“A Very Punchable Face”

After weeks of back and forth with electricians and car shops in an effort to find somewhere or someone who could help with the installation of all my electrical equipment and wiring throughout the van, I finally found a place and have an appointment to bring Ody in to get worked on.  The earliest appointment to my dismay is September 8^th.  So, for now, unfortunately, the building process is paused.  To make the most of this delay, I set up a temporary bed and have enough supplies to comfortably do short East Coast trips in the meantime.  This past weekend on a whim I headed up to the coast of Maine.  Having lived in New England my entire life, it’s honestly pretty shocking that I have: 1. Never been to the coast of Maine. And, 2. Never been to Maine in the summer besides for the dreaded TPC Soccer Camps in high school.

I left home Friday midday for the weekend with no plans besides to visit a friend (s/o Jordan) in Portland that afternoon.  I had done some research the night before on coastal Maine attractions but hadn’t decided on anything, and I know Acadia is supposed to be beautiful but it seemed like an ambitious drive for just the weekend.  Essentially, I had no plan for Saturday or Sunday, no idea where I was going to go or where I would sleep.  This would typically bother me as I love plans, lists, and organization.  But, I reasoned that this is what van life and my big trip would be like.  I will be alone, showing up somewhere, and have to figure out what to do and where to go on the fly. 

I was pretty confident that in a place as beautiful as Maine I would be able to find plenty of places to visit, hikes and hopefully somewhere to park and sleep.  Two apps I cannot recommend more highly are AllTrails, which shows you scenic walks and hikes in your area, and iOverlander, which is a map of user submitted spots where people have successfully stayed overnight with reviews of the locations (checkout my YouTube video for an inside look on the weekend adventure).  But, I was more interested to see how I faired on my own.  Would I get lonely? Would I be bored?  Would it be scary sleeping alone in the van? 

I’ve always been a fairly independent person and enjoy “Annie time”, but this seemed different and more extreme (not that extreme it was like 2.5 days, but still).  I typically enjoy driving listening to music, but while hiking and hanging out in the van at night I’ve found that audiobooks are a nice way to fill the time.  This weekend I listened to Colin Jost’s recent book “A Very Punchable Face”.  I highly recommend.  Colin is a former head writer for SNL and does the Weekend Update on the show.  He was also the speaker for my high school graduation, which was basically him doing stand-up making fun of a bunch of Deerfield students (not hard to do) and I’m not sure I’ve ever laughed harder except maybe when listening to this book.  Not only was I laughing, but I also found myself relating to many of the stories he told throughout the book.  Though I’ve never been punched in the face like he has (and hope I never am), Colin has also broken his hand in a punching incident while intoxicated.  I definitely don’t recommend or encourage fighting or punching, but the hairline fracture I got from Liam “Steelface” O’Connell’s face and the resulting permanent lump in my right hand might be one of my favorite stories from college. 

On a much different note, Colin also wrote about how he didn’t begin speaking until he was four years old and spent a lot of time in speech therapy.  He explained his fear of speaking, the overthinking that takes place before he speaks, and how overtime he’s overcome it.  He also attributes his very active imagination and his ease of being alone to his late start to speaking, because for so long everything just existed in his head.

Though I did start speaking at a normal age, I would only speak to my immediate family to the extent my grandfather made my parents take me to the doctor to get tested to see if I was deaf.  I was not deaf.  I just didn’t like to talk.  I spent a lot of my first year of kindergarten in speech therapy working on the whole talking thing and lucked out and got to do kindergarten a second time.  I wouldn’t and I don’t think that people who know me well would say I’m shy.  I can actually be extremely talkative and, in fact, sometimes borderline annoying.  Once I get going I relax, but at first I’m nervous and overthink what to say and how to say it.  Though it can be fun and enjoyable, but, because it takes an additional effort for me, I find a lot of social interaction exhausting.  I’m not someone who needs to be around friends all the time and actually prefer having set time to myself.

Talking to strangers is an activity I’d typically try to avoid, but with so much time to myself in the van, I actually found it refreshing talking to random people.  There was a woman that came over to me in the grocery store parking lot to check out the van and talked my ear off for 45 minutes, a man who stopped and chatted as I was making breakfast on the sidewalk by a park and gave me advice on what to check out in the area, and countless others who went out of their way to say hi. 

This entire van experience is pushing me out of my comfort zone in so many different ways, but I think one of the ways I’m most excited about is being forced to interact with strangers and meet new people.  I know that there will be times on the road I’ll need directions or advice and will look to a friendly stranger for help.  Even though I’m traveling alone, it doesn’t really feel like it and I’m looking forward to meeting so many interesting and new people along the way.