On the Road

Recently I refinanced my home for 15 years, but plan to pay it off in 10 to 12. Mapping that scenario, I began considering whether to stay in my Hollywood Bungalow living this rerun. I mean, in 10-12 years “fiddy” will be a decade in the rear view mirror.

Lately I’ve been joking that if John McCain gets elected, I’m moving to France. That’s silly of course, especially since I’ve never been there, even though Paris and Normandy have been on the “I’d like to” list for years

While no world traveler, I lived in Tucson, Arizona during college and briefly in LA after that. I’ve driven cross country several times and have been to many great American cities including the Big Apple, Chicago, Miami, San Diego, San Francisco, Seattle and of course, Cleveland. My international travels are pretty limited, but luckily more than many including London, Los Cabos in Mexico, and Vancouver, Toronto, Montreal and Quebec City in Canada.

I’ve wanted to visit Australia ever since I heard Angus Young bang a guitar chord and now have friends who live there. The France thing is still high on the list and often when mentioning it’s mainly for the art, I hear, “Go to Rome.”

So what’s stopping me?

“Happiness is only real when shared.” That’s what Christopher McCandless (Emile Hirsch) painfully scribbled onto the white pages of his journal toward the end of “Into the Wild,” and is the irony of the film. This engrossing work by Sean Penn is based on the Jon Krakauer novel and chronicles one young mans road trip from privilege that begins with compelling images of severed credit cards, a $24,000 life savings check sent to a charity, and a pyre of cash and a Social Security card. His destination was Alaska, and “Into the Wild,” but his journey there and the people he meets along the way become a compressed microcosm of a life lived. It’s not a perfect movie, but beautiful cinematography and great renditions by Mr. Hirsch and especially Hal Holbrook kept my interest. Mr. Holbrook plays Ron Franz, a veteran and widower whose brief time with McCandless allowed him experience a fatherhood previously denied by a drunk driver. The screenplay written by Mr. Penn also has it’s moments including, “Some people feel like they don’t deserve love. They walk away quietly into empty spaces, trying to close the gaps of the past.” Yeah. Check it out.

I’m consciously not burning cash these days, and the thought of eating squirrel and gutting moose, while a sound weigh-loss strategy, remains unappealing. The recent newsworthy deaths of Tim Russert and Tony Snow in their 50’s got my attention, and I sure don’t want to hit the final check-out line thinking, “I never saw the Louvre.” Actually, maybe creating art is a more worthy pursuit… I don’t know, but I’ve reached a point where I’m searching for that “something else.” Something that’s truly a passion and pushes me out the pod bay doors and into a beautiful, unexplored new.

“The core of mans’ spirit comes from new experiences.”
Christopher McCandless in “Into the Wild”