STUFF THE ROAD TAUGHT ME

1.       PATIENCE

It doesn't matter whether you're waiting for a flooded river to go down or an airline check-in clerk to hand over your boarding pass, getting angry doesn't usually help.  It takes just as long, the only difference is you get to be angry while you wait.  And everyone else thinks you're a jerk.  Jerks don't usually get upgrades.  Most things take longer than you expect.

2.       MAPS

You can't be lost if you don't care where you are.  For the other times, there are maps.

An outdated map is a false friend…but sometimes it's better than nothing. I once drove around England and Scotland for 9 days using only the thumbnail sketches in a very small Holiday Inn Locations brochure…it worked pretty okay, really, although London was a challenge…

Any journey requires 3 things - a here, a there and a way of identifying the terrain between them.  Pinning down the direction part often requires a separate, known 'there' as a reference point,  usually 'North' although it can be something familiar to just you and one or two special others - "the old Johnson place" or "the restaurant where we met"….whether you need to find a waterhole or you need to turn left at the third traffic light after the cathedral will dictate which maps you're going to need for today…

Unless I'm on an easy journey that I know well (and sometimes even then), I generally use at least three maps at once -

·         the Big Map that shows the major highways and town names, so you can get an idea of the big picture, the whole trip laid out from beginning to end…it shows major changes in direction, when mountains turn to deserts, swampland to coast…you can't see much detail mile by mile, but you know what the real signposts are…

·         Today's Map, the detailed one, that shows the names of streets, where the rest areas and car parks are, how you get down to the marina or to the tourist info centre from here…

·         the directions I printed off Mapquest…discovery is romantic and wonderful and all that, but as a rule I'm happy to follow generations of navigators before me and learn from the work of others…can you imagine if the great sailors of the Middle Ages, Drake, Magellan, Columbus and the rest had Mapquest?  Making - and stealing -  maps was big business, the espionage war of its day…put it this way - if someone has been there before me, I want to hear what he's got to say about the trip.

Between them I can usually get where I'm going…although you never know when things are going to change…which brings us back to patience, really….


SAFE MOVEMENT ACROSS TERRAIN

Navigate carefully and methodically.  It is always better to take a more measured pace and hit your mark, or close to it, the first time. Rushing gets you tired. Rushing gets you lost. Lost stops being fun when you run out of water.  More about that under Leaders, below. Keep the big map in mind, but notice the details of what's around you…are you now walking slightly uphill? What does the map say? Is that a dry creek bed or a fire trail? If we do get lost, where is the biggest landmark around from here - a mountain, a big river or a paved road, something you can't possibly miss.  You need these landmarks. Something that is so big you can't miss it, no matter which direction you approach it from…a place to get your bearings, find other reference points, re-orientate your map to the terrain, and take off on the new bearing…sometimes it's worth getting lost just enough to recognise what 'close' looks like and whether it's close enough…

It's also worthwhile relating map to ground on a regular basis. I've seen people walk blindly along a trail, fixated on the map and never learning how to discern the signs all around…the signs of life…the things you only really understand by experiencing in the flesh…warmth, colour, depth….

And remember - it's the terrain that changes.  What used to be a river is now just a dry gully. The art deco cinema and roller skating rink is now an office block. Get your bearings. Adjust the map. Take notes. Take pictures. Remind yourself to remember how this smelt. You might not be back this way again for a while….somewhere like it maybe… 

A SPECIAL CASE: THE LONDON UNDERGROUND

Here's a tip for the travel novice - you cannot navigate your way around London using a map of The Underground.  Trust me on this one.  Designed in 1931 by railway employee Harry Beck, the 'tube map' is probably the most famous map that completely ignores scale and physical location in the real world.  It is truly fiendish in its simplicity and it works brilliantly…as long as you already knew exactly where you were and exactly where you want to go - on a real map …it is possible (I know, I've done it) to travel halfway across London using several intersecting and overlapping different lines, and emerge into the sunlight to find that you're less than a hundred yards from where you started…which only goes to show you, again, that maps are just tools, just pictures of one person's vision of the journey ahead…

3.       LEADERS

I was on a one day management course and the ice-breaking discussion was 'Define Leadership'.   After a lot of bollocks backward and forward, the presenter gave the best definition of 'Leader' that I've ever heard - "someone who has followers"….that's not as obvious as it sounds…I think it was back around the early 1990's when every guru was banging on about leadership as distinct from management, and how every corporation had a desperate shortage of the former and a glut of the latter, soft, fat, pasty managers with pastel coloured short-sleeved shirts with outdated ties that were cheap when new…the new would-be CEO needed to be a Leader….military parallels were drawn, sweeping away any doubt that there was little difference between overseeing the landings at Normandy and running a supermarket…

I think much that was good got lost during those years, along with an awful lot of people who followed the self-styled leaders. I saw the Peter Principle in action for years, the theory that people will tend to rise to their level of incompetence and stay there…I watched the meteoric rise of men and women who could not have led hungry wolves to meat, but they could lie brilliantly on their applications for promotion…no-one ever checked with the followers or, for that matter, whether in fact there ever were any followers…

The point of all of which is that I have learned from being on the road that I don't like groups, I don't trust groups, I don't want to be in a group, and I sure don't want to be told what to do and where to go by some control freak with an overactive alpha complex…does that pretty much make it clear? One of the big reasons I don't like groups is that they tend to draw wannabe leaders like dung draws flies…

There are times when urgency is a factor. No argument.  On rare occasions, perhaps only a handful of times in an individual's life, someone has to take control of a situation. Someone has to say "This way" with the authority that people know somehow not to question. I get that. I love that whole 'leader born under fire' bullshit. But. It's rare. The circumstances that require it, and the presence of an individual with the cajones to make it happen, both rare. And unless my life is in danger I really don't like being told what to do. Say please, and say it with a smile. Please. . .

Which brings me back to groups. There is some safety in groups. Some. And sometimes a group just makes a bigger target, especially if they're not being led right.

From what I've seen, I'm better off on my own. I don't aspire to leadership, I really don't. I have enough trouble getting my sad self through the day, I just don't have the time or the inclination to make other people's decisions for them. But, trouble notwithstanding, no-one knows how to get me through the day better than I do. I've had more practice than anyone else, for a start.

Once you've seen your fill of the big ticket milestones, remember that the really interesting stuff is in the backstreets. I missed the Roman arena in Amman but I drank coffee you could stand a spoon up in and smoked untipped Camels and a hookah with a young Greek guy in a little cafe overlooking the arena and I had a lot more fun doing that…it's surprising who you meet when you're not really looking for company…and be very careful of the person who wants you to follow them, it's not unknown for them to have an ulterior motive…I know, shocking, isn't it?

4.       LEAVE CACHES BESIDE THE PATH

You can't carry everything.  Packing well is an art, but even the most dithering eventually appreciate that what you want to take you have to carry.  Some things you have to leave behind, and if you know that you're going to be traversing the same road for a while it's not a bad idea to organise supply drops at certain points.

Some things you can post ahead to yourself before you leave, to be collected at post offices and hotels. There's a lot of stuff you can pick up on the road…just remember to pay the price for quality when it comes to things you need all the time. When the storm sets in, it's always comforting to know your umbrella won't leak.

If you don't stay in touch with people you meet on the road, leave on good terms as much as you can…you never know when you might run into them again, and it's surprising how the journey can change people for the better…

It's important to learn when to let go...and having said that, I must say that I try not to burn bridges behind me until I have no choice, and it has been my experience that stuff you've accumulated on previous trips can really come in handy…however, in the interests of full disclosure, it is now a decade or more that I have carried one of those inflatable u-shaped neck pillows for use on planes and so on…you've all seen them...this navy blue plush-finish blob has accompanied me around the world at least twice, it even has its own little carry case…and I've never used it, not once ever…I blew it up the day I received it as a gift, tried it on, then deflated it and put it in my 'carry on' rucksack…where it sits from one hemisphere to the next, just in case….it's funny the useless things we carry around with us for years, don't you think? We secretly know we're never going to need it, but we're just not ready to let it go…lucky a neck pillow doesn't take up much room.

CACHE BOOKS FOR OTHERS

You can't carry a library. Read the travel guides and the cheap airport paperbacks and then leave them on the train, in a bar or on the bookshelf at the guest house…knowledge hoarded is knowledge squandered, and it's one way you can pay something forward, something nice…

5.       PLANS

Planning can be a fun game when you're stuck somewhere that you can't get a ticket out of and you need to kill time…there is a very old saying that if you want to make the gods laugh just tell them your plans…refer earlier under Patience…

A journey has to blend the pre-arranged and the ad-hoc, and everyone has their own idea of the perfect balance…if you know you're going to be in a certain place at a certain time, there can be advantages in making arrangements before you get there. Book the hotel, it's almost always cheaper over the net. Have someone meet you when you arrive. Cultivate contacts, talk to friends who've been there.

Group people usually don't travel much out of their own familiar territory…when they do, they like other people to have organised everything for them, when, where, how long…jolly good luck to them, I say, and I mean that…having life packaged for you can be a real help at times, and not everyone has the experience or the ability to do for themselves…although it can be surprising how interesting life can be when you set aside some time to just wander around…I found a brilliant old oak-lined pub down a cobbled side street in Dublin, only because I wasn't in a rush and wasn't paying too much attention to the detail map, just meandering in a general direction…almost all of the best experiences of my life have been just down a side street that was off the usual map…

6.       VILLAGES

Everyone needs to come back in to the village sooner or later. Even the most hardened nomads and outlaws need a solid base from time to time, protection from weather and other predators, a place to relax for a time, barter, repair the wear and tear, drink fresh water, trade stories, and get ready for the next leg of the journey.  It is my belief that environments shape the communities that dwell in them…the natural surrounds shape the city, the village, the family as the soil, rainfall and sunshine shape the plants…and their individual fruits…their values, their compassion, their art, what they do to survive, to celebrate, to give thanks, how they live and how they die… which is the reason it pays to choose your village carefully…some places just don't take kindly to strangers…doesn't matter how long you stay there, it will never feel like home…and there's other places at other times when you feel like you just fit right in. They're the places worth coming back to. Where your accounts are all paid up and there's a coffee cup in the cupboard with your name on it.

7.       ATTACHMENTS

Goodbyes suck, and there's no getting away from them, not ever. During the course of a life, everyone's going to get through a bewildering array of parents, neighbour kids, siblings, school friends, goldfish, team mates, parents of friends, dogs, cats, rabbits and guinea pigs, college friends, workmates, lovers, haters, spouses, kids, friends of kids, store owners, the guys at the bar….they all come and go as we move on through, it's just how it is…

I refuse to hold life at arm's length because I'll miss it when it's gone. I'm not generally what I'd call a people person by nature. I don't hate people, I just find a lot of them annoying after a while. How long usually depends a lot on the person. Some people are great. I love some people. I love the contribution that some people have made to my life. It's inspired me to help other people from time to time. I like to think that I've made a positive change in the life of everyone I've ever met - although it has to be said that I'm sure I've improved some people's lives by removing myself from it…

I can't go through life refusing to get close to people, or let them get close to me…I don't think that would be much of a life, not for me…and I can't spend my whole time 'missing' people and sobbing in airports either…so I've learned, as best I can, to know, to like and love, and to let go…I try and make the most of people while they're here, because no-one's going to be here forever…I have some great friends that I've never met, and there's a reasonable chance I never will…there's some people I couldn't imagine ever seeing enough of then whose names I can barely remember now…

That's one thing I've learned from the road. All things pass. Eventually, all things pass. You'll be surprised what you miss most.