Carl has undertaken the road as his home. A Vagabond with a penchant for sipping a latte, making his hosts delicious dinners, playing the washboard, dancing in the streets, and hopping planes, trains and buses around the world.
You can contact him by e-mail or phone and see when he's coming your way, or just to say "hi". He's always interested in meeting up with like-minded vagabonds, nomads and travelers.
If you enjoy Vagabond Cafe and feel like helping Carl out, Buy him a Grumpy Latte by clicking on the picture to the right. Or just offer to put him up sometime.
A lot of times we lose ourselves on the road only to rediscover the new self that the road has helped us become.
“I am an excitable person who only understands life lyrically, musically, in whom feelings are much stronger as reason. I am so thirsty for the marvelous that only the marvelous has power over me. Anything I can not transform into something marvelous, I let go. Reality doesn’t impress me. I only believe in intoxication, in ecstasy, and when ordinary life shackles me, I escape, one way or another. No more walls.â€
~Anais Nin
I leave for New Orleans, LA at 5:30am. First by car to the bus station. Then a bus to the airport. Then to IAD then to New Orleans.
I can never really sleep before the night I embark upon another shift – another jaunt where I throw what I have over my shoulder and take to the road. The world is brimming with enegy, my mind dances on the edge of things and keeps me from pause.
Vagabonding is a thrilling, arduous, and exhilarating experience in the density of life. Having to live each moment from a place of mindfulness –of the self, of the world, of the lack of distinction between the two– otherwise you fall out of place and are swept away.
The act of moving places renews my creativity. Maybe it’s the surge of endorphins from approaching the unknown or the thrill of doing what so few people are willing to or maybe I just need to be in motion through the world.
Alas 6 months into my vagabonding trip my trusty Jaguar rolling garment bag has met it’s end.
It has seen over 19 cities and town in the U.S. in just the last 6 months not counting numerous layovers on buses, planes and trains. It has crossed the U.S. coast to coast 5 times logging around 20,000 miles of travel on top of intermittent use in prior years on various dance weekends.
Now I’m accustomed to getting great service from my hair dresser or barber. I think that’s mostly because I’ve known most of my hair dressers personally before I ever arrived. I didn’t expect this.
Very many people spend money in ways quite different from those that their natural tastes would enjoin, merely because the respect o their neighbors depends upon their possession of a good car and their ability to give good dinners. As a matter of fact, any man who can obviously afford a car but genuinely prefers travels or a good library will in the end be much more respected than if he behaved exactly like everyone else. — Bertrand Russell
