Open wounds, glowing red. That sort of odd gelatinous hue where just enough skin has been milled away to expose…whatever comes next. Certainly enough to send an eight year old to see the school nurse, and enough to make a 48 year old question his life choices (or more immediately pressing, which socks will be most comfortable). Let’s not talk about my shins, which resemble a 12 year old David who mis-struck a pedal on his freewheel bmx bike while attempting a hastily made jump, only to have it shred his skin seemingly down to the bone (not really, but thats what it felt like for all of us, every single time). Lets not discuss my nipples, which are rubbed raw from the material that’s been pressed between me and another sweaty, voluptious, hearty 200+lb man.

Three days. I’ve been back on the mat for three days. Open mats on Friday and Saturday, and tonight, my first class in months. Between those sessions, my epidermis is more reminisicent of road kill. Three sessions. It don’t take much.

I try to think about how and why I allowed myself to go dormant in the winter months, managing to avoid doing almost anything productive for either my physical or mental health, practically in a state of suspense or hibernation. Eventually it all points back to my generally depressive state and the stranglehold it establishes during the winter months. Then I find myself locked in a death-grip relationship with my PS5 and the futon in my basement, almost as though I’ve regressed back to being a 17 year old David, longing to block out the world and the voices of self-doubt bellowing with reality-arrows of having few friends, zero love interests, being from a poor family at a rich kid school, only passing each semester because I had special athletic talent, and still processing my parents divorce. It don’t take much.

Re-entry is difficult in almost all circumstances. In my case it’s taken a few different recent episodes of self-awareness to get me back in the gym. Fortunately once there, other than a few “where have you beens?” from regulars I already had good rapport with, it was business as usual. I felt comfortable doing drills, my rolls (sparring) were all very positive considering the time I’ve had off. I rolled once with one of the coaches, the one I used to take private lessons with, to get some tips for my reentry and things I need to think about going forward to improve my game.

At the end of the session I walked through the parking lot and a guy from class flagged me down. He is a couple of belts higher than me and not someone I do more than shoot a nod to before and after class. We don’t really speak and I’ve always gotten the vibe that he doesn’t like me. He lets me know that I was cooking the other big guys tonight and that I need to get into the morning sessions, which have a reputation for having all of the really good, really aggressive super sized folks. I demur for a moment and say “yeah I dont think I’m tough enough” and he proceeds to give me an impromptu pep talk about how well I was doing and that I shouldn’t sell myself short. I left class on a high, thinking about how much I leave behind when I am not showing up regularly and how good this space, these people, and this activity is for me on a multitutde of levels and spheres. 90 minutes, three times per week, is less than 2% of my week, and it has such a massive, positive effect on the other 98% I’d be a fool to let depression in all its manifestations to intervene in that.

It don’t take much.

A year or so after starting with the company, one morning I was working in the frozen section and this guy who I’d worked with a lot and lived in my neighborhood was next to me stocking bags of frozen chicken and out of nowhere, he turns to me and says “you know, it would be really nice to be your friend but you wont let anyone be that.” He dropped his box of chicken and walked away. There I was, shell-shocked by a moment of revelation on the forever journey that is self-awareness.

I acknowledge I am a difficult person. If you’ve ever heard my podcast, read my blog(s) or just spent any time with me, I have things I am passionate about that I will expound upon mercilessly and much to the chagrin to whomever brought up said thing, but I absolutely abhor small talk. I have confidence that for better or worse, runs along the bleeding edge of arrogance regularly and is always tinged with nihilism. I am quickly dismissive of people or relationships with people that I don’t find satisfying, and I am perfectly comfortable if people treat me the same way. Well, most people. If it looks like I am analyzing something for weakness, rest assured I am. I can be cruel with words (and sometimes actions) to people I love. Topping this chart of unbeatable things that make me a totally fucked up person to spend significant time with, I have moderate grade depression and body dysmorphia.

I am not proud of any of it.

So on the first night at this year’s Camp when Corey said “I really feel like I had to win you over to be your friend” it felt like I was being boxed up in a time machine to 2008 working the frozen aisle with Kyle. It held up a funhouse-sized mirror to one of my notable character flaws contributing to my overall complications in this already complicated human experience. I am misanthropic by nature. I enjoy people, but from a third party perspective. I love their stories, I just don’t want to participate in them. The rare person that cuts through to that and gets to my core and makes me feel…I don’t fucking know “things” I guess, is either completely unfortunate to now have that designation, or has the potential to improve my life markedly or destroy it I guess because it’s so rare. Becareful with me.

As a result of being difficult, I don’t have a lot of friends. I will admit to having a socially-necessary job that I am exceptionally good at, but I have also spent months of my spare time in the winter tuning out chaotic noise of the outside world, addicted to a soccer video game and spending hours in my basement on a persistent nihilistic binge, disengaging from lots and lots of things I care about, including snowboarding and (less important to a massive degree) social relationships. Taking care of both my physical and mental health falls too far down the priorities ladder.

Camp is the kryptonite to the bad habits, behaviors, and shitty human being I can be when I have traveled too deep in my own head, which is unfortunately a lot of the time. Camp forces me into new relationships, creates new social dynamics for me that push me to be less of an asshole, not because I must be, but because I end up -wanting- to be. Every single year, Camp forces me to self-reflect, grow, and try to rectify those parts of my personality. Someone much smarter than I could probably do a better analysis of the social engineering aspect (copious amounts of wine probably helps) that creates this dynamic, but all these people – both the campers and the residents of Bear Valley – do the part of improving my life markedly.

I spent a couple of hours crying in my car today when I left Camp. There are a lot of reasons mixed in with this but I think the main one is that it’s the one place I have in my life where I am taken out of my comfortable zone of non-participatory social interaction and I am held upside down and shaken until some of those bad things fall out, I let my guard down a bit and for a brief glimpse of time, I feel like I have a shot at being a normal person with normal friends. Maybe even one that can do small talk.

Thanks Corey (and Kyle, wherever you are) and everyone else who contributed to my brief interlude of social happiness. Let’s hope the growth sticks.

Ronnie one of our very tough (in a more traditional human sense – typically all brown belts are tough) took me on a very hard roll (for me, anyway – a walk in the park for him no doubt) with three submissions in the round. He had some questions for me after though and wanted to show me two key things that helped me immensely:

• Pulling guard: I have been completely doing this wrong. I need to get my foot in the hip and pull to the same side grabbing the directly-across collar. Keep my other leg prepared to accept them into my guard, and the foot on the hip quickly to their back and pulling them in. I had been just grabbing people and pulling them down and hoping they’d naturally fall into my guard. Nope. I need to help them in and yank them into it, using the foot in the hip as the leverage point and the spin over.
• Scissor sweeps – I still need to improve these immensely but Ronnie was again teaching me how to pull my opponent into me, hard and deliberately, grabbing cross collar and then arm dragging across my body on their potential post arm, depending on which side I am sweeping. Thrust the hips up and go straight over without delay. Also – pushing the knee instead of sweeping laterally works as well.
• It occurred to me later on mount escapes that could be achieved with just one leg/thigh/knee combo to push someone up and off of me. I haven’t tried that yet.
• 2 on 1 (?) grip breaking. When opponent is grabbing the lapel, go for a sleeve grab on the same arm, but use your other arm to cup over the wrist and push it off. Keep the arm to pull it down and create an opportunity to go through the opponent for a take down.

Couple of key things I learned and am thinking about:

• Turning the leg to loosen/dismantle a de la riva hook. simple point and shift direction change.
• when stuck in de la riva, doing the turn and butt blast/slide down pass thing down the leg of the hook after turning around (must keep contact the entire time, must avoid losing contact. Melt into them. Constantly apply pressure.
• but if someone breaks YOUR de la riva by turning a 180, immediately get your other leg in between theirs and create double hooks and reach up to grab them.
• Reminder to keep my shoulders past their waist/hip line when breaking posture to get out of closed guard.

Notes on today:

When someone has a combination guard on that is half-spider, half something else, I must kill the spider guard first and get past it before I can worry about the lasso or whatever else is happening. Nothing will work unless I liberate my arm from that spider side. (Coach Evan)

New way to get out of half-guard – jamming my knee straight up, through, and sort of knee sliding through and tucking my hip around, like sliding into home plate in baseball, then hip-switching into getting into a position to take side control. (Mark)

Being cognisant of not trying to armbar the wrong way. (Jason)

“Your defense has improved so much” (Micah)

All in all… a good morning on the mats.

On the topic of your own body, I have spent nearly all of my 48 years feeling like I had been given a body that wasn’t symbiotic with my goals. I’m oversized in nearly every activity I love; skateboarding, snowboarding, surfing, running, soccer. The list goes on and on. Jiujitsu is the first thing I’ve done that has made me feel adequate with my body. Even embracing my size as beneficial to my journey and looking at it as a an asset and not a grotesque physical deformity has been a positive for my mental well-being.

I’ve signed up for my first tournament on October 12th. I will be doing all I can to prepare for it, and that will include invoking some interesting advice I got from someone on an internet forum that is not at all related to jiujitsu – write it down. write it all down. Start making physical notes on what went right, but mostly what went wrong in every session. Refer back to these and think about what I need to work on and where improvements can be made. I will be doing that and posting some of those thoughts here now.

The truth is, improvement is everywhere in Jiujitsu. At times it feels like a shell game, where just when you think you understand something, a slight hipshift, the scoop of an elbow, the burying of a head in your chest scuttles any idea you had instaneously and you’re beginning from ground zero. It is at once both the most humbling thing I’ve ever partaken in (especially as a guy that was good at pretty much every single traditional sport as a kid) and the most engaging and intriguing. You are improving, despite on some evenings feeling like all of the presented evidence is to the contrary. The journey and the growth and self-exploration that takes place is like a drug. Every session is another dose, keeping the flame lit until you can get to the next one.

I am spending the first few days of this week in San Francisco at at work conference that happens to deal with the very subject both local and national media can’t seem to get enough of whenever the City is introduced into a conversation – homelessness. To get to my hotel I had to get off of at 6th off of the 280, which essentially lays you down gently in the middle of the Theater District and then ushers you into the Tenderloin, which if you took the media at it’s word you would think represents the entire city of San Francisco instead of a neighborhood defined by a loose, informal boundary some gentleman in the late 19th Century decided upon based on something 3,000 miles away in New York City. Nonetheless, it is Ground Zero for all of the perceived problems in California at the moment; homelessness, mental health, drug use, etc.

As I rolled through the Tenderloin on Sunday night, windows down, lip syncing to some late 90s San Francisco-adjacent punk rock on the way to my hotel, I was struck by an immediate feeling of existential dread. Not fear, though frankly I would have not blamed anyone for that, but sensations of change, vulnerability, and hopelessness. Many of the media outlets have it spot-on – the Tenderloin looked like an apocalyptic hell-scape. Scantly clad people, just a touch more than skin and bones, walking around in a zombie-like trance. Unregulated drug and sex commerce happening, caustic and explosive arguments leading to inevitable violence. And this was over just a few blocks. In a City I spent plenty of time in in my early years, and have always held as a paragon of balance between what’s creative, interesting, exotic and some typical city grittiness, to see the Tenderloin (which frankly has always had its issues) in this condition was shocking.

The next morning during a damp run in the opposite direction of the Tenderloin, down to the Embarcadero with my friend and colleague Kevin, we discussed the conditions of the Tenderloin and how it devolved into it’s current state, harboring so much pain and despair. The truth is, we have allowed ourselves to become a place hyper focused on a bevvy things that are not necessarily for the benefit of society as a whole. It’s easy to cast stones at “tech bros” but they’re a small subset of a larger issue of laissez faire, let-the-eat-cake paradigm that permeates through to people who are simply exhausted by it all. By their own effort to stay alive and ahead, by society’s conditions, but the general stresses and anxiety of it all, the vast majority of people now fall into the category of being more or less satisfied, provided the problem is contained to a loose and informally bound neighborhood, and doesnt spill over into their own, perched high on one of San Francisco’s hills. It’s easy to look down on it all and say “it is a problem, but it isnt my problem.” The contention I have with this of course, is if you wait long enough to assist in solutions, it will become your problem. A young country, America still is (and perhaps too large for its own good) fully unprepared to come to grips with how to balance freedom with obligation to community. People at the top of Nob Hill, or in the Richmond, or in Pacific Heights would do well to understand that a little sacrifice now, will head off broadly unwanted situations later. Instituting the mininum threshold that the most basic of needs – healthcare, housing, and food – would be guaranteed for all people, would go a long way in starting the process of shifting the narrative to one where the media is instead reminding people that San Francisco is and will continue to be a beautiful place where art, critical thinking, and general joy proliferate.

I went for a coffee in the Tenderloin this morning. A light overnight rain had done a mediocre job of scraping the sidewalks clear of recent transgressions. I ambled about, my eyes quickly shifting in all directions, to take in the ongoing activity of the morning, assess the results of last night’s scene, and to look at the collection of SRO hotels and turn to the voyerustic side of me and ask myself what kind of activity could have gone on in there last night. Is everyone ok? I hope everyone is ok.

I think I know the answer to that question. More importantly I think I know how to make it so we don’t have to so intently ponder that question. Does anyone care enough to help us get there?

I was in Paris visiting my friend Scott, who has lived there for 20 years now, and he had started a small boulangerie that was inside of a converted old stone house facing a very busy square. It had an old boarded up fireplace with ventilation through the ceiling and I said “Why dont you guys start doing pizza through a window for these busy crowds?”

They thought I was a damn genius and got excited. We talked about how a pizza oven and prep area could be installed and the dream ended there. They seemed to be headed towards bringing the idea to life.

Anyway that’s it.

Just returned from the East Coast a couple of days ago. I spent 10 days out there with friends, colleagues, and acquaitances investigating and enjoying many things in the greater DMV area (including, in this case, West Virginia) and New York City. The start of the trip focused around my friends in Virginia. We ended up doing some fun family-oriented things- the movies, custom donuts, chasing the dogs, tossing a lacrosse ball around, injuring myself on a jog- and then, yes, going to the race track to bet on ponies. DC proper was the middle portion of the adventure, which was work for the most part, but at the tail end included some excellent food and seeing Red Fang and Dinosaur Jr. It also featured a chest infection that made things like walking up stairs nearly intolerable.

Finally on Saturday morning I woke early and picked up a train to New York City for a couple of days. I was able to attend the Van Gogh Cypresses Exhibit at The Met which is spectactular, however the rampant use of mobile phones to take pictures of things like Starry Night, as opposed to looking at them with your own eyes and taking it in, is nauseating. In an effort to maintain writing daily, a rant about that is likely forthcoming. I also saw Young Picasso in Paris which was perhaps a little less riveting (and heralded, for that matter). In the evening I enjoyed a performance of Toros at the 2nd Stage Theater which was quite fun.

The next day I was able to spend some time with a long-time internet friend, Pat Smith from CODA Skateboards a great dude who has run one of my favorite small skateboard companies and was a skateboarder who I really liked to watch skate back in the day.

Thats the roundup of the trip. This is shortish, because it was spur of the moment and I am just now thinking about how I can write every day. I hope doing it today and making a habit subsequently occurs.

I am working on writing down some poetry these days. I’ve been mired in a rough patch emotionally and motivation-wise for the last six months or so. words have been helping. I am planning/hoping to write more.

A local espresso place is doing open mics soon and I plan to take some of this stuff there. May record it for a new podcast episode.

Also I found out I like a Taylor Swift song today, hence the title of this post.

I dont know when.

I may not be around. Or I may.

My son will ask someone.

a friend

a partner

someone who helps

“why was my dad so sad?”

and there will be no answer

no response

not anything.

My Dad is not the most affectionate person. He has a reserved form of sentimentality which sits at a different end of the spectrum as me, as I am quite forthcoming with my feelings. So to receive this text was as good as it gets from my Dad, whose enthusiasm I have seen ebb and flow quite a bit throughout this process, I think partially due to having some anxiety about the whole thing. To hear this from him meant a lot to me.

Thursday night we had another planning session, and my brother was actually down from Fresno to work out some issues regarding his license to ensure he can get his passport in time. I feel like his chances of going are improving – maybe around 85% at this point.

We booked four bits of lodging; Edinburgh, London, Paris, and Switzerland. Two things became very apparent regarding our expectations and desires for the trip. First, we are all far more excited to see Scotland than we are London. Only my younger brothers have any real concrete desire to see and do anything in London, and both agreed that we could shorten our time there. We extended Scotland by one day, and decided to drive to Ben Nevis and back in the same day to do that hike, meaning the AirBNB we’re staying in could remain our homebase and we could potentially travel to Glasgow too the following day. The other is that we will spend next-to-no time in Zurich, which is actually fine. If you click the link above to see where we are staying in Switzerland, I think the idea of retiring to that place in the mountains away from cities and relaxing on that patio for a couple of evenings with a beer will be quite nice.

I think I mentioned before that I am going to be in London a bit before my Dad and brothers. Originally I had hoped to see my friend Chris, who formerly lived in London (and then Paris) but now resides with his family in Cornwall. We had discussed him coming to London, but with the idea I’d have more time in London on a weekend, but based on my Dad’s schedule and goals, it isn’t going to work out. I had also just completely been unaware of how big the UK is and how far Cornwall is from London. It’s 5+ hours via car. Hanging with Chris, sadly, will not be an option but he is hopeful in coming to Los Angeles in August.

What you may not know is that I am a massive Liverpool FC fan. Chris and I not being able to match up schedule gave me an opportunity to book a train to Liverpool on the way to Scotland to meet my Dad, and to stay over night, and….

….do a tour of Anfield!!!! I am so bloody excited for this it’s hard to contain it. I was brought to tears the other day thinking of how many pictures I will get of myself at Anfield taking in all that history while watching and listening to this. I get to to do this, eat at a local Vegan diner in Liverpool, visit a skateshop, and head to Edinburgh. I cannot wait.

YNWA.

https://open.spotify.com/embed/playlist/36v9fANgmf4AgVcCuCPMYV?utm_source=generator

The trip is essentially routed, and all flights are booked (!!). If you’d asked me two months ago if we’d be at Easter with this much progress and without all the customary hand-wringing, I’d have scoffed, but here it is:

I leave LAX on 6/23, land in London 6/24. On the evening of 6/25 I meet my Dad and brothers in Edinburgh, Scotland

We are then in Scotland until Tuesday, 6/28. That morning we head back to London via train. A few people on this trip (namely, my two young brothers and my Dad) are hard-up to explore…London. This trip is all about my Dad so I am happy, to some degree, to acquiesce that request. I am not particularly fond of London, but seeing it through the eyes of people who have never been might be quite fun and bring some life back to it for me. The morning of 7/1 we take the Chunnel to Paris and are there until 7/4 when we fly to Zurich. In Zurich we will really be moving on to do some mountaineering related things for my Dad on or around the Iger. On 7/7 my Dad and brothers all fly back to Los Angeles from Zurich. Within 45 minutes of their flight, I move on to Philadelphia and then Montreal. I will be there until July 10th, when I fly back that night to California.

The trip is starting to feel very tangible. I am having irregular dreams about it as of late. A quick run down of things I am most excited about are as follows:

• Potentially seeing Chas in London
• Stopping in Liverpool on the way down from Scotland to do a tour of Anfield
• Seeing my friend Scott in Paris
• Paris, broadly, especially with my Dad
• I’ve yet to go to Edinburgh and Zurich.
• Montreal has a ton of cool things, the running list I have for places to eat and explore near my apartment is long.

Here is the other thing I am quite excited about. I saw my Dad today. He and one of my younger brothers came over today to help with something and he dropped that my brother Adam, who I had real concerns about going, may now be able to join us and it looks promising. He has some hurdles to get through to get his passport, but it seems that if that can get sorted, he will be there with us. I am elated. I really wanted the experience of doing this with Adam.

So much of our lives are intertwined and the levy that holds in the regret we both carry with regards to our Mother is at it’s maximum. I don’t want to replicate it with our Dad. Fingers crossed, I will get to do the Scotland – Zurich portions of this trip with Adam.

Coming off a whrilwind block of time here where I traveled around the Sierras, snowboarding in both in Lake Tahoe and Mammoth, and also down into Reno and Carson City (perhaps more on that in the future). Then I came home to three nights in a row of Jawbreaker, which, I mean, anyone who knows me at all will understand that it was essentially my own personal 72 hour religions experience.

In the midst of all that, my Dad and his wife found three hours to sit down with me and hammer out details on the trip that would make it plausible for my Dad to manage this much travel in foreign lands and accomplish all of his goals. I am really, truly thankful for her right now. She is a rock for my Dad and understands what he needs. In fact, she scheduled a sit-down time with a travel agent and forwarded a list of needs for my Dad in advance (business or first, flying in a pod, direct or layovers etc) so they could sit down today and get situated.

Essentially the trip looks like this for me, London > Edinburgh > Liverpool > London > Paris > Zurich > Montreal > LA. For my Dad and my brothers, they’re ideally flying straight to Edinburgh and then home from Zurich. I am seeking a “soft landing” back in North America and have never been to MTL and have been obsessed for a long while, so going from Zurich, to PHL, to MTL, to Los Angeles will be my route home. Ten days later I am going back to the East Coast to for a work conference and I am hoping it includes at the very least one night in NYC. The NYC vs. MTL struggle was real for me, and I suppose it could still change. I haven’t been to New York in a long, long time but I feel like this trip provides a pretty unique opportunity to visit MTL and I will get other chances to visit NYC….like potentially two weeks later.

I finalized my passport application and appointment yesterday and went and got photos today. I am having to opt for an expedited process (nothing seemed certain until this past weekend) and also getting some sort of passport card that works for Canada and Mexico (though I’d still prefer a stamp going from Zurich to MTL).

It’s starting to really happen and I am starting to feel the energy. Before you know it I will be back across the Atlantic for the first time in 16 years.

It’s a bit off here, because I am actually arriving in London a day ahead of everyone. I have friends that live in Cornwall and south of London meeting me to skate at a park that we all were at together 15 years ago. Also as the lead organizer of this trip I want to get things sorted and on the right track.

Also I am staying out and about a few extra days. Originally my plan was MTL, or perhaps NYC. A “soft landing” back into North America sounds pretty good at the moment – giving me a couple of adjustment days before heading back to California and heading back to work. Being realistic with my age (I will be 46 when the trip takes place) means having a pragmatic scope of what I am capable of. But part of me is also presently obsessed with the Basque country in Spain, and seeing the Guggenheim museum in Bilbao.

I’ve been emailing with a friend in Paris, Scott from the Podcast and he is excited to reconnect and hang out as well.

The countdown has really started now. It’s actually happening and I am almost shocked after everything over the last few months. It’s going to be here quickly. More soon.

We were supposed to meet last Thursday for lunch, and then…then I was in a major car wreck just a mile from my house. The important thing is that I am typing this, therefore I must be at the very least alive (and it wasn’t my fault), but the situation is a mess and will continue to be for some time. Just today alone there will be multiple conversations with attorneys and doctor’s visits. It’s not rad. Not rad at all.

Wedged into all of that, my Dad has signaled he is ready to get serious, and is coming over today to discuss. The schedule, locations, etc all remain the same for what he wants to accomplish, so hopefully in the next week we will start to have some rooms and intercontinental flights booked, as well as trains. From day one I’ve said that I am going to Europe either way – my flight’s already booked – but my Dad said a day or two ago he realizes how much he will regret it if he doesn’t make this happen. Glad that’s crystalized for him.

More later on Europe, but less about the collision (I refuse to call it an accident due to its nature), owing mostly to the likelihood of prolonged investigation and litigation.

The chaos of the now hasn’t changed anything about a trip to Europe in June. If anything, this might be the best case scenario to ensure the trip happens (and as mentioned before, I am going either way).

It has definitely tripped up any getting together for planning sessions. There isn’t much to report (or record?) on that front.

In the meantime, I’m close to symptom free and I was scheduled to fly to Colorado on Monday for a week of snowboarding with a friend of mine. Instead I’ve canceled my flight and will be driving there solo, doing a bit of a self-reflective Vision Quest type of thing. I may write here daily about the trip. We’ll see.

I am such an emotional, nostalgic sap. The idea that this was shot at the famous PUNKS WITH PRESSES warehouse in OAK in 1994 dares me to stew in sadness that this analog life we all lived, where documentation was afterthought to most and personal interaction and being in the moment was everything, has forever passed. Why Rabbit, Rabbit? Well that can be found here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rabbit_rabbit_rabbit

On the trip planning front, a couple of interesting developments. My 21 year old brother recently went to NYC with his mother and he had an eye-opening experience that really prompted his desire to travel more and see the world. He’s been relatively sheltered, hunkered down here in Southern California and he suddenly has an appetite to see more. His enthusiasm for the trip is palpable. I am excited for him.

Apparently my other younger brother is less prepared/excited for the trip. That’s a whole blog post on it’s own. I’ll address that in the future.

All three of them have done the process of getting passports, which is otherwise very encouraging. In the vein of vanity, I am currently growing out my beard and debating what to do with my hair, so I am putting off taking a passport photo until next year. Silly, I know.

My position on the “pessimistic over my other (full, 38 yo) brother going” scale has jumped up considerably lately. More on that later as well.

My dad also committed (sort of, his version of commitment is ostensibly divergent from mine) to book flights around the first of the year. My going first and booking my one-way ticket into Europe was supposed to spurn them, but my dad in his decidedly and purposefully irritating humor told me “well at least YOU are going to Europe then!”

Yeah dad, real funny.

Some months ago when just talking about this trip conceptually, we decided that my dad needs to fly with one of us next to him, and that Business Class was, at a minimum, where my dad needed to fly. Because my schedule will be a little irregular and I am going out a day early and then not coming back with them from London we determined it would be best if one of my two little brothers (we will call them L and Ai) fly next to him. 10 or 11 hours is a long time to potentially be on a plane in one seat with Parkinson’s, so we’re trying to make it as comfortable as possible for him. He’s also requested flights with layover so he can deplane, walk around, make sure he’s ok etc before we continue.

It all seems sensible. My frustration right now is that my dad wont pin either of them down to commit to coming on the trip and thusly flying next to him…and my flight out to Europe is already booked. He just hasnt pinned them down and had the conversation with them to confirm they’re going. Meanwhile, I am already booked.

You can see the gap starting to emerge here. I am a planner, for sure. I certainly give enough time and space to allow for everything spontaneous to happen but as far as the “I will be at this place at this time” in a more grand perspective (I will be in Paris on this date, London on this date, etc) I want to have these things worked out, locked down, and in motion. There is so much to do and logistically to figure out for the things my dad wants to do, and is often the case in this family, it will fall on me to take care of these things. How this will effect (or likely strain) the relationships between the five of us remains to be seen. I am trying to be conscientious of my approach to these things, and accepting of the fact that not everyone else does it the same way I do (especially about a trip now 6-7 months out) but it’s a real challenge to me.

My father was diagnosed with Parkinson’s five years ago. Depending on when you’re diagnosed, how old you are, what kind of treatment you get, and a bunch of other factors (known and unknown) the disease progresses at a certain rate. My dad has some good days, and then some tougher days. I see him regularly (yesterday for lunch, actually) and I can usually tell pretty quickly. The way he gesticulates, how his mood is, how engaged he is in our conversation, what he might need help with.

A couple of years ago I mentioned to my dad in passing that if there was going to be an opportunity for him to see Scotland and his homeland (or at least, his homeland for 50% of him – his mother was Prussian-German) the time was now. I shelved the conversation, not optimistic that in a COVID-struck world we’d have the chance. Then about six months ago he brought it up to me. His wife had urged him to consider it, reminding him that his disease is progressive, this may be the one chance we have to do this, and that I have experience traveling overseas.

We began discussions. It’s a challenge to get my father to commit to much these days. So much depends on how effective his medication is, how he slept last night, and how he’s feeling generally. Fortunately he’s learned some ability to recognize and manage his condition, and is learning how to get the most out of it. We have now a general consensus on when we’re leaving (I already have a one-way ticket booked for June 23rd. Why one-way? More on this as I write on the experience) and a schedule the takes us to London, Scotland, down to Bern, Switzerland (my dad is adamant about hiking the Iger) and up to Paris, then back to London over the course of two weeks. My plan presently is to fly back to Montreal first. I’ve never been there and have always wanted to visit, and a couple of days to decompress will be good. Why would I need to decompress? My expectation is that managing this entire trip, my fathers condition and dealing with my three brothers who are all also slated to go, will be a lot. A couple of days will do me some good. Going to Spain may be an option as well.

I’ve chosen to start blogging as a mechanism to document this trip for a couple of reasons. The first is that I simply do not write enough anymore. I haven’t had the motivation to blog, write fiction , or do any essay work for a long time. This trip serves as good motivation. Second, I do not really have any conventional social media save for Instagram and Reddit (does that even count as social media?). Third, blogging almost feels like a quaint, passe method of documentation and communication.

I’ll be writing my experience and feelings on it over the next several months between now and when we leave. Talking about preparations and how that is shaping me and my expectations for this journey. Much like my podcast, I am doing this for myself, however if you stumble upon this you are more than welcome to come along.

I am desperate to do this with my dad and brothers, and prepared to take on the challenge of it all. I have a singular regret from my mothers’ death. The parallels to this situation are driving me to make sure I do not replicate past mistakes.

I will save that for another post. 242 days until we depart.

I can’t do this episode justice with just words. Just listen.