The Houseless Chronicles, Part 1: Lucy, the Saturn Sedan

It’s a perplexing feeling to wake up knowing at some point you need to army-crawl out of your sleeping bag into the backseat of your car, wrestle your shoes on while your head hits the ceiling, and then open the door to greet both the sunshine of the day AND a family of four walking into Walmart. You smile and squint at them. Maybe you don’t squint, who knows. Either way, they know you’ve just woken up. And they also know, for whatever reason, you were just sleeping in the backseat of your car.

At first, this immediate humiliation every morning is awful. Comb the hair with the fingers, smile really big to wake up the face muscles, push the sleeping bag into trunk, put on the pants. No one will know. I am normal dude, living in normal house without wheels or headlights. This is just car. The sluggish thoughts in my morning brain remind me I chose this life. Be proud. Once, I even crawled all the way to the driver’s seat so I could exit my car looking as if I had just arrived. Don’t laugh, life is complicated.

But soon enough self-consciousness wears off and leaves you with a confidence many would describe as misguided. Or enlightened. Casual smiles are met with smirks or nods. Gasps are met with blank stares. Yes, this is me, spreading peanut butter onto my half-eaten one pound block of cheddar cheese for breakfast. Want to fight? Want to talk about it? What do you mean by "where are your shoes?"

In normal life, you wake up in the same place most days. You go to the same coffee shop and see the same beautiful barista making the same beautiful cappuccino. Uncertainty can still exist, but it must be sought out. Not even running out of gas in North Philly is an adventure when you can just call your friend to come pick you up. And I won’t deny that it’s totally rad. Meeting friends for lunch on a whim is a pastime I cherish more than most things in my new, stationary life. Stability is cool. But there’s nothing like realizing the dream of drinking warm beer on the side of Highway 1 and watching the waves of the Pacific Ocean for the first time. Or backing into parking spaces in hotel parking lots to take a nap. It’s just so easy to find adventure when your whole life revolves around questions like “want to go to the beach?” or “how many hours is it from Joshua Tree to Moab?”

Good to be back.

Riley.