Just a Little Gap-filler

I left Las Vegas many weeks ago.  I had gotten a job at an Animal Clinic.  That night I entertained a friend of a friend around The Strip and Fremont Street.  The next day I had decided to leave Las Vegas.  Sometimes things happen like that.  I went into the Animal Clinic and informed them I was quitting.  They mailed my check to my Mother’s home in Florida.  I spent the next several days writing, hiking, and riding my mountain bike in long cement drainage gutters like the kind in Terminator 2.  Several days later I got a call from my friend Kari.  It was her birthday.  Her father is a friend of my father.  I hadn’t been snowboarding in two years.  At a moments notice I packed my car and started driving.  On the way out of Vegas I stopped at Fremont Street and bought some tacky key-chains for a couple of friends, and then I called my landlady and told her I had moved out.  Now I’m in North Carolina.  I became ill in Colorado, but after visiting a walk-in clinic and learning that I would rebound I began my drive back across the country.  The little car served me well and I only had to sleep in her one night because I was a fraction closer to the east-coast by beginning the trek from Colorado.  I arrived at nine thirty at night and was greeted by an old and dear friend.  I’ve been here for two weeks now.  I had gotten another job at a fine dining restaurant, but have since quit that as well.  My Mother offered me a better opportunity.  I have a financial goal of making back the money that I have spent here in the States since I have returned.  I will also sock away enough to get to Asia.  In the mean time I’m at Joe’s, he’s the friend that I mentioned.  I’ve known him for a while now, and years ago we lived together.  I hadn’t seen him much in the last several years.  He is happy to have me and unfailingly reminds me that I am the only person to come visit him since he moved away from Florida.  Since I have been here, amongst the hilly wilderness of Apex, NC, I have found the most peace since my return to the States.  There has been an extreme culture shock for me.  While I was in Australia, I didn’t drive much.  I also wasn’t around the hustle and bustle of highways and over-crowded masses of people.  I didn’t have a lease, and I didn’t have to wear a suit to interview for jobs.  My life was different, slower and wellness focused.  I had gone from one extreme to the next and in a conversation with my Father before I was to interview with a company, I had a moment of anxiety.  I got over it within forty-eight hours though.  I had known there would be an adjustment from the simplistic Aussie living to the fast paced American living and was somewhat prepared.  At least I tell myself that.  I don’t know how many weeks its been since I left Australia, but in the time since I have hiked in the desert canyons of Nevada, boarded the snowy Colorado mountains, and now I both rest and bike the hilly forests of North Carolina.  Soon I will return to the tropical climate of Florida where I will park my rear before getting on another plane somewhere.