episode four: she’s like a cactus…. CACTUAR!!!! dancedancedancedancedance

I seem to have picked up a passenger.

I’m on a Vespa (in case you need reminding).  It’s made to be a two seater, but while I wouldn’t consider me or my new companion to be abnormally large… it was kinda awkward.

Okay, a lot awkward, since I’ve only known her for about seven hours.

I stopped for a bathroom break and very late lunch about an hour away from Alberta.  It was a small little joint off the highway.  Far away enough to not be able to ear the cars, which was nice, since that was the only thing I had been listening to for the past few hours.

But asides from that, there weren’t too many more redeeming qualities about the restaurant.  I’m not going to hold back or be kind and gentle.  Ready?  What was served to me was quite possible one of the worst meals I’ve ever eaten in my life.

How hard is it to make a salad?  Answer me honestly?  A plain salad.  No bells and whistles, okay?  Just a salad.  Well, this place failed.  Failed miserably.  The leaves were brown along the edges, the dressing was too sweet, the tomatoes were mushy and it had this all around feeling of grease.

I ate a salad to be healthy, not feel like I had just devoured a hamburger.  Seriously, how can a salad possibly be greasy?  You might say it would be if there was an excessive amount of olive oil, but the taste and feeling of olive oil is completely different from that of the muck at the bottom of a deep fryer.

And the coffee.   Don’t even get me started.  It was like a brown sludge that clung to the chipped white mug in the same way that a Headcrab clings to its prey’s cranium.  I turned the cup over completely and it didn’t even spill onto the table.

I don’t want to think about the bathrooms.  At all.  Ever.

Funny how the actual restaurant itself didn’t look to dingy.  Left over from the 80’s sort of thing…  The seats were vinyl and the floors were white linoleum and there was a brown splash of god-only-knows-what on the ceiling next to the fan.  But it could have been much worse.  It probably would have been much worse if I had mustered up the courage to look under my table, but I wanted to preserve the feeling of eating in a somewhat sanitary place, so I didn’t.

There were only a few other people around me, and the loudest of them were the couple fighting over in a corner.

I didn’t really pay attention to them and picked at my salad in silence.  I’m pretty sure that there was swearing involved, because a tired looking waitress shuffled up to their table and asked them meekly to either quiet down or leave.

That led to more swearing and an exclamation of frustration from another table.

I snuck a glance over to the verbal fight.

There was a man and a woman… both looked to be in their late twenties.  The man had a shaved head and tattoos running up and down his arms.  He was dressed all in black and his mouth was currently spewing every profanity that came to mind at his companion.  There was definitely something Native about her… it must have been her eyes.  They were flinty and cold as the glared at the man, silently wishing every possible death upon him.  Her hair was dreadlocked, her ears were pin cushions and her dark skin had old acne scars that spread like stars against her temples and cheeks.

She stood up with a clatter of her chair and stormed away from the table.

She was pretty, in a harsh kind of way…

And she was headed straight for me.

Nonononono.  She wasn’t walking towards me.  She was going to the bathroom.  Or she was leaving.  She was NOT walking towards me.  She was NOT walking towards me.  She was NOT wal-

She plunked herself down in the seat opposite mine and gave me a smile as I still tried to convince myself that what was happening was only in my head.

“Hey,” she said.

My mouth opened.  I closed it.  It opened again.  I suppose that I was trying to say something, but the words would not form and I, instead, had created the perfect immitation of a fish.

“Where ya headed?”  She asked.

Why did everyone have to ask me that?

“How do you know I’m going anywhere?”  I managed to stammer.

“Your suitcase is a pretty good clue.”  She rolled her eyes.  “Besides, you don’t come here unless you’re just passing through.”

“Why do you want to know?”  I demanded.

“I wanna come with.”  It was a statement, not a request.

“WHAT?”  My jaw hit the table and I dimly realized that I had just shouted the last statement much louder than anyone in the restaurant appreciated.

At least I wasn’t swearing.

“You can’t!”  I hissed, a bit quieter.

She raised an eyebrow.

“Okay, lemme put it this way.  My ex-boyfriend has the keys to the car, so leaving that way is out of the question.  That family over there wouldn’t give a ride to someone like me even if there was half a baby coming out my vagina.  The man at the counter is a pervert and a sleaze, and the waitress doesn’t even have a car.  And even if she did, she wouldn’t be going anywhere near where I need.  You’re all I’ve got.’

“Why don’t you hitchhike?”

“That gorilla over there would snatch me up before anyone else could, and I’d be back at square one.”  Shee gestured at her ex-boyfriend, who was snarling at us.

“I don’t think I’m the person you’re looking for.  I’m going to Toronto.”  I tried desperately.

The woman grinned.  She made a scrawling motion in the air, prompting the waitress to bring the check.  She paid the bill.

“I’m headed to Thunder Bay.  What a coincidence.”

I had only one more card to play, and it was my trump.  I stood up.

“Come with me.”  I said.

She followed me out into the parking lot as her ex began to swear again and demand where we were going.

There, awaiting me, was my Vespa.

“You’re driving this to Toronto?”  She asked, shocked.  “When I saw your helmet, I figured that you weren’t in a car… but a scooter?!”

She threw back her head and laughed.  The laughter shook her body and made me think that she hadn’t had a reason to do so in a very long time.  For an instant, she looked years younger.  Not much older than me.

“See… that’s why you can’t come.”  I said as I secured my suitcase to the silver rack.  “And it’s a Vespa, not a scooter!”

I strapped my helmet to my head and mounted my yellow key to freedom.  I turned on the ignition and was about to zip away when I felt pressure on the seat behind me as a pair of arms wrap around my waist.

I twisted my head around.

The woman had climbed on as well, and she was shaking.

“Please…”  She whispered.  “He’s coming.  Please, just go.  I don’t care anymore.  Just take me away from here.”

“You’re not even wearing a helmet.”  I protested weakly.

“Please!”  Her grip tightened and I could hear a rough, gravelly voice getting louder and louder.

Closer and closer.

I made my choice.

We raced away towards the on ramp, the woman not so much as holding on, but clinging to my very skeleton.  Whoever that man had been, she didn’t want to be around him any longer.  Perhaps there was something better for her waiting in Thunder Bay.

I could almost feel the cactus skin she had wrapped herself in digging into my back.

There was a story behind her eyes.  A long and bad one.  I wondered if I would ever get to hear it.

We rode and rode and rode, and eventually, I realized that a sign on my right was welcoming me to Banff.

I pulled over and we both got off the bike to stretch our legs.  Not once throughout the entire ride had the woman let go of me.

I turned to her as she was pulling a cigarette out of her back pocket and lighting it with a lighter from her purse.

“Well, I guess if we’re going to be travelling together, we had better know each other’s names.”

It took a few minutes for those words to completely sink into her head.

“Robyn.”  She said, extending her hand, another smile beginning to spread across her features.

“Tally.”  I replied, taking it.

She was much prettier when she smiled, I decided.  She was a bit like Revy from Black Lagoon, if I had to make a comparison.  Tough as a rock and completely kick ass.

We stood in silence as she smoked and I studied my map.

“Uh…”  I began awkwardly.  “About costs and stuff…”

“Don’t worry.”  She cut it.  “It may not look like it, but I’ve got a lot saved up.  I’ve been planning this for a long time.”

“Of course!”  I exclaimed, flustered and embaressed.

I fidgeted with the map a little more.

“How soon do you have to be in Thunder Bay?”  I asked.

“Not a big deal, as long as we get there.”  She shrugged.

“Okay, because I want to stop and explore some of the places we come to…  I’m thinking about a week and a bit…”

“A week and a bit?  Yeah, that sounds fine.”

“And if you ever want to go, just let me know.  I won’t take it personally.”

“Even if it is?”

I stuttered for a little, and Robyn giggled.  She threw an arm around me.

“You’re good in my books, kid!”  She said.

I relaxed a little.  The smell of cigarettes have never really appealed to me, but I didn’t really notice.

“How old are you, anyway?”  She asked.

“Me?  Uh, twenty.  How about you?”

“Twenty-two.”

“Really?!”

“Yeah, I know.  I don’t look it.  Shut up,”

“Nononono!! That’s not what I meant!”

“Kidding!  Alright,”  she leaned over my map.  “Where are we headed?”

“I was hoping to stay in Banff tonight…”  I said.

“Sounds good.  It’s getting dark, and we need to find a cheap motel.”

We got on the Vespa again and took off.

Robyn seems like a good person.  I don’t have any solid proof, but I think she’s clean.  It’s just a gut feeling.  The kind that usually right.

Well, she’s coming out of the shower now, so it’s my turn.

Good night guys, I’m going to be fine.  Seriously!

With confidence,

Tally

episode three: spica requires two stars to shine as brightly as it does. i’m nothing without you.

Stopped in Revelstoke now.  Have been for a long time, actually.  It’s so late, and I’m so tired.  I walked around the town for so long… it’s so pretty here.  Really small town.  Really down to earth.  It’s like the city doesn’t even exist anymore.  I’m in a completely different world.

But there reason I’m writing this so late (not only because I promised, and you can stop worrying about my wellbeing) is because I have a story to tell.  It’s about distances and space.  I really wish I understood what I have to tell you better than I do, but I’m just going to get it all out here and come back to it later, when I’ve got food in my brain and sleep in my stomach.  I mean… the other way around.  Uh… yeah.

Anyway, I pulled over after a few hours of driving after my last post for a quick stretch.  There was a little patch of green to the side of the highway, and I decided that it would be a good place for a break.  It was pretty small… not much bigger than my house (or the property, anyway).  There was nothing built on it or anything, not even a fence to keep intruders off or a sign to tell me to go somewhere else.  Just a lonely spot of grass.

Well, not completely lonely, because there was a guy reading a book there.   Just sitting with his butt in the dirt and a book in both hands.

I guessed it was okay for me to be there.  I mean, I wasn’t going to stay for long, and if really was a crime for me to set foot on the little park, the guy would have probably said something.  Unless he wasn’t supposed to be there as well, in which case he wouldn’t warn me either.

I stretched out my arms and swung them around to loosen them up, I walked around the field to limber up my legs, and at some point I must have said hello to the stranger, because he put his book down and nodded at me.

I waved in response and began to bounce on one foot to the other.

“Where’re you headed?”  He asked, jerking his head towards my Vespa.

Now, I know I’m not supposed to talk to strange people, and I know I’m not supposed to reveal any of my accommodation plans while traveling (that Liam Neeson movie… hello?!), but when you’re posed with that exact question in real life, it’s the most difficult question to sidestep.  I mean, I had already said hello, and I didn’t want to be rude.  How is anyone supposed to react in a situation like that (really, tell me, because I would love to know)?

I guess the obvious answer would be “screw manner s and be rude!”  but it’s tough!!  Especially since I didn’t want to get on my bike just yet and what would follow that particular response to an innocent question is The Awkward Silence, something that can only be cured with the disembarking of one of the parties or the offering another trite conversation starter.

“Toronto.”  I replied finally.

His eyes widened.

“Toronto?  On that thing? No Way!”

I laughed and nodded my head.

“Good luck to you.”  I said.

I thanked him.

“Bet you’ll have some amazing stories to tell,” he said.

“That’s what I’m hoping for!”  I grinned.

The man turned onto his back and gazed up at the sky.  It wasn’t sunny today… there was a bit of an overcast, but there were flecks of blue peeking through the clouds.  A typical British Columbian day.

“You know, we have this amazing world.  Right here.  All around us.  There’re blue oceans, green trees… all the food, oxygen and company you could ask for.  There’s nothing more you could possible want in terms of variety and adventure.  When you get bored of one place, you just hop into a car, bus, boat, plane or Vespa and find somewhere new!  Somewhere where they put Dijon mustard on sandwiches instead of honey mustard.  Somewhere where the people speak a completely different language all together and you have to start from scratch in order to understand what they’re saying.  Somewhere where walking on your hands is the norm and not on your feet!”

I won’t lie.  I had no idea what he was talking about.

“And yet,” he continued.  “We want to travel into space.  We want to discover the final frontier.  There’s no food or oxygen up there.  You can’t feel the sand between your toes, or taste the mountain air between your teeth.  Why would anyone leave it all behind it and go into a barren void?  Leave friends and family and loved ones in order to satisfy a thirst for the unknown that could just as easily be quenched down here?”

He sighed.

“You know that there are still tribes in the Amazon that have never had contact with the outside world?  Imagine what that must be like.”

I nodded.

“The person you’re thinking of must be very brave.”

“Huh?  Why’s that?  Stupid is a better word, I think.”

“Leaving everything behind to chase a dream.  That’s not easy.  I would know… but I guess I’m different.  I’m just traveling across a country.”

“But why?  Why does space have to be so far away?  Why do you have to go to space in order to get a kick?  Feet and eyes to the ground kid.  That’s all I can say.  It’s safer.  For everyone.”

I thought.  I chewed my lip and thought really hard.  Then I opened my mouth and began to speak.

“You know how it is when you go without food for a long time?  Maybe you skipped lunch and had to work, so there was no time to eat.  It doesn’t seem like such a big deal at first, but pretty soon, you get hungry.  In fact, when you leave, you’re so hungry you could eat up a car, your shoes… anything.  When you finally arrive home, its dinner time, and you can smell the food from outside on the street.  It smells amazing.  Delicious.  Like the best meal you’ll ever eat in your life.  You rush into the house and plunk yourself down at the dinner table.  Your food is piping hot and waiting for you, so you just dig in.  You eat and eat and eat like you’ll never have food again.  You think that the food you are eating is the best kind of food in existence… that you’ve never eaten anything better than what is in your mouth right now and that nothing on earth could ever compare to the flavours that are erupting on your tongue.  But then you realize that what you are eating is no different from anything else that you’ve ever eaten.  If fact, you had this very meal just a week before.  Yet you cannot remember it tasting so amazing.  I think… I think this is how astronauts must feel when they return home.”

It was the man’s turn to look confused.  I studied his face for even the slightest indication that he understood what I was talking about, and all I got was complete confusion.

“Astronauts look back on the earth when they’re in space.  Look back at the blue oceans and brown dirt and white clouds and think, ‘I can’t remember any of this being quite so amazing’.  I mean, training for a life in zero gravity must be gruelling and exhausting.  It probably doesn’t provide much time to sit back and enjoy a sunrise.  No time to listen to the seagulls and no time to feel the touch of a friend’s hand on their own.  This is like standing outside and smelling dinner when you are ravenously hungry.  And then when an astronaut lands on earth and feels gravity trying to strip the very flesh off their bones, they realizes all that they’ve has missed and how beautiful it always was even before they left.  This is like eating.  I know it doesn’t make much sense… sorry.”

“So, basically… you don’t know what you’ve got until it’s gone?”

I nodded.  That explanation seemed so much simpler.

“Besides,” I smiled.  “Think of all the stories you could tell after one trip.  That’s a whole lifetime of curling up by the fireplace and listening to tales from infinity and beyond.”

That made him smile a little.  The corners of his mouth pulled up just a tiny bit.

“But it’s so far away…”  He mumbled.

I reached up my arms, hands up to the clouds, sun trying to break through.

“You won’t get anywhere with both feet on the ground.  You have to lift them up to walk.”

We stayed in that position for a little longer.  The man looking up to the sky and my hands pushing up towards it, as if trying to hold up the atmosphere.

“Are we,” I asked.  “Where the earth ends?  Or are we where the sky begins?”

“I don’t know.”  He replied honestly.

“Neither do I.  But either way, that makes space seem just a centimetre closer.”

The man rose to his feet and shielded his face from the glare with his hands.

“Silly girl always had her head in the clouds.  I just miss her.  She’s never home anymore.”

“If she can’t join you on earth, why don’t you join her in the air?”

“I miss her.”  He said again.

I wondered if he had even heard me.  If he had understood me.  Even to me, everything I was saying didn’t make much sense.  It was all a jumble of thoughts and words that spilled out of my mouth like clothes from a tumble dryer.

I left that guy there, in that little patch of green, looking up at the sky for what may have been the first time.  Really looking at it.  Really realizing just how close it really was.

I just got back onto my Vespa and rode away.

People who are grounded are sometimes too heavy to learn to fly.

Responsibility, money, reputation… those things tie us to the earth.  Burry our legs in the dirt.  They’re weights on our feet that often prevent us from even moving forward, let alone fly.

Responsibility, money, reputation… I put all of those on hold so I could trek to the east and chase my dreams.  But there are some things too important to me to completely leave behind.  My friends, for one.  Flying may be wonderful, but flying alone seems kind of lonely.

But that’s what it takes, I think.  To be completely free.

There are people out there who can let it all go to follow their hearts.  Leave it all behind and float up to the stars.  Join Cassiopeia and Orion in their celestial resting places.

Regardless of the sacrifice, however, I still believe that a journey is a journey.  An adventure is an adventure whether is takes place four or several hundred thousand meters above the ground.  Nothing changes that fact that you are looking back at your home and your life through different eyes.

I like the feeling of pebbles and dust under my tires as I roar past fences, houses and gates.  I the like the feeling of the wind in my hair as my Vespa takes me one more kilometre away from the life I know.

Canada’s a gigantic country.  Huge.  Enormous.

The world’s even bigger.

To any one of you reading this, my arms are reaching out to you.  Across cities, towns, fields, oceans and continents.

And the distance between us, if you reach back as well, will become that much smaller.

With love,

Tally.

episode two: a cross between flcl and lain. damn that’s depressing.

Sometimes, I find myself thinking like Kyon.  I wish that something amazing would happen to me.  Like maybe that if time travellers, ESPers or aliens really existed, my life would be absolutely perfect.  Granted, I wouldn’t have to go on wacky adventures (though that wouldn’t be entirely out of the question), but just knowing that they were out there.  That they really existed and were interacting with the dreary humdrum of everyday life and everyday people might give me some hope in thinking that my life wasn’t so boring after all.

I mean, living in a small city is an amazing feeling, because you feel like you know everything there is to know.  About your surroundings.  About life.  About people.

The world is so closed in that you don’t think about what’s out there.

Well, not everybody!  But I didn’t even realize how encased my life was until I discovered anime.

I know, I know, I know!  Anime is in no way a substitute for life or even a provider of great epiphanies, but the first time I turned on the TV and saw Sailor Moon, my whole life changed.  There was this place, out there across the water and all around the other side of the world, called Japan.  Land of the rising sun.

Growing up in school, we had a few Asian students, most of which were Indian.  They were minorities… there weren’t very many of them and elementary school was pretty miserable if they had accents.  It’s not that we didn’t like them or that we thought they were bad people; it’s just that they were different.  And I think, as children, we were scared.  The adults less so, but I think they were too.  We didn’t think of them as any less than human beings, with equal rights and everything… but it was their own lifestyle, the life they had lived and the life they had left behind that caused the people in my class to stare when they felt that no one was watching.

And then I watched anime.  Suddenly, a whole new world opened up to me.  A world where girls had magical powers and saved the world from evil aliens.  A world where teenagers piloted giant robots in space and fought epic battle after the other, all while still remaining loyal to the ones they fought for.   As world where an ordinary high school girl discovered she was the catalyst to preventing or begining the destruction of a completely fantastical world.   YTV (a Canadian cartoon channel) was my sanctuary.  It was my escape.

Maybe, out in the world, there was a place where monsters that attacked the city were normal.  The more rational side of my childhood said that was impossible.  And the little kid inside my heart never stopped believing.

Even now.

Manga and anime is how I continue to live my dream.  Pretend that magic really exists.

But I’m out of high school now, and have been for a little while.  Those childish fantasies aren’t going to get me anything but laughed at as I get older and disappointed as I continue aging.

So that’s why I’m here, typing this out at a gas station that graciously has provided Wi-Fi.  I’m out to find the magic of real life.  The magic of escaping the town you were born and heading out on your own.  The magic of the wind against your face and helmet as you tear down the highway.  The magic if seeing an empty stretch of road ahead and wondering if anyone can see you as you throw back your head and laugh so loud that the birds fly off fences and electrical towers as you pass by.

This world is connected to me.  And I am connected to the world.  Every action has a consequence, and I’m tired of living in a world where the consequences are isolated to a small cubicle in the corner of the office.  I want to get out.

I want to live.

Hahaha… I was so nervous on my first day; I don’t really remember much of what happened.  I’m just stopping here, about an hour away from Kamloops, for gas and a lunch/snack.  I haven’t really met too many people yet, but I’ve got about five weeks and to fill up that requirement.  Will probably stop in Kamloops to sightsee, then will move on to Revelstoke and stay there for the night.  Will update there, too (hopefully).

Getting crumbs all over my computer…. shoot.  Hope all of you a doing well!  See you guys soon!

Love,

Tally

episode one: there comes a time when one must realize Canada is a very big place

There comes a time in every girl’s life where she knows that she’s met the man she’s going to marry.  She knows that their pinkies are tied together by a single red thread.  She knows that their destinies intertwine with one another.

The man in question is named Farlow, and I love him.  He goes to school in Toronto and I love him.  He has ginger hair, and I love him.  He has green eyes, and I love him.

“You’re only twenty!”  My parents tell me.  “You still have your entire life ahead of you!”  I know that!  I know!  But Farlow is my life.

Like Misa would follow Light to the ends of the earth (damn… stupid simile), I would do the same for Farlow.  Which is why I’m going to go visit him in Toronto.

Problem is, I live in Chilliwack.  Farlow is on the other side of the second biggest country on earth.  And I hate flying.

I actually can’t do it.

My parents took me and my cousin on a trip to Disneyland when I was seven; I threw up, had seizers and  panic attacks on the way there, and repeated the process oven again on the returning flight.  It took two days after each trip to fully recover (as in, get out of bet and eat).  In fact, I don’t remember Disneyland at all.

It was THAT bad.

But I do have a Vespa.  A yellow Vespa.  A Haruharu Haruko kind of Vespa (though not in the same year or model, but you get the gist).  I’m planning to ride that from ‘the Wack’ all the way to Toronto, and then come back.

Truth be told, I’ve never been past Vancouver in one direction, and Seattle in the other.  This is going to be one heck of an adventure.  Something like Kino’s Journy, but not quite as deep.  This is real life, after all.

This blog is how I’m going to be tracking my progress.  Any of you chickadees want to drop me a line, feel free!  But this is girls only, for the ones that I know!!  No telling Farlow!!!  I’m going to SURPRISE him, okay?!  So if I don’t post every few days, assume that I’ve been in a terrible accident, been kidnapped, killed, or abducted by aliens (which is actually the same thing as kidnapping…).  CALL THE POLICE!!!!

I love you all!

Hugs and kisses,

Tally

PS.

Most of you should have a map of my route, but I’ll put one up soon so that you guys know where I’m headed in case you need to find me.  The only way we can stay in contact is through this blog, and I need you guys to watch out for me!