The Interminable Present
I stood outside of an empty room at the Rodeway Inn of West Hollywood, ready to ride off into the sunset on my bike. It was just about the quintessential dream of any American motorcyclist. Perfect California weather. Plenty of time. Only a vague plan to head north for the summer. But as I looked back into the room, I found tears welling up in my eyes.
My cousin Brian and I had spent a month living in that motel room. He was finishing school. I was there for emotional, physical, and occasionally logistical support. Brian used a wheelchair, and I had volunteered to go with him to L.A. for the last of his film production classes.
My initial plan was to work remotely while helping him with whatever he needed help with. That quickly spiraled into taking a month off of work so that I’d have more free time to help him, and more importantly free time to ride my motorcycle on the glorious roads in and around Los Angeles. That quickly spiraled into taking a six month sabbatical to ride up and down the west coast after Brian’s program ended, taking the time to properly explore highlights all over the west coast: CA highway 1, the Mojave Desert, various national parks, friends from college who moved out there, and anything else I could find. Maybe I'd make it all the way to Portland to visit my sister. Maybe I could bop across the Canadian border for a minute or two. Maybe I could just go all the way to Alaska. Maybe. Maybe. Maybe I should just quit my job.
The planning filled me with excitement. On slow afternoons at work or dull evenings in the dead of my last Chicago winter, I researched way points and by roads, either famed for their beauty or their remoteness. Looking ahead, beyond the immediate concerns of daily life, sustained me for a year leading up to the day Brian and I set out.
I was elated when we finally left Chicago. We had an itinerary, and a time-boxed need to make it to L.A. within a week, before Brian's school started. While he went to classes, I spent more of my time thinking about what I would do after he eventually headed back to Chicago without me, or did the usual errands of grocery shopping and laundry for the two of us. It wasn't all that different from my life in Chicago, except that the weather was a little nicer, and I wasn't getting paid for my daily tasks anymore.
And then he left. And I was alone in the outdoor hallway of a motel in Hollywood, overwhelmed with the sudden singularity of my own existence. I carried hardly anything with me. Seven shirts. As many pairs of socks and underwear. The bare bones necessities to make it one more day. No debt. No kids. No wife or girlfriend. No rent. No job. No more time to research cool destinations for a theoretical vacation. Nowhere to be. Nothing in particular to do. Only the interminable present remained. Like a motel room waiting for its next resident.
