The leaving

---

<!--StartFragment-->
The leaving was harder than I expected. It wasn't that I wasn't mentally prepared to go; it was that I was perhaps too prepared. It had taken over a year and four months to deconstruct my life and save enough money that I believed would sustain me over a period of 2 to 3 years of being on the road. This I did, after renting out two of the homes I owned freeing me from no longer having to pay the mortgages then committed myself, with the help of friends and family, to a year and a few months of couch surfing. This endeavor, I must add, although an unimaginable feat to most, was much easier than I expected. And why shouldn't it have been. I had back-packed around the world once before for two years, randomly floating from hostels to pensions to bungalows, to the homes of others and even the streets on a few occasions. I just saw my circumstances as such: I was already traveling; only I was traveling in Los Angeles with a job, trying to save as much as I could from every paycheck. So, little by little and one step at a time, I scratched off my list any and all attachments, commitments, bills and material items that kept me bound. I'm not saying that I will never come back to Los Angeles some day and pick up where I left off, but in the leaving I knew I had to burn it all down, go and not look back as if I was never coming back. That way, I believed, would be the only way I would be able to experience the world freely without the ties of my former life hanging over me. I also sought to make this journey much different than the first. The first trip was by default a journey of a young man going out into the world to further find oneself by adding the building blocks of knowledge and awareness that could only come about through exposure. But I was 23 back then. Now I'm 50. It is my desire this time around to apply all that I've come to know with an observance and awareness that could have only come about later in life. But in the closing weeks before my departure, Nov 30 2011, I was emotionally overwhelmed. I still had much to do and focus on which was mixed with the, precious time constraint, desire of saying all my goodbyes. Trust me when I say, sincerely, that no man is luckier, more appreciative or more grateful than I, to have so many wonderful friends and family whom were always there for me during this transition. With so much going on, I felt like a groom just days before the big wedding. After months and months of planning I had come to the point that I just needed to get on that plane and get it over with, to get this trip started.
<!--EndFragment-->

---