I look up.
“Hi, I’m Bud, I am checking in”
I know that face. Without even thinking I blurt
out,
“Did you do the Green Tortoise years ago” (12 years ago to be
exact)
He looks at me, puzzled.
“I have taken it a few times.”
The Green Tortoise is a hostel in San Francisco that does these
affordable bus trips for backpackers.
It’s a bus that holds 30 people and our trip was a drive from San
Francisco to Baja, Mexico.
The bus has lounging areas, tables to gather and at night the do
“The Miracle,” which converts it into a giant bed where you sleep head to feet,
lined up like sardines in a can.
Once we got to Mexico, we slept on a private beach on the ocean.
No showers, no tents. We drank by the fire at night and stumbled to a mattress
under the bright stars when ready to slumber.
We fished and made fresh ceviche almost daily.
And we connected with the most random people ages 18-90. One man
who had traveled the world and was another inspiration for my lifestyle, a
gorgeous Argentina boy, a moody red headed French boy who wore black t-shirts
and jeans even on the beach, an ER doctor, a journalist from Boston, the bus
driver’s 90 year old drunkard father, German au pairs, some dread locked
college kids from Eugene, and Bud the oncologist.
Kiara and I had loved Bud and were so impressed that this doctor
was on a hippie bus to Mexico. We were studying to be in the health care world
and he was in it, so there was much exchange about that path. And he was just
fun and open and cool.
“I’m Lacey. Do you remember me? We were in Mexico together!”
It takes a second for him to connect that 22 year old, 98 pound
vegan with short hair to this long haired, non-emaciated 34 year old but he
remembers.
Bud and I spent the evening talking. When I told him of my life
on the road he just thought that was so neat.
“I have done the same thing since 1974, the same career, the same
house. You can look back on life and remember based on where you were...‘the
summer I was in Alaska, the time I lived in France...’ for me it’s all a blur”
We laughed at how we admire that which we are not because as he
thought my life on the road was so great I told him that sometimes I wish I had
focused on one thing and become something, like a doctor with a family and
home.
We exchanged e-mail address and as I was telling Munro, I miss my
retired friends. My entire life I have always had good friends that were
retirement age, I appreciate being with people twice my age as they are full of
wisdom and a perspective that only life experience can bring. So, maybe I will
go hang out with Bud and his wife.
The world is small. Indeed it is. There are no goodbyes. People
always show up again. And four days later, I was in Seattle visiting my
girlfriends for the weekend and on the street, I run into my college boyfriend.
Small, small world....