Travels With Stu

“Chris, this can’t be sane. I really think I’ve lost it this time. I mean, it’s 7:30 at night already and I’m just leaving New York. Do you think it’s crazy that I’m driving to Maine? I need to know if I’ve lost it this time,” I rubbed my eyes awaiting Chris’ response. Other than my mom, Chris was the only person in the world who knew I was on my way to Maine that Friday evening. I was looking forward to a 3-day weekend because of it being Easter - even though I don’t celebrate - and I had learned minutes before leaving the office that the office was going to be open. Had I really lost it this time? Was this rational? By driving that far north I was ensuring myself a long weekend trip, possibly even a week-long trip, and work was going to be secondary to my need to leave New York, even only for a few days. I felt trapped in the abysmal hell-hole of Manhattan, and even though I’ve been living a cushy life, it wasn’t the way I wanted to live my life. Yes, I’ve enjoyed working and making some money and becoming a more responsible young adult. And yes, many of my friends and family are happy to see me staying busy and doing OK for myself. But personally, I couldn’t take it any longer and if I was going to be able to work at my utmost ability I needed to give my mind and body a break for a few days RIGHT NOW!

“Ha, ha,” Chris laughed at my predicament. “You’re the only person in the world who would call me and ask me that question. No, you’re not insane, Stu. It’s just Stu being Stu. I think you should head straight for Maine and enjoy a long weekend.”

I couldn’t believe Chris was letting me know that my behavior wasn’t that atypical. For years now I’ve heard the “that’s Stu being Stu,” response, but I don’t know what that means and I don’t think it justifies my actions, whether they be related to traveling or not. But I felt confident that this was the right trip to take at the right time. I needed to get as far away from New York City as I could, and in my mind, Maine was the only ailment to my sickness of the city. I wasn’t going to let anyone know I was going to Maine, because I didn’t want to hear anyone’s comment’s of “Why Maine?” or, “Don’t you have work?” I knew what I needed to do, and I felt completely justified that it was the right decision, regardless of the consequences.

My phone buzzed in my pocket as I looked at my clock on the dashboard, where the clock read 9:30PM. There was no way I was getting to Maine tonight. I picked up my phone, saw that it was an unknown number and excitedly started talking.

“Hi, who’s this?” I spoke into the phone, hoping it was the sexiest woman on the planet wanting to see me for a wild night. Fortunately, the voice was a woman’s, but it didn’t sound that sexy, and she didn’t seem interested in having a wild night.

“This is Pamela at the Bar Harbor Hostel. I got a message from you earlier tonight, and wanted to know when you were planning on arriving,” a middle-aged woman’s voice replied with some curiosity. It was the first days of Spring, but it wasn’t the peak season to visit Maine or Acadia National Park where I was heading. “Were you planning on stopping by tonight?”

I looked out my front windshield and saw that I had just entered Connecticut and saw on my navigation system I still had hundreds of miles to go to get to Maine. How was Maine that far away? How is the U.S. that big of a country? There was no way I was getting to Maine tonight. “I’m currently in Connecticut,” I told the voice on the other line.

“Wow. Where are you coming from? There’s no way you’re going to get hear at a reasonable hour,” the woman’s voice became even more interested in my trip. I must have sounded as if I were fleeing from a murder scene or a crime, and was seeking refuge in the backwoods of Maine. I hadn’t done anything terrible, but I was definitely seeking refuge.

“New York. But I may stop in Boston and make my way towards Maine tomorrow. Is that Ok?” I told the woman as I rubbed my eyes to stay awake behind the wheel. How could I be this tired? I hadn’t even gone running tonight and I was extremely beat. What was this world, this city and my life doing to me to make me feel this way. Things just didn’t seem right. This couldn’t be the life everyone who worked lived on a daily basis. I wanted to believe this, but was realizing that I was probably just thinking wishfully. Everyone worked to pay rent, pay for food, and survive. I worked for the same reasons, but I needed to live my life as well.

“Well, I’m closing shop for the night, but call me when you get nearby Maine tomorrow. I should be in the office after noon,” the phone clicked on the other end. I had made numerous calls to anyone I knew in the Boston area and fortunately found a friend who had an available couch and was pleased to have me over for the evening. Hours later I drove into a suburb of Boston where my friend was living. As I exited my car, my friend from Kenyon was waiting outside to greet me.

“Hey Stu!” Margaret’s face warmed with a smile as we hugged. “I need to do some shopping, so can we head to the grocery store?”

“Sure thing, Margaret. Anything you want,” I told her as we both hopped into my Toyota. “Where are we going?”

“Just the local supermarket - Stop & Shop,” she responded.

“No way,” I retorted as flashbacks poured into my mind. “I used to work at a Stop & Shop in Long Island.” It wasn’t long ago I was scanning hundreds of food items at the local Stop & Shop supermarket in Long Island during my painful job search. Beep! Beep! Beep! Cans, fruits and women’s hygienic products would pass by my scanner on a nightly basis. Sometimes friends from high school would see me and wonder how I was doing. Looks of disappointment, and sometimes pity took over their face when they saw me in my Stop & Shop uniform. I was also writing freelance for a magazine and working as an intern at another magazine, so Stop & Shop wasn’t my only responsibility, but I thought of it as a bridge from vacationing to the professional world. Even though many friends and family members may have not thought the job glamorous, I’ll forever be indebted to that supermarket for helping me re-focus on wanting to get a job. They were the only supermarket, out of the four I applied to, to even call me back for a cashiering position. This memory, plus hundreds of others racked my mind as Margaret and I walked down the food aisles.

We returned to Margaret’s apartment shortly afterwards where I saw a guy with the most interesting looking facial hair sitting on a couch. Brownish-red hair hung down his ears, and very prominent sideburns ran along his face. His mustache was equally as impressive, as I wondered who this guy was and how Margaret knew him.

“Hi, I’m Stu,” I extended my hand, introducing myself to Margaret’s roommate.

“Hi, I’m Bruce,” he said, in a the most relaxed voice I had heard since visiting Ohio in the beginning of February. I had immediately befriended Bruce before we exchanged another word as I yearned for this type of down-to-earth, friendly person who didn’t seem caught in the middle of the rat race lifestyle I was escaping in New York.

“How do you and Margaret know each other?” I asked, eagerly awaiting a response. I still didn’t know what the connection was other than thinking they met over Craig’s List.

“I went to Kenyon. Graduated last May,” Bruce answered.

“No shit! How is that possible? I went to school with you for three years and I never saw you once? I don’t understand,” my eyes lit up, and confusion ran across my face. I didn’t know everyone at Kenyon, but the place was definitely small enough that you’re prone to stumble upon mostly everyone in your class at some point. But I had NEVER seen Bruce before, and couldn’t fathom how that happened. Could have I been that preoccupied at school?

“I stayed in my room a bunch,” Bruce responded, and we left it at that. Bruce was apparently just chilling in Boston with Margaret and amazingly didn’t seem caught up in the craziness of the post-college/Kenyon world my friends and I had fallen victim of. He seemed to be totally complacent living in the outskirts of Boston without a job and not necessarily knowing where he was going or what he was going to do. I loved Bruce because of this, and wished that I’d reach a point where I could feel so at ease with what I was doing with my life, and where I was going.

Everyone was extremely beat from work or lounging around, as Margaret provided me with an ample amount of blankets and pillows and I made myself a comfy bed on their couch. I had been out of New York for less than 12 hours and was already having more fun than I had had in over a month. I needed to get to Maine. I needed to get away. I didn’t understand why it had taken me so long to find this time to finally leave New York, as I wished that this long weekend would never end and I could explore new areas, and meet up with old friends and make new friends until I got older, fell in love, and then share those experiences with whomever that lucky woman would be. But I had a life back in New York I couldn’t abandon because it was too difficult to find a job, and I was trying my damn best to make the most of the opportunity before it ended. Some day I’d have the freedom to go wherever I wanted for however long I wanted, but this wasn’t the time. I’d have to settle for a long weekend, but that was much better than staying in midtown one more night. Anything was better than New York City.

“His manhood shuddered at her glistening body until he entered his wand of pleasure into her moist grotto,” read magnets attached to the refrigerator. What the hell was going on here, and more importantly, what was a grotto? I looked around a kitchen that was undoubtedly not mine and its corresponding unfamiliar apartment. Where was I? A small wooden table with two blue placemats lay near a wall. A sink, dishwasher and counter were nearby the window on the other side of the kitchen. A large wooden baseball bat rested near the door, and a spicy chili zest smell exonerated the air mixing with a pungent mildew and body odor. How did I get to this point in my life and was it where I wanted to be heading? I didn’t feel confident answering such large and looming life questions, but I felt comfortable that I was curing myself from at least one malady that had plagued me for far too long. I needed a break from New York City and my daily routine of waking up, going to work, returning home, going running, eating dinner, reading, writing and sleeping. Day in and day out I followed this schedule with some variations on the weekend. A day trip here and there; an afternoon reading at the bookstore; a night out at the bars and clubs being surrounded by older women – those were my distractions. But even these aberrations seemed repetitive and dismal after seven months. The post-college life had to be more rewarding than the mundane routine I felt trapped in, didn’t it? The reality of the “birth, school, work death” mentality was seeping into my mind and I had to get out now, even for a few days. New England wasn’t too far from New York and it allowed a natural respite to the lifestyle that was polluting my lungs and brain in Manhattan.

“Are you excited about the Earth Day marathon?” I turned to my marathon teammate, Terrell, after grabbing myself a banana covered in a black skin, but which surprisingly contained a white-yellowish interior. A year ago at Kenyon College in Gambier, Ohio, I trained religiously for Kenyon’s Earth Day Marathon Challenge. “Crunch, crunch, crunch.” “Pat, pat pat,” my feet glided over Ohio’s rolling hills and meadows. Although I was graduating in a few weeks without a job or any idea what I was doing with my life, running provided my only solace to the chaotic world around me. Any problems with my girlfriend, or classes, or the post-college life vanished during my daily hour runs through Amish Country’s farmlands and fields. Kenyon may not have provided a lively night scene, or many cultural escapes from academia, but Gambier’s isolation provided a running experience that somehow alleviated the daily stresses and pains of being a college senior. Continuing my training into the summer after I had completed my half marathon relieved the stresses associated with unemployment, uncertainty and loneliness. From June through March running had become a drug to resolve my problems and bring my mind and body back to a happy medium, but my body needed some rest a month before my next marathon. My mind needed new stimulus and some variety.

“I don’t know, actually,” Terrell responded as she poured herself a milkless bowl of cereal. “With work taking up so much time I haven’t been able to properly train. I wish that wasn’t the case, but I’ll try my best to get in shape this month,” she turned from me slogging down her arid cereal before collecting a huge red and puffy winter jacket and her teaching materials. Frustration transfixed her face and even though life seemed to be going well for Terrell, her job was creating stresses that were wearing her thin. I can’t let this happen to me, not now, not ever.

After a night stop in Boston with Terrell I was off to Acadia National Park in Bar Harbor, Maine. Surrounded by vast woods to my left, the Atlantic Ocean to my right, and stuck in the middle of a National Park, I was finally able to take a breathe after a six hour drive from Boston and 12 hours from New York. Climbing over ten-foot rocks, bounding over boulders, crossing glistening streams and walking over thin ice were my new life challenges. Building web pages, writing news stories, making phone calls and dealing with a very tentative professional future were afterthoughts that settled deep in my mind. The sweat that poured down my forehead, and ran over my nose, slowly accumulated with every passing rock. The waves whooshed along the coast, crashing into the rocks creating a white, frothy foam. The wind softly whistled through the trees. Silence surrounded me on all sides except for the crunching leaves and sudden bursts of “Hmph” and “Huff” that spewed out of my mouth.

The weather was neither cold nor warm. Caught in the limbo between winter and spring a nose-numbing breeze blew over the rocks before the suns beams provided minimal warmth. “Pow,” my legs flew out from under me and I lay on the ground, blood seeping out of my elbow and my head shook up after slipping on some ice. Gathering consciousness and stabilizing my body, I climbed down to the rocks below that were being assaulted by the crashing waves.

Acadia in the “Sprinter” may not have been ideal for most visitors, but as I gazed into the setting sun separated by miles from other park dwellers, and hundreds of miles away from New York City I couldn’t imagine a more serene and natural environment to escape to for a weekend trip.