For the past few months I have been employed by a company producing a theatrical national tour. There are some great things about this job. I get to travel all over the United States and some of Canada, the down side is I often dont get to spend as much time as I would like in some places and sometimes I have only enough time for a short walk. But, there are other times I have a day or two to explore areas and it has taken me to some places I might not have otherwise been to.
I live and travel on a sleeper bus, often we will get hotel rooms and that is always nice, but a good portion of the time you sleep at night in your small bunk while flying down the highway. You grow accoustomed to the bus and I have in fact become very fond of it, and you get used to the sleeping quarters. The one thing that gets to me the most is that this bus is enviromental destruction on wheels. We drive all over the place consuming ridiculous amounts of gas, many of our meals are prepackaged microwavable things, which not only lack in nutritional value there is so much waste in the packaging. Generally we use plastic silverware, paper plates and bowls, go thru roll after roll of paper towel. I would like to think, and I tell myself I am just a victim of my situation. We dont have much of a sink and our water is fairly limited so things like cleaning dishes are difficult. Again this is an excuse. If I would just put in a little more effort I'm sure I could reduce this waste dramatically. Reducing waste is something I find myself thinking about fairly often, about as often as I think about things like we should all spend more time shopping at local farmers markets. They not only cause less waste but also promote small and local business which is what this country was founded on. I challenge everyone to take a look at the waste output of their daily lives and see if they could reduce it by even a little? How much extra work would that be?
The upside of my life is of course the travel I have been to many states and several provinces in Canada not to mention numerous cities. I have met many wonderful intelligent people and many people who do not live up to those descriptions... I did travel to some places on my travel checklist for life, Mount Rushmore and San Diego are two of them. I came close to Vancouver, just close enough to know for sure I need to visit. I spent a few day in Las Vegas, I forget every time I go there just how filthy of a place it is and I don't just mean the greed and sin and scum everywhere but also the trash and dirt and smell. This brings me to what I find to be a funny irony of my feelings versus my work, light pollution. Yes it is a real thing. It has endangered nocturnal species and also ruins the night sky in many places.
I am pretty sure there are enough places I want to visit and see and experience to fill multiple lifetimes. So I guess I better keep moving.
"you never know where life will take you unless you are willing to go."
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