How to celebrate the passing of 33 years

Hey everyone.  Ori here, and I’m older and wiser now!  Yup… I’ve beat out the life expectancy of not so distant human ancestry.  In Judaism we have a Bar-Mitzvah (the Jewish rite of passage into manhood -  basically, you read from the Torah, and throw a party) at age 13, because back in ancient times this was like a midlife crisis.  30 was not a bad age to die at.  By traditional rock-star terms, 30 is quite old… better to burn out, than fade away, right?  With all the stupid things I do, I am kind of surprised to open my eyes, and still be alive and breathing.

I could probably write entire novels filled with “stupid things I’ve done”, and yet, these are all part of my experiences that make up who I am now.  I don’t feel “older” – I do feel wiser.

My initial plans that I was so excited about were to pack up my place (‘cept I wasn’t packing… I was throwing away, selling, and giving away everything, and stuffing the rest into my car), and leave on Tuesday night… MAYBE Wednesday morning (like 5am), and getting to Austin by 8 or 9pm to enjoy a birthday party with some close friends. Apparently, I’m a packrat.  I had so much crap at my place, that it took me until noon on Wednesday to get rid of everything, and stuff everything into my car.  I had SO much stuff in fact, that if I farted, my car would’ve probably popped open.  Actually… there was SO much stuff, that I had to give my neighbor the 3 galons of water I was going to drink for my journey to my neighbor.  I ended up drinking 2 12 oz bottles instead

***SHELF UPDATE*** I forgot to tell you! Tuesday evening, Jeremy Johnston came over, and fixed the shelf that my neighbor could not. My neighbor had used his dremmel tool and made the holes too large to fit the shelf pins.  Jeremy did it the right way, and now we have metal shelf pins, and the shelves aren’t going anywhere!  The missing shelf was replaced by my neighbor with a shelf he cut for me… it was thicket than the other ones, and the dimensions were a tiny bit small… but who cares, it sits on the shelf-pins, and can hold stuff on top of it!  Crisis averted!

Tuesday night was cool because I sold my couches, my TV (the 55″ DLP… the 36″ one I had already given away), and… I even managed to sell my most comfortable office chair to Jeremy. Everyone I sold stuff to is thrilled because they got really amazing stuff at a great price, and I even gave a payment plan.  I just had to get the stuff out of my place.  By the way… if you’re selling stuff on Ebay, I hope you’re not doing it for fast cash… ’cause they put the funds on a 3 week hold!  How do I know?  I just sold one of my 3 cameras (Canon 30D for $450+$22 s/h), and I get to log in to my paypal and wave hello to the money, but not play with it. That’s a lot of gas tanks!

Back to talking about how there was SO Much stuff in my car… so much so in fact that I literally could not see at all out of my passenger window.  Heck.. I couldn’t see the passenger window.  I couldn’t see behind me, or lean my chair back at all.  The passenger seat was covered in stuff, reaching the ceiling in fact.  Part of the dashboard was even covered in stuff.  This did NOT feel safe at all… nor legal.

I did a last scan of my place, locked it up, and started my car.  I inched forward, watching the various land-formations of stuff test their stability by shaking around.  I had a laptop case on my lap… this may interfere with steering too.  I didn’t feel the massive urge to rush… it was already too late to make it to the party on time, now I should focus on just arriving, and with this visibility, I wasn’t sure that would happen.  The “Gate Ajar” light was also on… so, despite that the trunk was slammed close, it may pop open and shower the road with my belongings.

“Here goes something,” I stepped on the gas, and the structures held, over the speed bumps, down the big hill, and nothing flew around as I stopped at the stop sign.  I could see to my left, there were no cars coming.  I crossed half way…. I could not at all see to my right.  Should I just wait and randomly go for it? Should I get out of the car? This trip could definitely take a while.  I disengaged my seat belt, opened my sunroof, stood up, and looked to the right.  There were no cars.  This was one intersection too many to do this method of traffic checking… something had to be done!

I came up with an idea!  There is a UPS store about 3 miles from my neighborhood.  I would attempt to drive there, and just ship myself some stuff.  That does not violate my terms for not using storage….. I did empty out my place, and I did not leave anything in storage.  There was a very nice lady at the UPS store that listened to my story.  I thought I could get a large box, and throw stuff in it, then ship it.  She had a better idea… why don’t I just bring everything I want to ship inside, and they’ll arrange it in boxes.  I don’t even know what I brought in.  There were definitely some clothes, and some diffusion boxes for my strobes (these white things that make the light softer so that the shadows are not so harsh in photography)… I know it was $100, and the box did not need any of those styrofoam popcorns.  It was packed.  24″x24″x24″, shipped to me in Austin.  I sent it to Kate Buck Jr’s address.

It was 2pm, maybe 2:30pm.  The UPS Store was right next to the Shell gas station, and my “You’re running on fumes, and should probably fill up before you get stranded!” light was on.  I usually guess that when it’s on I have about 30 miles before empty.  It would be of no concern now, as I was already within pushing distance. I filled up, and it was time to get on the road.  How do we know that it’s official? Well, that’s simple! I called Mom and Dad and said that I was on the road!

My alignment felt a little bit off…guess I’ll be holding on to the wheel this time around.  I had just had my car serviced.. twice.  Once to fix the front collision from that small fender bender in Florida (don’t text & drive), once because my “Service Engine Soon!” light had been on for a few thousand miles (“Soon” is a matter of opinion… those lights should really be more specific!”), and because of that my car did not pass emissions testing.  If I don’t pass my emissions testing, I don’t get to renew my tags.  If I don’t renew my tags, I can’t really drive around the country (well.. not without getting tickets) God knows I don’t want to give cops reason to pull me over and search my car!  I mean.. I have a sword in there, and all sorts of oddities, since I kind of live out of my car. Tag renewal is always synched up to your birthday, and as you know, my birthday is on December 16th.  It was $243 to fix my car enough to pass emissions, and that had nothing to do with alignment obviously.

The weather was sunny, and not too cold (45 degrees feels damn near hot compared to the other day’s 30 degrees).  The driving was easy.  There was no traffic to complain about.  I have recently added purchased an amazing system on helping local businesses dominate their market. This 14 (or so I thought) hour trip would be plenty of time to go through some of the case studies on my nano. I actually had a few calls to return, so why not handle that 1st?

My family had called me at midnight… that’s a tradition we have… start of your birthday should be brought by family, don’t you think?  Time zones sometimes make this confusing… but we manage.  If you’re a good friend of mine, you’ll probably receive a call at midnight of your birthday, so don’t sleep early.   Victoria had called…. she’s always good about birthdays and such, but I know that she gets a reminder from her palm pilot. More on that in a future blog post that I’m encoding the video for while I type this.  Skizzy called me in desperate need of some consulting…. a client of his was very irate at the quality of the output a vendor of his had done, but the vendor refused to give a refund… what should he say to convince the vendor to give the refund?  One of my dear friends, Will  called (Will Call joke here?) me up wish me a happy birthday… even though he called on Monday, thinking it was Tuesday, and that he might be too busy the next day to call… so just in case.  Even though he called on Wednesday, and just to be safe, on Thursday as well

I quickly left civilization, and made it to the long stretch that is I-20. Trees changed as I gained distance. That’s a neat aspect of driving… the changing of the flora and fauna. The lakes are some of my favorite, as are the different bridges’ architecture.

I spent about an hour fixing Skizzy’s problem.  I explained what to say, in what sequence, and explained the psychology of each item.  A follow-up text today revealed that my plan had worked, and the vendor is in fact giving the client the refund.  Score!

I gave my friend Elizabeth Potts Weinstein a call, but got voice mail. On Tuesday morning (back in the day… you know.. back when everyone including me thought that I’d be taking off on Tuesday night) she skyped me that if I need to be on the phone to stay awake, or pass the time, I can call no matter how late.  That’s the kind of awesome person she is.

**NOTE: I love to know what you like and dislike in my writing.  Certainly you can leave comments, and they are highly appreciated. Many people have said they would like to know more about the interesting people that I run across…. so… I’m telling you more about these awesome people. Contact me with suggestions, questions, etc.. and always leave comments.  Now back to our regularly scheduled blog post.

It hit me all of a sudden… I was tired!  I was swerving a little bit, but nothing a slap to the face couldn’t fix.  I should take a nap, I had been up for about 29 hours at this point, and I don’t recall eating anything.  My dinner the night before was a Bacon Explosion! It was gifted  to me by Jason of BBQ Addicts at the American Royal – the largest BBQ competition in the world – at Kansas City, Misouri. I had driven 3 days from San Diego just to meet Jason, and of course try the Bacon Explosion. It was damn good, and he gave me a frozen one to take with me.  And that was my last meal at my place.  Talk about saving the best for last! Thanks Jason!  Oh yeah.. back to feeling tired.

I figured that a nap in a gas station outta restore me.  I exited the freeway, found a shopping plaza, filled a parking spot, and layed my head sideways… on a pile of stuff (I only shipped enough to permit me to see out the window, see my passenger-side mirror, etc… the seat was nowhere near vacant. I have a confession though.  My neighbor gave me an adderall (from the pictures on Wikipedia, I’m thinking it’s an Adderall XR) as a going away present. He has a prescription apparently (and since it’s a federally controled substance– basically 4 types of speed combined.  “Government Meth”), and I thought that it might be wise, considering I had a really long drive, and no sleep.. Truckers are notorious for doing speed.  I had swallowed it, but was tired as all heck… so I figured these things may not work on me… too bad… guess I’ll take my nap and keep going.

After 2 minutes of trying to get comfortable on “stuff”, I realized that I was not tired. Like, at all! I guess this stuff works after all.  I lost my travel charger for my phone while I was in Florida.  My car was so packed that I could not reach or find my AC Inverter (you know… that thing that turns your cigarette lighter port into an electrical (and these days USB also) outlet)… it is burried in … yup, you guessed it!  Stuff!  There would be many phone calls made, and I needed to charge my phone.  Wallmart, here I come!

As I pulled into the Wallmart parking lot (I have a Garmin Nuvi GPS – It is at the top end of my “must-have list for traveling” — this is not the model I have… I wish I had this one, as it seems to have many features that I’d love to have… like faster satelite acquisition. Amazing what functionality you can get for $200 these days. Remember back in the day when we used to have to get road maps? *shiver*) Elizabeth called. I took her walking through the store with me, and she got to hear my chat with the poor sales clerk who had no idea what a Palm Treo is.  They only sell accessories for Motorolas, Nokias, and Iphones… maybe a few other brands… but only the massively popular brands.  My phone is definitely not in the “Cool” bracket.  Being 33 years old, and wise, I don’t care   I got another AC Inverter.  The small one is only $20.

I got back on the road, and we chatted about everything.  That’s our usualy conversation topic.  I asked how her kid was doing. Gracie was recently burnt by a glass of boiling water from KFC, which the manager had given them to use to keep warm, since the store’s heater was not working so well.  Gracie needed to get surgery, a layer of some fake skin grafted on, and like her mom, is a trooper, so is smiling, and running around again.  We tried to come up with more ideas for January.  Elizabeth will be coming to visit. She had told me that it was on her bucket list to go on an adventure with me. It’s pretty damn cool when you see people take control of their lives. Elizabeth has been doing a lot of that lately, and engineering the life that she wants…. shrugging aside what is proper, and what other people want for her.  You should take a look at your own life, and see how many things you do because other people think you should… or it’s what’s proper.  We met in Vegas this year at a tweetup.  We didn’t even talk that much then.. but through twitter we have many mutual friends, she’s interviewed me for a series she’s doing on people who are living their truth, and somewhere along the line we just started talking more and more until we were practically bffs.  I can’t take full credit, but if you look at EPW’s blog (which I recommend you do anyways), you can see a pattern of more passion and freedom coming out over the last 1/2 year…. gaining momentum with time.  She’s also not been afraid to get controversial.  One of my favorite blog posts on there is Commitment to Signposts and Bat Sh*t (I would’ve written Shit, but… heck.. nothing wrong with being proper.) Heck… it’s even got a nice dedication to yours truly at the end, for the inspiration.

I felt bad, or rude, having to say “Oh crap… gotta take this one.  Call you back.”  ’cause I had to say it a few times over the trip.  It was Skizzy calling back after speaking to his client. When I consult, I need to know the details of how things progress, so I can make changes to the plan.

My tooth was bugging me a bit.  I had noticed it over the past few days…A slight shard protruding.  I thought that one of the fillings I got as a kid was starting to come off.  This made me remember that someone once told me that fillings have Mercury in them, and it can leak or something, and they should be replaced with mercury-less fillings.  Great! Maybe now my filling is broken, and mercury is oozing into my mouth, getting absorbed through the soft tissue of my gums and throat, and is seeping into my brain and bloodstream… creating mutant cells, leading to cancer, nausea, and birth defects… Happy thoughts… Happy thoughts!

Since I get businesses more clients, and help them get more business with their existing clients, I thought I would find a dentist in Austin that might want to barter.  That’d be fun…. replace my mercury factories with some nice shiny modern fillings (Maybe something with some bling, eh? umm… no!) in exchange for some SEO.  Get my deca-annual clearing and checkup (once every 10 years is the recommended norm, right?) in exchange for some lead capture implementation .  Perhaps a few shades white of a smile in exchange for improving their advertising, and some high-end marketing videos sent out to 30+ video properties. Of course something to maintain that white color for some social media development?

I think it would be more of a “All the stuff you want done to your mouth will cost $X (Algebra must have been so easy for the Romans… X always equalled 10!)- get me to the front of Google for ‘austin dentist’, and help me convert more of that traffic into leads, and we’re good to go!”  I’ve always been curious about that sleep dentistry too!  If you know a dentist in Austin that has a website that could use improving, or that would like to have more business, have them contact me. Not only that, but I’d be more than happy to film what they do to me, and pimp them out (My blog gets a lot of traffic, you know).

The next interruption of a call with Elizabeth came from Craig Allen. I’ve spoken about him before many times. He is a great friend, and an Austinite.  I forgot to mention that I had not really decided who I’m staying with once I get to Austin.  I had plenty of invitations, and I had an invite to come crash for 2 months from Craig and Suzanne.  They have a few trips coming up, and having a housesitter would be convient, and I already love their awesome (and large) dogs so can take care of them.  The trips include some snowboarding in Colorado (as well as a crazy new year’s party in the Ritz Carlton in Colorado), and a Vipassana meditation journey… I think that one’s 10 days.  We’ve been playing phone tag to see what our overlapping schedules are.  I believe we are going to watch Avatar on Imax 3d on Friday.

I had a 3 way with Elizabeth and Ori, and it was the best part of my day” was a tweet that went out from Allison Nazarian. Allie is a sweetie, one of my couches, and has also been *gently nudged* recently to knock a few items off her bucket list. She got a tattoo recently.  We went and sang Karaoke for the 1st time recently. It was brutal for both of us, and I will post the videos soon.  She’ll be going skydiving soon enough too.  I think we’ve decided that Arizona sounds like a nice place to plummet out o a plane. Allison and Elizabeth have become BFFs, and are even going to New York for New Year’s.    With 3 way calling we were able to have our own party line, and chat about everything.  More time has flown by.

I didn’t stop to eat anywhere. I had brought a large bag of cereal that I would just crunch on every once in a while.  I had my water bottles for drink.  I did stop off in Louisiana to get a large coffee, as I was getting tired, and was only given the 1 magic pill.

When I finished filling up gas, and sipping my coffee, I got on the line with Caleb Jennings.  Caleb is one of my couches that now lives in Las Vegas. He is working with legendary copywriter Joe Sugarman right now, and we have a few overlaps. We’re both involved in marketing, and have an affection for constant learning, science, and extreme sports.  We not only had promised each other that we’d call to mastermind, but also we discussed all these great spots in the world that we want to hit.

As I told Elizabeth (who did keep her word from the day before, and kept me company pretty dang late in the night, so that time flew, and I stayed awake), there’s a great thing to finding people that inspire you.  They are often inspired by you as well.  I have many friends who are adventurers that inspire me, and I find out that they think that I rule, and they are inspired by me.  Take Caleb for example.  He spent a month this year snowboarding with Craig Allen in Whistler (Canada).  That in itself is cool enough… but if you look into his past, you’ll find that Caleb used to be a competing snow-boarder, and has actually broken his back.. yet he’s still riding! Remember… I started this blog post talking about how surprising it is sometimes that I’m alive, with all the stupid shit I do…. Another very interesting thing is that Caleb told me about his trip with Craig… and then a few months later, I met Craig in Austin… but not through Caleb. It was only after a few conversations that we realized “Holy crap! You’re That Ori/Craig!”  Then of course, I went on a 6-week road trip with Craig to Burning Man, Yosemite and the world of Raw Foods.

I made it into Texas while on the phone with Caleb.  My mom knew that I was on no sleep, and that I had a long trip ahead of me.  To ensure that she has less to worry about, I called her every time I crossed a state line. It was just after midnight.  Mom called… how the heck did she know I just crossed a state line? That was just a coincidence… she was just calling to say “Good night… we’re going to sleep.  Just email us when you arrive, so we know you made it.”

After this, things got quiet, and I had time to resume my audio content. Why?  ’cause I got tired of sounding like I had Tourette’s syndrome!  “Shit!” “Fuck!” “crap!” “Argh!” What the?”  The winding back-roads that make up much of Texas were lined with trees… often enough to block my signal. The calls got dropped so freuqnetly!  The Palm Treo that I have does not let you do forced roaming (i.e. only use Verizon’s network (which has way more coverage than Sprint.  Verizon if you are reading this, I would like to be sponsored by you!  I can be in your ads, I have a visionary marketing campaign that would work with your existing campaigns, and I have a following of well educated people that love passion in their life.).

Eliabeth kept me company till about 5:30am (3:30am for her). We had just finished taking apart the education systems in this country, discussing physics and quantum mechanics, talked about religions, and a few other topics.  Time definitely flew by… as did other vehicles.  Between having a full car, and lots of time to make the drive, I did not want to speed.  Not just ’cause there’s cops on the road….  but because I don’t want to wreck.  When I 1st came to Texas in 2007 I discovered something called Black Ice… that screwed up my car pretty badly!)

My GPS took me at 7:30am (CST) to downtown Austin…. about 30 minutes from Kate. Since I wanted to leave Georgia promptly, I had just used Find Cities-> Austin, TX.  It took me to Austin all right.. but now despite being really tired, I had an extra 30 minutes left of driving.

Remember that I mentioned black ice?  When I first discovered it, I was doing about 40 mph, as  my car spun, got smashed into by an SUV, spun around 3 times, and then finished off with a concrete wall. While driving from Houston to Dallas, I had watched the temperature outside drop slowly from 70 to 30.  At 32 degrees, I jokingly said to myself “hehe! Look, that’s the temperature at which water freezes!”  That should’ve been my 1st sign to slow   This time I wasn’t taking any chances.

Additionally, I was also hallucinating a bit.  Not sure if from the sleep deprivation, or it maybe something with the Adderall.  Reflective signs took on much more depth. Colors were vibrant.  Shapes would assemble into recognizable forms.  It was fun… but I was slightly nervous about it.  I did swerve lightly out of the way to avoid hitting an imaginary black stallion in the middle of the road. When it evaporated into non-existence I realized that it had only been a set of burnt out rubber marks from soeone having  slammed their breaks, or peeled out.

My 14 hour trip ended up taking 18 hours, but despite fatigue  and sleep deprivation, I had made it  That’s what counts!  It was through friends that care that I made it. In fact, I recommend long road trips to be an opportunity to catch up with people you haven’t spoken to in a while.

I had over 120 birthday wishes on Facebook. That’s a new record for me, and I’m still replying back to each and every one.

Since my party was supposed to be the night before, but I hadn’t made it, Kate & I thought that rescheduling the party would be the right thing to do.  And at 4 or so I posted an event invite for tonight’s party.  Ummmm… yeah… party during the week, 40 minutes from downtown, and with 4 hours notice.  Oops!

Despite not having slept in 2 nights, I stayed up till 5pm, and finally took a 3 hour nap.

When I woke up, and saw that people are not fighting each other to get to the party first, I just called it off.  C’est La Vie.  I celebrated by mixing up, and then drinking a Mango Margarita while eating a frozen coconut popsicle.

A friend had wrote “You’re old!” as her way of saying Happy Birthday. I replied: