Our flight back to Los Angeles left Panama city this morning at 8:30am. We weren´t on it. After a few days of serious discussion and talking it over with Tucker we´ve decided to stay in Bocas del Toro, Panama and see if we can make a go of working from down here. A few vitals are being shipped down, like laptops, but other than that we´re out here with pretty much only what we brought with us.

This is something I´ve wanted to do for years, get somewhere cool and not look back. And now that I´m actually doing it, I´m not even sure what I´m feeling. Scared, excited, sick to my stomach from too much street meat. Tired, sunburned. I´m sure I´m driving Jeff insane with my constant mood swings. It´s a testament to his patience that he hasn´t stabbed me to death yet.

In other news, I can´t honestly remember how long we´ve been here so I´m switching from days to just labeling these on the dates they were written. It´s unreal how disconnected you can get down here. Yesterday a girl asked me if she missed New Years and I DIDN´T BLINK AT THE QUESTION. That´s Bocas for you. It´s so laid back and the party scene is so intense here that you could concievably miss New Years thinking that it´s just another night. And since they sell professional grade fireworks to anyone here from stalls on the side of the street, it´s not like a fireworks display would tip you off. There have been fireworks every night we´ve been here.

It´s not that NYE isn´t amateur night here. It´s that there are no amateurs.

Since we´ve been in Bocas del Toro numerous people have talked about Wizard´s beach. It´s supposed to be a good surf spot and since the surf was running double overhead stacks (or whatever nonsense surfers are calling 11 foot waves) yesterday Jeff and I figured we´d head out there and watch some surfers.

Now to get to Wizard´s everyone pretty much said ¨just take a water taxi to Bastimentos, it´s easy.¨ Which in my mind is analogous to someone saying ¨oh, you want to go to the mall? just hop in a cab and he´ll drop you off at the front door¨ and what happens? You get out of the cab and you´re in front of the mall. It´s a five foot walk to the door and seconds later you´re eating a Auntie Ann´s pretzel and wondering how you´d look in a new hoodie (Answer? Gangsta, you´d look gangsta).

Now say between the taxi and the entrance to the mall is a 1.2km hike up the side of a hill on a muddy trail in a torrential down pour. Say that hike included fun features such as knee deep mud holes, poison dart frogs, goats tethered to the path, horses wandering back and forth and takes over an hour. You´d include that in the brochure right? I certainly would.

Not in Panama. I´m not sure what horrors these people have endured in their lives that a 1.2km death march doesn´t rate mentioning but believe me, if I ever tell anyone how to get to Wizard´s the first thing coming out of my mouth is BRING YOUR MOUNTAINEERING GEAR AND SAY YOUR PRAYERS.

But despite the fact that I´ll be discussing the aforementioned hike to my therapist next time we talk, Wizard´s is so totally worth it. It´s absolutely picturesque and when Jeff and I first got there, we had the entire beach to ourselves. It was awesome. After about an hour, some of the people from our hostel showed up with a cricket bat and we had a quick game in the surf. I don´t want to imply that I know the game of cricket or that I knew what I was doing, I don´t but neither did anyone else. For a game that is supposed to be popular all over the world, the only person who really understood what was going on was the guy who brought the bat.

One other event rates worth mentioning. So there´s probably 20 of us who hike back to catch the water taxi before it starts getting dark. I´m towards the back of the pack as we get back into town and by the time I get to the dock where the water taxi is, he´s boarding the last couple of people ahead of me. Pay attention to this next part because it´s important. AS I´M WALKING DOWN THE DOCK HE PUTS THE BOAT IN REVERSE AND PULLS AWAY. I´ll stop here so you can picture it. I´m standing on the dock, mud up to my knees, yelling for him to come back. There are twenty people yelling at him ¨una mas! una mas!¨ and he´s just slowly shaking his head as he pulls away AND LEAVES ME STANDING THERE ALONE. Son. Of. A. Bitch. For the sake of the children, I won´t repeat the vile string of words that came out of my mouth as I watched everyone fade into the distance but believe me, I wish I could have had a picture of me standing on that dock, middle fingers in the air, screaming out into the ocean.

In any case, it didn´t matter. The next water taxi came by about ten minutes later.

The isle of Bastimentos is pretty poor. The houses have a ramshackle quality, there is trash pretty much everywhere. So it wasn´t really surprising to come across a group of kids gathered around a homemade ping pong table, playing ping ping with homemade paddles and a crushed coke can for the ball. What makes this weird is on a balcony overlooking this, in a house that clearly had no respect for anything resembling building codes, was a girl working on a Sony laptop.

Then later that day I saw a guy in his early twenties standing barefoot in a muddy unpaved street playing with an iPhone. I have a feeling that the world has gotten a lot weirder since the internet.

Two nights ago was xmas eve and we did a white elephant gift exchange at the hostel. It's funny how people who have made such a conscious choice to be away from friends and family during the holidays come together to celebrate those holidays. In any case, it was a lot of fun and there were probably sixty people who showed up for it. The gifts ranged from the awesome, bottles of rum and fireworks (yes together as one gift). To the funny, coloring books and crayons, a coconut. To the practical, shot glasses. To the bizzare, a red lace bra and panties, spam, toilet paper. Then afterward the hostel did a real American xmas dinner of Turkey, ham, mashed potatoes, green beans and carrots. There were over a hundred people signed up for dinner, it was quiet the affair.

As a side note: In the gift exchange Jeff got the fireworks and a bottle of rum. I ended up with a girl's tank top that probably would have looked cute on the right person but on me made a rather convincing sports bra. Yes, I did trying it on. Luckily the guy next to me got the bra and panties and so I probably didn't look as ridiculous as I could have.

Christmas eve on the island is supposed to the quite the party night but no one could quite figure out where the party was supposed to be. That's Panama for you, all rumor and innuendo. There was a "huge" beach party that everyone was talking about and never materialized and there was a club that their opening night was supposed to be Christmas eve. After swinging by the "beach party" which was four dudes with a six pack, we took a water taxi over there to check out the club and there was maybe 10 people in the whole place, including the bartenders and security. You could tell everyone was sort of standing around just hoping that a crowd of people in a fleet of water taxis were about to materialize out of the darkness but quickly died when it started pouring rain. No one is getting on a water taxi in a torrential down pour. Club Aqua, your opening night = fail.

On Christmas day we woke up late and spent the morning reading and napping in hammocks. Then we took a taxi to playa de mango and spent the afternoon reading and napping in different hammocks. Then, I'm not sure what happened. I got hit with the worst bout of homesickness I've ever had. All I wanted to do was go home and curl up in bed and watch tv and sleep which, of course, wasn't going to happen. People, I don't get homesick often, but when it happens, it happens bad. We were waiting for a taxi to take us back to the hostel and I was considering just lying down in the road and calling it quits. I figured, "it's been a good life, at least if I die here, I won't have to endure another night of sleeping pressed against the ceiling, suffering from altitude sickness in that damn bunk bed."

I think Jeff could see the defeat in my eyes and although he's pretty much set on killing me on this trip, he saved my damn life last night. When we got back to the hostel he ran out to a chino (what they call the small convenience stores down here because, no shit, they're ALL run by chinese people) and got me dorritos, a coke and a bottle of rum. Then he set me up with his video iPod so I could watch reruns of Seinfeld. It was like a homesickness survival kit. I'm sure that today he'll do something nasty like find a six hour trek through the jungle that we just have to do, but he gets a gold star for friendship for last night.

In the little research we´ve done about things to do in and around Bocas, Jeff found a guy who for a few bucks will take us on a tour through a cave he found.

Think about that for a moment. In any civilized country on the planet you simply can´t find a cave then start dragging tourists with you to check it out. There´s something called liability and insurance and permits and licensing and safety regulations. Not here in Panama. Strap on a head lamp and you´re good to go.

So to see the cave goes something like this. Take a water taxi to the island of Bastimentos. Find a bar called Roots and ask for Oscar. Make arraignments with Oscar and you´ve just booked yourself a cave tour.

This morning we woke up and it was sort of raining although not really. Seeing as how the beach was out, we figured we´d find Oscar and see about this caving expedition. We took the water taxi to Bastimentos and getting off the dock we turn right and start walking. Sounds good right? Then we hit a little crossroads, the street goes into the interior of the island and there is a narrower street that continues along the waterfront. Jeff consults the map, gives a confident nod and we stay along the water. Soon this street turns into some wooden planks laid over mud then the planks disappear and we`re on a muddy path. Then the path disappears and we´re walking over mounds of trash that have washed up on the island. Seriously. We were walking over an open landfill. Then the trash disappears and we´re walking on ... marsh? I´m not entirely sure what we were walking through but it was muddy and wet and smelled like death everything I took a step. Then we hit a patch that was overgrown with trees and our choices are start swimming or turn back. Luckily as we had camera equipment with us, Jeff deemed that it was alright that we turn back and ask. Had we not had that equipment I´m sure he would have just suggested we swim to the next dock over to continue looking for this bar.

So we turned around and brave the marsh and trash and mud ONLY TO FIND OUT THAT WE TURNED THE WRONG WAY WHEN WE LEFT THE DOCK. And while Jeff claims that he read the map right and that the bar or one of the landmarks must have moved, I THINK WE ALL KNOW WHOSE FAULT THIS IS. Yeah, so maybe a hundred meters from where we originally had gotten off the water taxi and half way up a hill we find Roots. And Oscar is gone for a couple of days, no word when he`ll be back.

I`m not entirely convinced that all this wasn´t on purpose. Jeff`s been getting antsy the last couple of days as there aren`t any steep hills here on Bocas that he can run to the top of with reckless abandon. I think that he thinks that I´m getting too comfortable. For example. This morning we find a water taxi to Bastimentos. Now the docks that these taxis pull up to aren´t anything special but at least they´re proper docks and are at least a couple of feet wide. Not the one Jeff found. This was one board about ten feet long and a foot wide that ran to another board that was maybe ten feet long and six inches wide. Of course, he looks at this, shrugs and walks over to the boat. I´m stuck standing there looking at Jeff then back at the guy running the taxi, then at Jeff then at the guy. And everyone is looking at me like what are you waiting for, walk the scary plank. Finally I inched my way over to the taxi and believe me, the look I gave the guy didn´t need any translation. It said NOT HAPPY.

I´ve gone back and replied to some of the comments in the Panama entries. Internet access being what it is, I don´t always have a chance to get to your comments right away but I will get to them eventually. Also, the quality of the computers down here can vary greatly so please excuse spelling errors, typos and the like. These keyboards are laid out differently than I´m used to so mistakes get made.

Thanks, keep reading and commenting. I enjoy hearing from you.

Last night we arrived on the Isle de Colon in Bocas del Toro. Everything Jeff and I had read about Bocas del Toro said that we`d get sucked in and wouldn´t want to leave. And when you read that about a place fifty or sixty times you start to hate the place for no good reason, even before you get there.

This place is a sleepy little beach town just like every other beach town you´ve ever been to in the third world. It consists mainly of four main streets, several hostels and hotels, bars, restaurants, water taxis, internet cafes and more bars. And the number of people either passing through or spending a few months easily rivals the number of locals. The whole town is super laid back. When we arrived we had a list of things we wanted to do. That list is currently in the bottom of Jeff´s pack and we´ve spent our time wandering the streets just doing as little as possible.

You get the feeling that every once in a while Panama gives itself a great shake and all those who are backpacking around the country fall here and find no reason to leave. And since you can get by on basically $20 a day, there might not be a reason to leave.

We`ve managed to score two beds at the Mondo Taitu hostel which the Lonely Planet gushed so much about I can only assume the author either got laid or fell in love there. Apparently finding space right now is a bit of a challenge. When we booked this little trip, I had assumed that Panama would be empty of backpackers as people would want to be home with friends and family. Not so. This place is crawling with people looking to avoid awkward discussions over christmas dinner and yet another sweater they have to pretend to like.

What this means from a practical standpoint is that while we managed to score space, I´m stuck on the top bunk of a bunk bed. If you know me at all, you know that I do not posses a body that is meant for graceful acts of balance five or six feet off the ground. Getting in and out of bed has become a daily routine of terror and I´ll be happy when some of this people clear out so I can go back to dwelling on the ground.

What more than makes up for the lack of hot water and sleeping amongst the jungle canopy is the bar. The bar at Mondo Taitu is legendary. Beer is 1.25, they have drink specials every night, the place is always packed with backpackers looking to get a cheap buzz and everyone is just there to have a good time. I`ve never seen a friendlier crowd of people anywhere in the world.

I guess this is all a very long way of saying that even though I wanted to hate on this place, that´s almost impossible. So I´m warning you now. Do not come to Bocas del Toro, you´ll get sucked in and won´t want to leave. But if you can swing $20 a day, you might not have to.

A few people asked if Jeff or I speak spanish. The short answer is no. Neither of us are remotely fluent in spanish.

The longer answer is still no but sort of. We know a handful of phrases, mostly related to ordering food, telling taxi drivers where we want to go and checking into hostels. The moment anyone tries to engage us in conversation we´re pretty much lost. Jeff´s spanish is better than mine as he can usually understand what people are saying to him. While I can formulate a sentence, people here speak too fast and with too much of an accent for me to pick up any sort of reply.

We get by with a mixture of lucky, apology and pantomiming. Seriously people, you haven´t lived until you´ve seen me communicate nonverbally that I need to buy a phone card. That´s some oscar level shit right there.

We`re also picking up a lot along the way. We both took spanish in high school and even in the last ten days, a lot has come back to me. Given enough time here being surrounded by it every day I´m pretty confident that I´d be mad fluent. But for now I end up saying mi espanol es muy mal, los siento (my spanish is very bad, I´m sorry) a lot.

Man, this place makes Haiti look like Trinidad - Jeff

Today we took a water taxi to the island of Taboga. Its the closest thing to a real beach as you can find near Panama City. We walked around a bit but there wasnt much to see as Taboga has a rather interesting history. Here is what the Lonely Planet has to say.

Taboga is part of a chain of islands that were inhabited by indigenous peoples who resided in thatch huts and lived off the bounty of the sea. In 1515 Spanish soldiers announced their arrival on Taboga by killing or enslaving he islanders and establishing a small colony.

On August 22, 1686, the ship of Captain Townley was lying in front of Taboga when it was attacked by three Spanish ships armed with cannons. During the ensuing battle, Townley destroyed one of the ships and took the other two captive as well as a fourth ship that had arrived as reinforcement. Afterwards, Townley sent a messenger to the president of Panama demanding supplies, the release of five pirates being held prisoner and ransom for the Spanish captives. When the president refused to send anything other than medicine, Townley sent him a canoe that contained the heads of twenty Spaniards. All of the Townley´s demands were immediately met.

As late as 1819, Taboga was still sought after for its strategic location, a fact made abundantly clear when the pirate Captain Illingsworth and his party of Chileans sacked the island and killed most of its inhabitants.

During the 1880s, when the French too a stab at digging a canal across the isthmus, Taboga became the site of an enormous sanatorium for workers who had contracted malaria or yellow fever. The Island of Flowers might well have earned its name from all the flowers placed on graves here.

And finally, the US Navy used the broad hill facing town for artillery practice during WWII.

You cant help but think, ¨Wow, these people really drew the short straw.¨ And while peace is supposedly come to the island you can see that most people there are thinking ¨If the next boat over that horizon even looks unfriendly, we´re headed for the hills. Let them kill the tourists for a few hundred years.¨

But even with limited things to see, Jeff found a cross that was mounted on the highest hill on the island and immediately suggested that the view up there would be ¨Just awesome for pictures.¨ Normally that would have me running but not today, people. IT DIDNT WORK. I was totally ¨Eh, I´m over it, let´s just drink beers on the beach¨ and he was all ¨ok.¨ I vetoed a hill climbing expedition and it actually worked. I guess even on Taboga, miracles happen.

And so drink beers on the beach we did. For a few bucks a piece we got a beach umbrella a couple of chairs and a guy who would occasionally run over to the bar and bring us icy cold beers. AT 65 CENTS A PIECE. You can´t buy a bottle of water here for less than a dollar. These people have their priorities straight and you have to love a place that doesn´t know to mark up the beer even when they´re getting it for you. Even with the umbrella though, I managed to burn myself to a crispy finish.

And I would like to officially take back anything nice I said about the driving here. Today our taxi driver, being stuck in traffic, thought it would be appropriate to pull out of his lane INTO A LANE MEANT FOR ONCOMING TRAFFIC and just cruise for two or three hundred meters before pulling back onto the correct side of the road. And I was all about just thinking that we had the one taxi driver who had clearly eaten too many peppers and had lost his mind except that as we were sitting there in traffic, I looked to my left and an SUV was innocently trying to merge in behind us after having done the same damn thing. Panama, you fooled me for a while but I get it, you´re just as crazy as your Latin American cousins.

This place is ruined - Ben

Today we saw Panama Viejo, founded August 15, 1519 and was the first European settlement along the Pacific. For about 150 years it must have been really nice and served as a pipeline to move Peruvian gold to Spain. Now, there´s nothing left but ruins because in 1671, Captain Morgan (of spiced rum fame) and 1200 pirates sacked the city. If the thought of 1200 pirates doesn´t do it for you, then how about this: They ruined the city so badly that insead of rebuilding, the Spanish just moved the whole mess east and the original city lay abandoned for 300 years. Or maybe the sacking just gave the Spanish an excuse to move because the original city is built on insect infested marshland. Either way. Awesome.

Now there´s a historical site where part of Panama Viejo used to be which encompasses part of the ruins. The rest of the ruins you ask? Oh they´re surrounded by Panamanian slums. It´s surreal to look down a street and see houses built from corrugated metal and scraps of wood with 500 year old stone walls between them. Walking from the historical site to the museum we were told to stay close to the road because if we got too close to the town, muerto. And we had a bike cop follow us for most of the way. Whatever I´ve said about cops in the past, I take it all back. Thanks for keeping me alive.

Being that it is a marsh, I had hoped for an easy day but true to form Jeff found a fifty foot tower and within minutes of arriving I was sweating my way to the top while he ran the stairs for fun. It´s alright though, he still hasn´t managed to kill me and the view might have been worth it. I won´t know until I get the pictures back as I was lightheaded from exertion.

While we´re on the subject of Jeff, he´s found a rather insidious way to motivate me into doing things I´m not naturally inclined to do. He´ll quietly say something like ¨I think you could get a better picture from up there¨ and since i´m all about the photos I´m off and running before I´ve had a chance to properly think things through. Today, in addition to a fifty foot tower in Panama Viejo, he had me climbing a twelve foot signal light tower on the causeway at the entrance of the Panama canal.

I know I said last time that the driving here is the safest I´ve seen yet in Central America. I might have to revise that opinion. Today, after a particularly scary run down a four lane highway in which the other drivers ignored the lane lines completely I saw our taxi driver cross himself twice and offer an under-the-breath prayer to god. I can only wonder how many close calls he has in a day.

Tomorrow we´re on a water taxi to an island. Then we fly north to Bocas Del Toro. The five day sailing trip didn´t work out due to weather and we´ve seen just about everything there is to see in Panama City. We don´t know where we´re staying yet in Bocas Del Toro because none of the hostels I called take reservations. They all assure me that there will be space however so I assume that means they´re lying and we´ll be huddled on the beach at night like vagrants.

Panama? I hardly know her - Jeff

While I´m having a good time down here, I did forget to mention one thing that creeped me out. Down in Casca Viejo there were four pre-pubescent girls dancing without shirts on. One of them was just old enough to need a training bra and standing around them in a loose circle were three American men in their 70s or so taking pictures. Welcome to the Latin American sex trade. Leave your dignity at the doorway.

Today we took a local bus to the Miraflores Locks at the Panama canal. I wish I could take a moment here and tell you how awesome we are for figuring out the local bus system but we didn´t. We simply found a korean guy staying in the hostel who was headed there and followed him. Afterwards, having braved the bus system once, we hopped in a taxi and headed for El Parque Natural Metropolitano. Being out in nature with Jeff is something of a mixed blessing. Most of the time I´m content to simply absorb the wildlife, preferably from a bench within maybe 100 or so yards of the entrance to the park. Jeff on the other hand likes to find a steep hill and sprint up it. He failed to kill me however and I got some good shots of wildlife and of Panama City.

A note about taxis: The taxi system here has been a real blessing. They are everywhere and we can get anywhere in the city (except the airport) for no more than 7 dollars. That´s 3.50 a piece, people. The last time I was in Central America, there was real value in riding a bus. The drivers in Mexico, Guatemala and Belize drove as if traffic laws were a personal affront to their pride and from everything I could see, they took great pleasure in never obeying a single one. So you wanted to be in the biggest, heaviest vehicle possible. But in Panama people regard the traffic laws as a friendly suggestion and I´ve been pleasantly surprised to find that our drivers do things like stop at red lights and stop signs, slow down when approaching intersections and blind curves, never try and pass on two lane roads with on coming traffic or blow their horn, close their eyes, floor the accelerator and assume everything will work out for the best. I´m not going to go as far as calling these people good drivers, an American insurance company wouldn´t cover the rosary hanging from the rear view mirror, but they don´t drive like their testing their faith in god either. Small victories, people. Small victories.

The Lonely Planet said the neighborhood of Casca Viejo was in the process of gentrification and that it´s the only place in Panama city that you can still get a feel for the colonial architecture so it shouldn´t be missed.

What the Lonely Planet doesn´t tell you is that Casca Viejo sits next to the worst slum in Panama city and that going out at night isn´t advisable, going above thirteenth street isn´t advisable, and that there are police on every street corner to keep the tourists safe from the locals.

Instead I found all this out from a nervous kid on a college outreach program who was staying in the hotel I had booked Jeff and I into. That first night he regaled us with statements like:

¨Don´t go out at night or you´ll get mugged¨

¨My professor got chased by a guy who yelled at him to give him his money¨

¨If you go above thirteenth street, you´ll get shot¨

¨You can´t even trust the taxi drivers at night. We´re only allowed in a taxi with our advisors¨

¨My professor heard gunshots all night long the other night¨

The hotel itself lent the kid an air of authority. When I had booked it online the picture of a double was what you´d expect a hotel to look like. Two beds in a room with a dresser and the description of the room mentioned a private bathroom. What we got was a square room with a double bed and a window that opened on a trashed interior courtyard. Bathroom down the hall. It looked exactly like what you´d expect a third world flophouse to look like. I guess I should have known, or at least suspected, as it cost us $7.50 per person a night. I guess I´m a sucker for a good deal.

Luckily I´d only paid for two nights so we´ve made the jump from Casca Viejo to the banking district. It´s a better neighborhood with lots of night life and really good restaurants. So we´re no longer confined to our hotel after sunset.

To be fair to Casca Viejo, we didn´t hear one running gun battle the two nights we were there. And we spent a fair amount of time hanging out there without problems. I think the professors were maybe doing a little bit of a scared straight thing on their students but it doesn´t mean that we didn´t move as soon as possible. The better part of valor and all that.

Nate called it traveler's disease. It was that headspace you got to after a while on the road, where it was hard to stay in one place. When you'd come to expect something new and novel and surprising out of every day.

I met Nate the week before classes started freshman year. We were both recent transplants to Tucson and since we didn't really know what we were supposed to be doing with our time until classes started we spent our days talking to girls, hanging out with a couple of punk rock kids who were juniors and wandering around campus, bored out of our minds. That first week we'd end up spending a lot of time in the laundry mat, only because it was one of the few places open all night, and debating the relative hotness of the girl who worked third shift at 7-11.

Classes started and while I was busy failing my way through a calculus class that I had no business being in, Nate decided that he wasn't really about school and bounced for Seattle.

The first time he was back to visit, I didn't really get where his head was at. And he wasn't the type to try and explain it. He was one of those annoying people who was more interested in getting out and living life than talking about. So while the rest of us were content to do the college freshman thing, hanging around the dorms and bullshitting, he was itching to do something. He knew things, like what freight trains you could ride safely and which ones you could die on because of the length of the tunnels they went through. This was not the kind of wisdom that a middle class upbringing imparted and we loved him for it. Not that any of us would go on to become hobos and ride the rails but just being able to recite that information made us edgy and cool to the kids we parroted it to.

He did say one thing to me that stuck with me during that trip. I was asking him how it was in Seattle. He was living out of his car while trying to pull enough money together to get an apartment. What he said was "Seattle is whatever, but for the first time in my life I have something to say. Instead of just going through the 'what's your major / where are you from' bullshit, I finally have something worth talking about."

Then he was back in Seattle and I was busy failing out of college so things sort of just bumped along for a while. He found a place to live. I found myself at a community college.

One night I got in my car and drove from Tucson to San Diego. I don't remember how I ended up in the car that night but I found myself driving north on the highway when I saw a sign for I8 West to San Diego and took the exit. I told myself that it was an adventure, that I'd watch the sun rise over the ocean. It wasn't until the sun actually came up, behind me, that I realized I was on the wrong coast.

And the adventure part sucked. I slept on the beach that night and when I woke up I was sandy and damp and tired. I wasn't looking forward to the drive back and whatever clarity I'd hoped to find had eluded me.

There was no one in my life I could even talk to about it. The semester had just ended and I was splitting my time between working the counter at Jack in the Box and hanging out with some kids who talked incessantly about starting a band, even though none of us ever bothered to pick up an instrument.

It was an awesome time to be alive. I was hopelessly twisted over a girl with whom things never worked out, a bunch of friends I didn't really like and a job in fast food. I'd just managed to fail my way into community college and even my adventures left me cold, damp and wishing I'd stayed in bed.

A wiser person would have taken a step back, reevaluated their life, chosen a direction and starting working towards something positive. I stronger person would have taken responsibility for where their life was and known they could have fixed it. I packed up a weeks worth of clothing, called Nate and drove to Seattle. In the face of great adversity, I took the path of least resistance and ran.

That summer I caught traveler's disease bad and I finally understood where Nate's head was at. It wasn't about the miles traveled, I spent most of my time walking around Seattle just getting a feel for the city and the freedom of doing something on my own for the first time in my life. I had no job, I wasn't in school, I had cool roommates and enough money to afford a 40oz now and again. I fell in love with a girl who worked in a coffee shop and had white ink tattoos and kept a hedgehog in her apartment. It was the first time in my life that my future was uncertain, without a clean, time-lined road map laid out in front of me on letterhead that read "What You Should Be Doing."

I'm not sure what I was looking for in Seattle or even if I was running away from my problems or towards an adventure. I do know that Seattle was good for me. It was the first time in my life I did something on my own and while my parents were horrified that I was throwing my future away, it seemed to me that the future held nothing but promise. It was an awesome time to be alive.

Just recently a friend asked if I thought all the traveling I'm doing this year was me running from my problems. I don't know that I have an answer to that. In the eleven years since I left Seattle I don't know that I've figured out if travel is a hobby, an escape or if it's me running toward an adventure. It's probably a bit of all three. My own private pathology and I'm sure that one day I'll make a therapist very rich figuring out why I do the things I do. I know I'm happiest when I'm traveling and when I'm writing. And so disease or not, I'll take the travel when and where I can get it.

I wish I knew what happened to Nate. After a few months in Seattle the urge to go caught up with me and I left. At 19 I wasn't the letter writing type and after a year or so we weren't in contact any longer. If you know a kid named Nate who lived in Renton Washington right off of Martin Luther King about 11 years ago, tell him to email me. I probably owe him a beer or two.

I leave for Panama this week and I'll be gone through the New Year. I hope to have internet access, so look for an update or two in this space. And of course, lots and lots of pictures when I'm back in the US.

Decided to step away from the computer for a few hours today, found this guy out hunting.

In ninth grade I sat next to a kid named Andrew who, had his interests run in a different direction, could have probably played varsity football but really only loved the beat up black notebook he carried everywhere with him.

That first period biology class was my introduction to the world of graffiti. For forty-five minutes a day I watched Andrew tag everything he could reach. He'd work something through in his book, then pull a paint marker out of his bag and go to town on the black-topped tables we sat at. I'd watch him pour himself into a tag that would take up half the table, only to get called in for detention later that day to clean the desk. I watched him tag the table legs, the floor tiles, the textbooks. I'm pretty sure that, had I fallen asleep in class, he'd have dropped a quick stylized "drew" on the back of my neck, just for the fuck of it.

I liked Andrew because he knew who he was. Graffiti for him was a lifestyle, an identity. While the rest of us were sweating memorizing the male and female reproductive systems, Andrew had a singularity of focus that most of us wouldn't find for years, if ever. It would take me ten years to find something I loved like Andrew loved writing graffiti.

For a kid like me, a recent transfer from a private Jewish middle school to a public high school, identity was a big deal. Caught between those two worlds and not fitting into either, I did the only thing I thought I could do. I spent hours trying to write graf. I bought a black notebook and a bunch of markers and tried to come up with some ill shit that would give me entry into that world. But no matter how long I spent, or how nice Andrew was about my vestigial art skills, it was clear that I was never going to run with the kids Andrew ran with. And they weren't nice about it. I was a joke, a toy, a failure, a loser.

As much as their disdain hurt, for forty five minutes a day I got to watch Andrew work his magic across whatever surface he could lay his paint markers on. I don't know why Andrew liked me, maybe I was funny, maybe simply because I sat next to him and he knew I wasn't about to sell him out. Whatever it was, it didn't matter to me. I learned more from watching him then I ever could have from those biology lectures.

As the year went on, things only got crazier. Some mornings he'd show up at school with bloodshot eyes and paint on his hands. He'd tell me about some billboard or bridge or building he'd hit the night before. Then, with a sort of self-satisfied smile on his lips, he'd fall asleep on the desk. Some mornings he'd show up with bruises on his face talking about getting jumped by rival crews.

This wasn't just captivating to me. Half the class would be turned in their desks listening to him talk. On the days that he was early to biology, he'd get peppered with questions about what had gone down the night before. Or if he was going to cut that day. Or, or, or. We'd ask him anything, just to keep him talking.

Of course, as the year went on, shit only escalated. Whatever vandalism happened in the school, it was Andrew and the friends that got called for it. Whether it was someone spray painting a burner across the lockers in the two hundred hall (obviously them) to someone popping a canister of pepper spray in the eight hundred hall (obviously not them) they were the ones who got called into the deans office first. And the more they got called into the office the more we loved them for it. Andrew was someone. In a school of three thousand plus students, people knew who he was. Say "Andrew" and no one had to ask who you were talking about.

I wish I knew what happened to that kid. I wish I could say that he was headed to art school but honestly, I don't even know if he was interested in art school. Freshman year of high school doesn't inspire a lot of "so, what are you thinking of doing when you graduate?" It wouldn't be until four years later, my freshman year of college, when I'd stand around like an asshole in training hitting people with the "so, what's your major, what do you want to do when you graduate?" combo.

And by my tenth grade year, my mom had moved us to a new neighborhood and that meant a new high school. Once we moved, I didn't really think a lot about Andrew. I had entirely new social circles to navigate, new friends to make, new trouble to get into. Removed from his influence my interest in writing graffiti faded to be replaced with music, girls, computers and the occasional joint or 40oz when I could get my hands on it.

But even though I didn't think a whole lot about Andrew the lesson had already wormed it's way into my brain. Find one thing you love, be brilliant at it and nothing else will really matter.

And I still have a soft spot in my heart for graffiti.