Prelaunch 2

                                 “There’s a race of man that don’t fit in,
                                  A race that can’t stay still;
                                  So they break the hearts of kith and kin,
                                  And they roam the world at will.”
                                                 Robert Service, The Men that Don’t Fit In



My parents had a suspicion that something very unorthodox was about to happen to their eldest son. I had already told them, but they were pretending I hadn’t. My mother knew I was serious but chose not to discuss it, hoping I would change my mind. My father was more conflicted. He was a self-made small town boy, who started his adult life by having to take over his father’s clothing store, when the old man died from a heart attack on a rock at the lake one day. He approved of my going off to M.I.T. to study aerospace engineering at sixteen, but he had some difficulty with my wanting to on to medical school, especially since I already had a marketable trade. My latest project seemed to confirm his guarded impression that I would come to nothing useful. ‘Expanding consciousness’ had never made it into the family lexicon. Everyone was too busy trying to just keep it the same size.
“Don’t expect me to bail you out of some Bolivian jail”.
“OK, Dad”.
“And don’t come back with Herpes.”
“OK, Dad”.
We shook hands.
Herpes. Jeezuz.



                                       *         *        *








                       “The longest journey is started by a single step”
                                                     Winnipeg Fortune Cookie




“Hitchhike to Vancouver and hang a left”.
It was the answer to the most frequently asked question, at the farewell party my friends held for me, a few weeks before my departure. They all had the same concerned expression on their faces, like I had developed some rare form of career-killing leprosy that they, thankfully, and with superior karma and insight, had avoided. My escapade was a slow motion stunt destined to go horribly wrong, and they had ringside seats to the opening ceremony.
‘Poor Wink. I remember him just before he met his tragic end.’
It was a special evening. They conjured up a cake in the shape of South America.
“How are you going to get there, Wink?”
I was actually not concerned about the How. I just knew it would happen, somehow. I wasn’t worried about the Why. People travel because they’re either looking for something or running from something. I was on a Pilgrimage. There was no other place to go. The Where was everywhere. I was going to where the smoke alarms turn into geckos, and way beyond the last ice cube. The When was carved into my calendar and brain, counting down to July 17, 1980, t-minus that many days. The one remaining variable was the If. And the only existential force that could possibly change that, in the final minute... was me.