Setting Sail

My last day in the Napa Valley and my to do list is daunting. Trying to cram all of the belongings I have accumulated over 22 years into a 1973 VW Bus seemed impossible. Turns out it was. Three trips to the Salvation Army and one to the neighborhood dumpster made some headway but there was still a mountain of work to do if I had any hope of leaving on time. Fortunately my motivation is STRONG. Living in the Napa Valley for two and a half years may seem like a dream for some people, and for a long time it was for me, but the claustrophobia had officially set in. There were temporary fixes to this problem; travel to Europe and stuff your face full of foreign eats, move from St. Helena (pop. 6,500) to Napa (pop. 75,000), quit your job as the Fish Cook at a Michelin two-star, and go to work at a vegetarian restaurant. (where surprisingly I would eat more unhealthfully than at any point in my life, but more on that later..)

However, none of these quick fixes solved the ultimate issue that I had been born into, and had cultivated over the course of living for 19 years, isolated and yearning, in Anchorage, Alaska. Born and raised in a city where it takes 8 hours of steady driving just to reach the next and only other town with a population over 100,000 makes you wishful. It starts a steady sparking inside of you, sparks of curiosity that continue to flare for years but will die out without the proper fuel. Lucky for me I happen to have that fuel. For me it is a combination of being a cook, which you can do ANYWHERE, a newfound freedom that I have found living in the contiguous US, an almost built-in desire for travel and newness, and, now here is the most important part, a house on wheels!

So, back to the task at hand. How do I fit the necessities for living into a space the size of a Tokyo Micro-Hotel room? The answer was to give away about 90% of my belongings, my own personal Into the Wild moment. I am left with only the bare essentials:

• condoms
• crossed fingers
• three pairs of pants, one work, one jeans, one for some faraway special occasion
• a patagonia polar-fleece
• my only warm jacket
• two pairs of socks, one wool for good luck
• pillow, blanket, and sleeping bag
• two chef coats, two aprons, and my trusted Birkenstock clogs
• my knives
• portable stove and camping pot
• tons of ramen and oatmeal, for living on the cheap
• laptop, camera, and journal
• small stockpile of wine, sake, beer, and grain alcohol for those colder nights
• assorted cookbooks
• master list of 45 different restaurants across the country that I'm hoping to cook in

With the brilliance of German engineering, and utilizing all of the hidden and stowaway compartments in my Bus I finally get everything crammed in and am ready for the road. My first stop is just a baby step, heading to a city I have been to countless times over the last two + years but this time is decidedly diferent.

Napa -> San Francisco - 49 miles