A Rolling Stone Gathers No Moss

How my tranisition from service to civilian looked like.

 

The first time I crossed the pond and visited Europe, I was twenty-one years old and on a booze cruise with an organization that had been born in a pub in 1775. Back then, I never imagined that I would live overseas. The second time I was stationed overseas in Germany, I was a little older and dumber, separated from my first wife and in love with Europe. I say in love with Europe, but I can fall in love with almost any place I visit. Except for New York. Fuck New York.

The Grand Staircase, in Odesa, circa 1998.

I started to imagine living abroad during my time in Germany. Initially, I only wanted to get stationed in Germany because the unit in Baumholder was about to go to Afghanistan. That is where I really wanted to go because I heard the fighting was nice there. Spoiler alert: it wasn't. I lived in Germany for three short months, which I mainly spent on military exercises in the icy timbers of the Black Forest. Those short months had a long-lasting impact on me. Once I got used to the slower way of life in Germany, I fell in love with her. The people, the architecture, the food, beer, the weather, everything. At the end of my deployment, I tried to stay in Germany, but the Army had other plans for me. So I spent what little time I had left in Germany driving and drinking all over Europe.

The Rockies as seen from the roof of my house in Florence, Colorado.

Fast forward five years, I retired, living in Colorado on a beautiful 30-acre spread of land in a small town near Pueblo. I was surrounded by three mountain ranges and had land to play and shoot on. A month after retiring, I had lost my sense of purpose. I’d cut back on my binge drinking and replaced it with Colorado’s unofficial state flower. I slowly fell into a deep depression during the next several months. In July 2018, a friend suggested we go backpacking through China or ride motorcycles through Vietnam. Vietnam has always been my dream destination for reasons I will clear up in another post. I hopped on a plane, then on a motorcycle, and rode from Hanoi to Da Nang. I fell in love with Da Nang and went back several times. I wanted to live there. The people were awesome, the weather was amazing, and traveling from Da Nang to other destinations was not expensive. My future ex-wife was climbing the corporate ladder, and eventually, my delusions of becoming an expat disappeared.

The author cresting the Hai Van pass on the way to DaNang.

After my trip to Da Nang, I had no desire to pay for a house and a car and be anchored down. I told my ex I didn’t want to buy a house again. I wanted to travel and see the world. My disability from the Army was more than enough to live comfortably in Vietnam, with plenty left over to travel the world for two people. The idea of working just to pay for a house and car was stifling to me. Time ticked by, and the ex kept getting promoted, which was a good thing. It was her time. I told her that when we got married, it was her time. My time in the Army was over, and now it was my job to support her career. We moved to Ohio and lived on Lake Erie. I took a trip back to Hanoi and taught English as a volunteer for three months. The pandemic happened, I enrolled in art school, and we bought a half-million-dollar home with a pool in Akron.

Having dinner with the pyramids from the roof of my hotel in Giza.

At the end of my first year at the Cleveland Institute of Art, I took a trip to Europe, where I visited Albania, Serbia, Ukraine, Egypt, and Morocco. I had the bug again. The house in Akron had been a sticking point for me. In a moment of weakness, or last ditch effort to salvage our relationship I caved to my wife's desire for the home. It was a house built by an architect with many oddities. It was one thing after another — the pool needed a retaining wall before it slid down the hill into the neighbor's house, the cedar siding on the house was rotting, and before I left for Europe it snowed, causing a huge leak in the downstairs bedroom. It quickly turned into a money pit. A beautiful money pit. Ohio was nice, but my head and my heart were somewhere else. I had my own home gym, dream motorcycle, Audi A5, and pool, but they were only things. What I wanted were experiences. Not that I couldn't have them from time to time, but access to travel in the United States is expensive, and even more so now. The future ex and I weren't happy, and I think that had been going on for about three years, but neither one of us was ready to admit it.

The country was changing. People were disappearing into their algorithms and going mad. Not even the Waffle House was open before 7am. What the fuck, America. I needed to get out. I needed to do something real. When the Russians crossed the border into Ukraine, I had my reason. Onward to the great perhaps.

The author on The Grand Staircase 20 years later with my boy in the background.