Time Warp

You’re little and your mom has dragged you to the furniture store. For most this is equivalent to a death sentence but there was a way to escape the terrible tragedy of walking through those prison-like doors: explore and try to get lost and find your way back (while examining what bunk bed would function as the best playground in your room).  It was the ideal way to turn your life sentence into a great adventure, a superb way to make the hours you were stuck there fly.

Before this trip there were many places across the country that needed to be explored. For the past eight weeks, we have been Lewis-and-Clarking each town we arrive in and, miraculously, within a couple of hours it feels like you’ve been there for days, sometimes weeks. Throughout the course of the trip at presentations we have been saying “We started on June 8^th in San Jose, California and will wrap up the tour August 8^th in New York, which means we still have ____ weeks left.” Now it’s no longer “we have eight weeks left” but rather “we only have about eight days left.” Let me tell you, this change feels downright bizarre. It’s just like your mom coming to get you in the furniture store right when you were in the middle of a great maze through the kitchen section and you realized a couple of hours had passed.

Maybe it is because of the odd mentality developed from being in a different location every day for 64 consecutive days, maybe we’re all just a little crazy. Both are highly plausible. But whether it’s the craziness settling in, the mentality developed from hectic travel or innate nature, it’s amazing what such a mentality can allow. For example, this morning the city of Pittsburgh was explored. Now, initially the Disney tourist in me said the expedition would take several hours and that even after that a lot of the city would still have to be skipped. Wrong. Wrong, wrong, wrong. Buildings were examined, Dunken drank and the essence of Pittsburgh discovered all before eleven, leaving time to relax in one of the many miniature parks the city has to offer. Call it crazy, call it a traveler’s mentality, I call it another day with BAP.