New York, New York

I had looked to the New York skyline as symbol of freedom from my Greyhound’s extra-terrestrial climate, and shortly after scooting over the Hudson River I was fully immersed in the freedom.

Another one of my favorite people in the world and good friends, MK, had kindly got a job on the south side of the Empire State building so his office was my first stop in town. It wasn’t a bad welcome to town to stare out the window beside his desk and see all of Manhattan and the distant Statue of Liberty exchange the orange glow of the sun for the dazzling sparkle of countless city lights. And it sure beat having to struggle with the touristic herds that are funneled through mandatory cheesy photo booths and ticket stations to get a view from the observation deck.

But I wasn’t in New York to observe, I was there to experience. Most of my friends from university had ended up congregating in this concrete jungle of a town and I was eager to act like fools with them again. So after a brief run over to Roosevelt Island to drop off my things at MK’s, we zipped on down to Union Square to see the rest of the gang.

As I recall, we didn’t get up to anything too much that night; sure we went to a club after the point when we didn’t need to pay cover charge, didn’t order any drinks (I think one of us even brought his own flask), and were a complete drain on the quality of the establishment, but we didn’t need to do that much. With just a room and the right combination of people, it’s possible to have as amazing a time as would be possible on any adventure in any corner of the planet. There are a few rooms and a few groups of people peppered around, mainly in Canada and the USA, that have provided me with more happiness than have entire countries of rooms filled with people.

After a couple of days, I was able to remember that what really fascinates me about New York is that it truly does have it all. I’ve never seen a place that has the highs and the lows so seamlessly integrated. A simple commute through town can demonstrate the variety of the city with ease. After a delightful brunch with the boys, MK and I hopped on a subway back to Roosevelt Island. About 3 stops in, the doors opened and a severely disgruntled woman who was Kung Fu gripping her crotch began Walking Dead shuffling her way towards our car. The closing doors alarm began to sound and she was able to scurry just quick enough to make it inside. Instantly, the car filled up with the strongest stale human urine smell I have ever come across, and I spent 3 days on an Indonesian ferry that had urine raining down from lifeboats.

At the next stop everybody, except said lady, stood up and made a break for fresh air and to switch cars. It is however, apparently, New York etiquette to not warn any of the new passengers about the imminent assault to their senses. Instead everyone streams past and leaves newcomers to their own fate. That meant that I was helpless to notify one of the most attractive, well put-together, purposeful woman I had ever seen from what she was walking into, and instead could only turn around and watch her sit down across from the Kung Fu grip and then immediately stand back up and bolt for the far end of the car.

We were all discombobulated from this affair so ended up missing the right connection and had to take the tramway to Roosevelt Island, instead. So we were lifted from the underbelly of the city, over the yellow cab-filled streets, and into the sky. Fresh air and snowflakes surrounded us as we carted across the East River, and the lights from countless skyscrapers, including the United Nations streamed into the tram.

The next night we had arranged to have a final dinner down in Union Square before we all needed to go home for the holidays. On the way there I decided that I should fit in at least a little bit of sightseeing while I was in town. So I made a loop to see the Christmas tree and skating rink in front of the Rockefeller Center and lights of Time Square. The illuminated tree in front of the more brightly illuminated 30 Rock, along with the constant glare of nearby Times Square’s advertisements were magnificent sights, and the problem with that was, of course, that people like magnificence. Every attempt at movement was met with elbow jabs to the side and every peek through a camera’s viewfinder revealed a stream of people too eager to snap a photo to stay out of mine.

Strolling through Union square to the boys’ place, I passed by a man standing on a street corner with an entire bottle of whiskey, gaily getting drunk and telling the world about it. A genuine look of joy was on his face as he blasted through the bottle and belted out his thoughts. After meeting up and heading out to dinner, the man was still there happier and prouder than ever in his choice of activity for the night.

I was pretty pleased with our slightly tamer plans for the evening of just eating some food. I spent about 10 times my average cost for a meal over the past year, but it was a special occasion. It’s awfully handy having friends dotted around the world when you’re travelling, but it’s awfully inconvenient at every other time, and I was just days away from being in that other time.

As we parted ways and headed to the subway, we passed by the same man whose multi-hour drink-a-thon was coming to an abrupt end when the police showed up to ask him what in god’s name he was doing. As we walked by I could see the man giving the cops an innocently puzzled is-this-not-normal-behaviour face.

My personal New York celebration also came to a crashing and depressing halt on my last day there. Everybody was flooding from town for the holidays, MK had already flown back to Zimbabwe and now I was in New York, alone (aside from the 16 million other people). Not only were my friends skipping town but my journey was nearly over. My entire way of life would be coming to an end the next morning when I would be standing in the Toronto bus station. I thought my idea of going around the world was a pretty good one, and I had enjoyed it. But now it would be all over? Just like that?

I jogged through Central Park hopping the snow covered trees, and frozen over lakes would shock the joy back into me, but to no avail. Eventually the night came and it was time to find my ride out of town. I hopped back on the Roosevelt Tramway for one last soar through the sky, dropped every last remaining cent I had on a burrito (a delicacy that is unfortunately not found all around the world), and with beans and hot sauce churning around my innards, I stepped into my bus. The final 10 hours of my world tour would be inside of another Greyhound.

The Cruise: Day 9-15, Crossing the Atlantic

With nothing but sea days ahead of me until I reached Florida, I realized I would have to make a serious change in my approach to the cruising situation. There would be no moret ports to visit and the facilities on the ship weren’t going to change, so I’d have to up my efforts in searching for some people to hang out with who wouldn’t assume I’m staff and try to tip me for talking to them.

My initial sleuthing for conversations turned up some promising results in unexpected places, mainly my dinner table. The brash American couple turned out to be just one brash American drowning out an interesting one. In the odd moments when the wife wasn’t bragging about how great her children are, how refined her musical tastes are, or how well she lies to her high school students, the husband was able to sneak in the odd great story.

It turns out that he was a veteran who has served two full tours of duty in the Korean War. During one of his leaves in Japan, he and a buddy went to bar that GIs generally didn’t patronize and they turned out to be the only foreigners in the place. A man from a large group of local Japanese came over, picked up a shot glass with some chopsticks, and threw back a bit of sake. There was a complete language barrier, but the man was able to communicate a sort of “can you do that?” Now my American dinner-mate had been taught by his father how to use chopsticks (not a common thing for a white American family in the ‘40s, I’d imagine) so he confidently grabbed his own sake with a pair of chopsticks and downed a hefty dose of sake. Immediately he became a celebrity and his money was no longer any good at that bar, but his new friends made sure that sake flowed all night. Now that’s a story! Just as he was about to start another one, he was silenced by his wife who had to impart some haughty information about her greatness.

My greatest find for more friends on board, however, came when I stumbled across Shannon and John who were also pretty young (I’m guessing 38-45) and suffering from the age gap-induced boredom. Not only did we have that in common, but it turned out they had also been hassled by the same neo-Nostradamus prophet loon back in Tauranga. They too had been innocently strolling through town when the bearded bicyclist magically appeared and began haranguing them with his predictions about the pope and why Putin was going to launch the nukes. It may have taken me a year to get around this world, but it’s still small enough for me to meet some people on a boat in the middle of the Atlantic who had met the same prophesier in a small town in New Zealand.

In addition to sharing experiences, Shannon and John also shared a passion for travel. In fact, they made me look like a travelling rookie. Not only had Shannon previously moved her way from China to America (she thought she’d never have to work again when she arrived and that the streets would be lined with gold, but then she found herself working at Walmart) but they were currently 2 years into 4 years of travel. After selling their home and everything in it, they’d managed to trot the globe and find some cheap housing by pet-sitting. They’d even found free accommodation by looking after and bottle-feeding baby kangaroos in Australia. How did I not hear of this until my trip was almost over!

They also let me in on the gossip that by the mid-Atlantic, at least 3 people on the ship had died. With the advanced average age of the passengers, combined with the increased stress of a rocking boat, I guess it’s a fairly normal occurrence on a transatlantic cruise. I remember my roommate Peter pointing out at one of our ports of call that there was an ambulance waiting for one, or several, of our fellow cruisers, but I suppose ambulances are luxuries reserved for landlubbers. If you go at sea, they must just through you on ice in the bottom of the ship until the ride is over.

My last major source of camaraderie had died on the ship himself, but only on the inside. An Australian fellow had quit his lucrative personal training position in Sydney to come work on this cruise ship, only to discover it was the worst decision he had ever made. He was able to be completely candid with me because he was hoping that he would get fired as soon as possible. His sole source of income was from selling supplements and fitness equipment to passengers, and since retired folks generally don’t slam back massive protein shakes after crushing the bench press, his two months of work had earned him about $64. It wasn’t like he was being particularly challenged, either. “Most of the time passengers just ask me why their headphones aren’t working,” he lamented, “or they look into the rubbish bin, see rubbish, and then ask me if it’s a rubbish bin. I used to be a semi-professional athlete!” His biggest challenge came from finding ways of taking long extended breaks without being noticed, and he seemed to be tackling that problem with ease.

“It could be worse,” he admitted “I could be working almost any other job on board.” He had a relatively cushy job reserved for citizens of developed countries, whereas almost every other crew member was from a poor nation and had to be on duty for at least 13 hours every day without any days off. The cabin stewards only had a 3 hour break at lunch and a 6 hour break at night. I hope they’re fine operating on just 5 hours of sleep, forever. For some reason, they change the sheets on the beds twice a day. Can’t we be satisfied with heavily soiling our sheets just once every day to allow these workers an extra hour of slumber?

I got into the routine of cruising eventually, hanging out with my new buddies and eating reasonable amounts of the incredible culinary treats (several passengers on board had decided upon the unreasonable approach and around the pool I saw many distended guts topped off with navels that had been thrust from innies into outies). I had even taken the extra time available on board to floss my teeth, something I had probably done 6 times in the previous 11 months. As I stared at the chunks the floss had flung onto the mirror, I had a terrible realization: real life and responsibility was approaching. My trip would soon be over and I would need to worry about things like jobs, paying rent, and even buying Windex to clean off the bits of food I would eventually spatter against a mirror.  

I made my way to the top deck to reflect on my coming integration back into society, and spotted several lights poking over the horizon; the marine traffic was beginning to increase as we approached the shores of civilization. The glow from distant Bahamian towns lighting up the night sky were definite signals of my imminent arrival in the USA. Only one more country was now between me and Windex levels of responsibility.

The Cruise: Day 7, Lanzarote

I was spared another day at sea by our arrival on Lanzarote, in the Canary Islands. Lanzarote is the easternmost member of the Spanish chain of islands, and is more or less a giant chunk of volcanic wasteland. Violently formed pumice and ocean cooled magma are in abundance, but vegetation and other forms of natural life are not. Even the defunct farms I trolled past were for harvesting salt from the sea rather than food from the land. Apparently there are some aloe vera farms and vineyards on the island, but one would need to rent a car or hire a tour for the privilege, so there was no chance I would see any life.

Even the town seemed to be devoid of human activity. We had arrived on a weekend, and during siesta, so there were more tumbleweeds than there were open businesses. So I had to make do with walking around a tiny island fortress, and looking at a tiny harbour of even tinier boats. Why did they keep bringing us to these ports where there was nothing to do? Was it so we wouldn’t accidentally have an amazing time and then the boredom of the cruise would seem that much worse? I waited in town until an hour before, the hour before the final all aboard. I was absolutely petrified of being abandoned on an island in the Atlantic and ruining my no-flying, cheap, year-long circumnavigation because I had accidentally set my watch wrong.

Later that night, I was once again subjected to a litany of reasons why my dinner mates were the greatest people on earth. After a series of more boasts of how their offspring are supremely impressing, we learned they also happened to be ambassadors of race relations. They mentioned the story of a waiter on-board, Wayne, who had recognized them from a previous cruise. After mentioning that Wayne was African American (despite not being American), in a way that the words “African American” rolled off their tongues very carefully to show us they were using accepted politically correct terminology, they let us know that he must have remembered them because of how they treat people like him. “They don’t like to be treated like slaves,” people like Wayne, “but we don’t do that, we talk to them, they like that.” Yes, this bit of information was also imparted with the same insufferable closed eyes of smugness.

I quickly retired and sealed myself in the library to avoid the chances of having to be subjected to any more conversations. I did find some peace and quiet except for the periodic thudding of a hardcover against the floor. The old man sharing the library with me had developed a perfect system of reading a few sentences, passing out, dropping the book to the floor, being shocked awake by the impact, and then starting the whole process over again.