francisco. I hope for her she manages to get herself away from home a while so she can grow a little more and become who she's desperate to become. There's a whole other person in there bursting to express herself but, as with anyone sitting in their hometown, they have appearances to keep up.
The morning of my flight I got a call from the airport saying my bags had arrived. I collected them and checked them straight onto my flight to America. I drifted dreamily through customs and security and waited patiently for the plane to board. I had bought 'On The Road' just before I left Sydney and it was keeping me occupied in the airports. I didn't sleep on the flight to LA and by the time I'd waited for my connection to San Francisco and landed in the 'white city' I had been without sleep for thirty hours and was dog tired. I collected my bags from the carousel, found a chair in the arrivals and slept for three hours. When I woke there was a blur of people streaming past me and sounds of American twangs and Spanish all around me. I changed my money to the tune of $40 and headed into the city on the subway. I sat behind a New Yawker who tawked and tawked to a couple of newly arrived tourists who had at first enjoyed the novelty of speaking to a 'local' American on their arrival but were quickly wishing they had just kept quiet. I got off at Embarcadero. As I walked up the subway stairs out into the city I looked up and saw a tall green billboard pillar with "San Francisco" embossed across the top in shining gold letters. Under it, at the foot of the pillar, sat an old white hobo playing solemn saxophone blues. This was still Kerouac's San Francisco.
I spent just over two weeks in the city and saw near enough all of it. Each day I would walk and walk, falling more in love with it with every step. I would usually walk a couple of hours, then sit in a cafe or bakery and read with a coffee for an hour and then carry on walking. I wandered, without aim or purpose, through North Beach, Chinatown, Fisherman's Wharf, Embarcadero, Russian Hill, Haight, Mission, Fillmore and various other little corners of this beautiful tale of a city, stories and vivid characters on every corner. The streets, set on rolling hill after rolling hill, were lined with beautiful little bay-windowed Italianete houses. Every little neighbourhood had its own identity and everywhere had at least one good bar, one good bakery, one good thrift store and one good bookshop. I was in heaven. In the two weeks I spent most of my time staying with a couchsurfer called Marck Fernandez, an idealistic man on the verge of big travels and a man desperate to live "in the moment" as he often liked to say, in a suburb of Berkeley in the East Bay. The first weekend we drove down to LA together for a family party that never materialised but we visited Newport Beach and I met some of his family before driving back to the bay Sunday night. My last weekend I had festival tickets for Outside Lands in the Golden Gate Park where Muse, Arcade Fire, The Black Keys and Arctic Monkeys were playing, among many talented others. Marck was out of town and every hostel and cheap accommodation was booked out so I was back on the streets, although as it turned out I only had to sleep without a roof for one night (a cold cold Sunday night) after I met some people at the Shins set and stayed with them. The weekend was a good one, I saw all the bands I wanted to and the only downer was my glowing red face, an award sponsored by The Sun for my dedication to not move from a prime spot to see Arctic Monkeys, Black Keys and Muse on one stage over a five hour period. On Monday night I was back at Marck's and on Tuesday, the night before my flight home, I went for a few drinks with him, his parents, aunt and uncle. My first year of travelling was over, like Keruoac I stood staring over San Francisco and further West at nothing but ocean. The road was finished, there was nowhere to go but home.

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