San Antonio, TX

My first day in San Antonio began very pleasantly and I had a good vibe about the city. I drove downtown and found a place to park close to the River Walk, which was the first thing I wanted to experience.
The San Antonio River Walk is a set of pedestrian and bicycle trails that run along the San Antonio River. One section of it, in the heart of downtown, is lined with restaurants and cafes and plied with river boats intended for tourists, driven by a boatmaster who doubles as a tour guide.
I spent between one and two hours on the walk, taking photos of birds and insects as well as other interesting spots, and chatting with a dog whisperer I met along the way. It was a very pleasant and calming experience and it helped me realize that some of the most wonderful things about my journey are the incidental occurrences and sights, the ones which I don't expect but which put a smile on my face and sometimes even make me feel awed.

Afterward I had some food and rode my bike in search of a spot to set up my slackline. In the evening I met up with my friend Amy, we got some beer and went back to her place, where I made us some noodles. I parked Dharma in front of Amy's house for a few days while I figured out my work situation.

The next day I went to see the Japanese Tea Garden, which, though rather small and currently under maintenance, so the ponds have been drained, was a nice place to sit and think. I was already feeling like I'd seen all there was to see in San Antonio and I wanted to move on, but I still hadn't found work. This has been a recurring issue on my journey, and one of the main reasons I haven't been enjoying myself as much as I would like to.

That evening I set up my slackline at Olmos Park and made friends with some people who were LARPing. LARP stands for Live Action Role Play. If you can imagine a game of Dungeons & Dragons in real life, then that is basically what LARPing is. This activity, unbeknownst to me, has its origins in El Paso, TX, but by now has spread around the world and I even know people in Edmonton who engage in it.

My third day in San Antonio was a crucial one as that was the day I found a job with Southern Mobile Home Transport. The week-long experience I had with this company is documented in my previous post, The Nightmare on Oliver Street, so I won't go into it again. I will just mention that when I came out of there, I was slightly dazed and disoriented, so the first thing I did when I got back to the city was to go for a walk and indulge myself with a coffee at Starbucks.

Before getting back to the city, however, I had to deal with Dharma. As I had mentioned in the other post, the cooling fan was broken, and I had to get a replacement. I stopped at Southside Auto Parts to get what I needed. They had a fan for me, but I still needed a shroud, which had to be obtained from a junkyard. While I waited for the mechanic to pick this up, I chatted with the owners of the business, Larry and Ed, and their friend Richard. Larry and Ed have run the shop for about thirty years, if I'm not mistaken, and according to my estimates are both somewhere in their sixties. They are originally from Flint, Michigan, which is the same town Michael Moore, the movie director, hails from. We talked about the impending collapse of the economic system, and I found out that Ed is very familiar with the tenets of the Zeitgeist Movement. It's always refreshing to meet someone who knows about concepts which are dear to me, and to whom I don't have to explain them from scratch.
I eventually got both the fan and shroud, and headed into town, holding two grapefruits, gifts from Ed, Larry, and Richard.

After my coffee and some much-needed grocery shopping, I went to the house of Jana Laven, who was to be my couchsurfing host for the next few days. When I arrived, she, her husband Andreas, and their daughter Rachel were sitting on the porch talking, and they welcomed me in. They offered me to stay in one of the bedrooms of their house, which I gladly accepted. I felt like I needed a break from Dharma after being cooped up inside for an entire week.

Over the next few days I tried, unsuccessfully, to find work in San Antonio. I had thought that due to its size, my options for work would be promising, but in this I was mistaken. While I was at The Lavens (this family, together with their son Niko, are in fact a musical band and they play at The Cove on Fridays), looking for work and relaxing, another situation developed, which was to determine my upcoming change of direction.

My good friend Jonathan back in Edmonton, who for the past two years has been working on opening a halotherapy (salt therapy) clinic, is also on trial for spurious charges (something I've written about on my other blog, Rambles & Musings), and the end of this was approaching fast. In fact, that very week, on Friday, he had a hearing where he could either plead guilty or not guilty. This was a hearing Jonathan had no intention of attending as he was afraid of getting arrested and losing his freedom. Jonathan had decided to take his life instead. I won't go into much more detail on this here, but the point is that this development, in conjunction with the unpleasant experience I'd recently gone through and the fact that I needed to change my mode of travel, made me decide to abort my journey for the foreseeable future and return to Edmonton to take charge of Jonathan's clinic.

I discussed this with him over the phone and he was agreeable to it, as it had been something he had offered me in the past. We began to make plans for my return, but with the knowledge that when I did, Jonathan would already be gone. It was Wednesday night.
Today I'm extremely relieved to say that Friday has come and gone, and Jonathan is still here. He attempted to kill himself, failed (he blames me for this, ha!), went to court, and pleaded guilty. No arrest took place. I will be flying back to Edmonton from Houston next Sunday (a week from now), on December 21st, 2014.

On Friday I was in a cheerful mood and I had an excellent slacklining session. In the evening I met up with another couchsurfing host, Rohn, who invited me to a Latin American art show, which was wonderful. I enjoyed Rohn's company very much, and later stopped by The Cove to see The Lavens play.

Saturday morning I packed up, said goodbye to Andreas (the rest of the family was still asleep), and went to meet Simms, a couchsurfer, for brunch. We chatted for a couple of hours over coffee and pastries, then I started to head north. I was on my way to Austin, the final destination of this, the first leg of my North American journey, but first I had one more couchsurfer to meet.

Michael is an older man with a large white beard, and appropriately enough, he dresses up as Santa Claus at Christmas and gets paid to pose for pictures with children. We met at a Taco Cabana on the northwest side of San Antonio.  This man had a completely different vibe than the previous two couchsurfers I'd met. He was conservative, unaware, not very open-minded. As he described himself, he was a simple man. The topic of our conversation very quickly turned to god, at which point I decided I was no longer interested in talking. I parted with Michael, got in my van, and headed north to Austin to explore this strange city whose motto is "Keep Austin Weird" (to which is often appended "and San Antonio lame") and to meet my Zeitgeist friend Tyson, who, as I will detail later, had changed my situation drastically and relieved me of much stress.