The Unreasonable Man: January 2014

It's 1:32 am and I'm sitting on the floor of a friends living room. My gracious hosts have long since gone to sleep and I'm left sitting in their abode feeling a little out of place in the silence. "Make yourself at home" they say in hospitable fashion before they retire. Once again, I'm the guy on the the couch. It's become my go-to move as of late.

But I'm still far from used to it.

Home it is not.

Illuminated by the glow of my trusty laptop, I think back on how I got here as the fridge hums it's dulling tune. My mind cataloguing the last couple months of memories, I stare out the window. It frames me a Toronto snowstorm more miserable than Rob Ford's publicist and an immediate desire for someone to deliver me a fireplace.

I picked a hell of a time to visit this frozen city. Rewind a week and I'd still be in Florida, beach under my feet, flip flops in hand. Look a little further and you would find me back in the cold, this time in the northern city of Edmonton. On a friends snowmobile, I push it towards the disappearing reddish sun as it sets into the frozen horizon of the Alberta countryside. It's a picturesque, perfectly Canadian scene as the soft, pillowy snow disappears beneath me, naked trees whipping by in the distance as the sun, relents to the moon. And yes, under my snow gear, I'm wearing flannel. Playing hockey and sipping syrup.

Canadian indeed.

A week before that, the only snow to see is peaked atop the mountains standing guard over Vancouver. They look through the window of this mornings breakfast diner, stealing my attention.

In front of me is a heart attack inducing creation called the Eggs benny pulled pork poutine. I'm pretty sure it's the reason things like cross fit needed to be invented. Beside my "breakfast" is a long missed friend that I will spend the rest of the day catching up with. No Skype needed this time. It's been a long time coming.

I rewind my mind further still to a week earlier, watching two friends standing at a beachside altar. The minister recites his bonding words as the two lovebirds stare into each others eyes. We're in the Mayan Riviera and our bride is beaming as her soon to be husband tries to hold back his tears. It's a fight he's not winning and soon his cheeks are no more dry than we are under the Mexican sun that has us melting through our nicely ironed shirts. The night brings us a full moon that is the brightest I've ever seen and it illuminates a choreographed wedding dance that won't soon be forgotten.

Back to the timeline. A week earlier and I'm floating in a sea of painkillers that are failing to mute my screaming body. The doctor says it's called Sciatica from a herniated disc and it has me feeling like I'm wearing a pant leg made out of volcano. How it happened is beyond me but walking is no longer a luxury I indulge in. Instead, I've old man hobbled into my friends back yard to watch the sun set into his San Diego skyline. I've always been a sucker for a good sunset and this one doesn't disappoint. It's a stunning mural of yellow, orange, pink and purple. I take it in while giving back a little ukelele but it's a lopsided affair. I doubt the sunset appreciates my ode to Sir Mix Alot's Baby got back as much as I enjoy it's sundown sacrifice but I'm not taking requests. The sound of happy barking turns me around to see my friend flanked by his two dogs, Tucker and Ella. He's wearing a big goofy smile on his face and he soon gets me laughing again, taking my mind off the pain. It seem like it's been days since we last saw each other.

It's been over three years.

Back on memory lane the trip continues. Heading towards the starting line of this journey I'm on a blur of buses, trains, and more than a couple planes (a two month tally of 20), taking me all the way back to where the most uncomfortable mattress in the world lives; my Bangkok bedroom. I find myself lying there, sweat beading on my brow, heart racing as I panic over how I'm going to do this travel-filled 2 month adventure with a back that has all the can-do of Mr. Burns's white blood cell count. Just two hours ago my back went into full go-fuck-yourself mode for no apparent reason. Now I'm panicking like a drug mule who's got the runs at the airport. Going back to this memory, me lying on a mattress that feels like it's stuffed with coat hangers and Xmas lights; I think I may have just put together why my back is angry.

Usually a bed isn't this uncomfortable until the morning after.... but like I said; no apparent reason.

This disc-angering bed housed me for two months after I left Hong Kong and while it was uncomfortable because it was stuffed with what I can only assume were dinosaur bones and car accident scraps, I was ready for it to feel off. I knew it wouldn't feel right before I ever laid down on it's angry, menopausal springs. It was apparent in the way that all beds I've slept on for the last 2 years haven't felt right. They just don't felt like home.

Because they aren't.

But neither were the beds I found during my last two months in Canada.

I had been warned that that might happen when I returned back to the great white north but it still

"hit home"

What can I say? I'm a sucker for puns.

There's a hidden truth that only becomes apparent after you've been gone for too long a time.

You can't go home again.

Of course everyone who reads this has gone on vacations and travelled only to return feeling glad to be "home sweet home"……. but for a select few who travel indefinitely, it's a different welcome when they return. A different feeling.

Some people travel to get a tan and forget work for a couple weeks. Others do it to backpack through Europe before starting a career after uni. But for those who see it how I do, you go for a different reason. You don't go to escape your life but instead you go to find it.

For me, life has never been where you were born but instead where you choose to make it. I've been moving since I was little and maybe that's why I always felt like I had one foot out the door. When people ask me where I'm from, I've never really known how to answer, as a handful of cities come to mind. These days I just say I travel. I say the same thing when someone asks me what I do for a living (a question I don't like answering).

But that's a story for another day.

I remember that exciting feeling of being at the beginning of an unknown new adventure the first time I left North America. It was exactly two years ago today (January 10th 2012) and ever since then things have had no choice but to be different. When I left Canada, I knew that it would be a different experience. That it wouldn't feel like home and I was ready for that (and it certainly didn't disappoint in the "different" category).

But what I wasn't ready for was that when I returned, home wouldn't feel like home either.

Don't get me wrong, this last two months of traveling across Canada has been an awesome experience. I indulged in Canada's greatest resource of quality people and I enjoyed every day I was here. Every breath of fresh Canadiana air but it revealed to me that I'm not ready to find my home here anymore. Not now anyways.

It's a realization that came as I watched my now married friends holding their newly borns in their suburban homes.

I saw it every time I had to jump the ever-widening gap to relate to old friends.

I saw it when I sat quiet in a group of conversing buddies, unable to un-see the North American traits my overseas friends use to see in me.

I saw it there, in between the lines.

That Kinder egg surprise that something was "different".

I did my best to downplay it's presence; but it was there. Worse still, I knew that I couldn't share it with anyone without further alienating myself. One thing that travelling teaches you is how to figure out things on your own, Han Solo and this one of those situations.

Somewhere along the way, this whole thing has changed me and while I deeply believe it's for the better, I know that it comes with a price. Whether it's two years abroad or two months back home; the price is there. It's not in the thousands of dollars I've spent on flights or in the airline headaches and hours spent in layover. Nor is it in the lost bags, or the countless times I've been ripped off based on my skin colour. It's none of those.

Tonight, that price is an uncomfortable couch in what should be a comfortable room.

And as my mind plays back a mere handful of valued memories from a trip home, one packed full of good times spent with friends;

I know it's a price I'm willing to pay.

I started this post on a cold Toronto living room floor and while it's writing has taken me down a trip of good days gone by, it's also very literally taken me through the skies above. You see, I was lying earlier when I said I was still sitting on that cold floor in Toronto. Truth is, while you've been reading this, I've been penning it stuffed in crowded planes, flying overhead. Through North America, Europe, the Middle East and finally this last plane, a marathon of many, is about to land me in in my new home of South Africa.

Cape Town to be exact. 303 Blue Waters Holiday Flat Beach Road.

So this is where I'll leave you.

2 years to the day after my travels started, it begins anew. With it, comes new journeys and adventures to add to invaluable collection of memories.

Memories that far outweigh the cost.

Thanks for reading