California: Hollywood

I have fond memories of long winding road trips with my family when I was young. Vivid thoughts of my Mother and Father sitting in the front seat with my darling little sister and I sitting in the back. I remember early mornings, a crammed car, the familiar little stops and having absolutely no responsibility other than to sit back for hours on end gazing out the window, wide eyed, constantly pestering my parents all restless and curious of how long we had until we were to arrive. Thinking about those days — so young and naïve, consumes me with happiness and wonder.

Then I grew up. And so did the world around me. Responsibilities came gushing in. I moved out from the comfortable roof my nurturing parents had provided me and somewhere along my road to independence and adulthood, I got a taste of the Monday-to-Friday grind and suddenly the ratio of the things I 'needed' to the things I 'wanted' got a little bit out of hand.

These last three months has made me ache for the bare minimum once again. I want so badly to chase life in pursuit of pure happiness before it chased me and tied me down to much heavier things. This is all my dreams are made of for now and 10,000 miles on the American road has proved to me that in actual fact, sometimes when you dream big enough, work hard enough, love hard enough — they do come true.

After surviving a tornado in Texas, sleeping in a teepee in New Mexico, making friends with cowboys in the wild wild west of Arizona, playing in the sin city of Nevada, partying for days on end amongst the sunny deserts of California, Kieran and I found ourselves back amongst the streets of Hollywood. Back to where it all started eighty odd days ago. A lovely lady from Texas caught a long overnight bus trip to meet us here for the purpose of becoming the next and proud owner of Chevy. Somehow we had managed to empty him and fill three bulging suitcases with all of our belongings, and after she shook our hands and drove away, sadness overwhelm the both of us.

During our last day in Hollywood, Kieran and I hired a car and spent the entire morning finding secret roads and climbing steep mountains to get the perfect view of the Hollywood sign. It felt like we didn’t stop until the sun went down and our legs gave in on us. That night we went to a drive-in movie theatre. I thought about the end of these American travels being near. I thought about missing Chevy. I felt genuinely sad about the thoughts of it all, until Kieran quickly snapped me out of it by reminding me that we still had tomorrow. Then and there happiness took over me once again, as I knew tomorrow was going to be nothing short of amazing.