A Little Wet -- Solin, Croatia

Tessa and I prepared dinner last night. Pasta and a thick vegetable sauce. Ivan forgot that I can't eat pasta, so I just devoured myself gigantic a bowl of sauce.

"I have only 20 kuna left in my pocket," our dreadlock bedazzled host said as he morosely watched the flames leap out of the cookstove. "No more money for food. So," he heaved a woebegone sigh, "that's it."

I watched the flames dance in Ivan's melancholy eyes, then shifted in my chair and said, "okay."

"You can do what you want. You can stay and not work or you can leave."

"I think Tessa and I will stay a couple more days, and then we will start our hitchhiking adventure by heading north."

There's just not a lot I can do to help this person. 

 I stumbled into bed with a raincloud over my head. Physical and... well... energetic.

"It will rain soon," Ivan had said earlier. "It will get a little wet in your tent. You don't mind, do you?"

"Well, a little wet is fine... are you sure it's only a little wet, though?" I doubtfully eyed the cover-less flimsy structure with netting on the roof.

"You can swim, right?" a sarcastic smile penetrated the raincloud of Ivan.

"Tessa can swim. You're a lifeguard, right?"

"Yup." 

Ivan shrugged his shaggy shoulders to settle the matter and walked away.

A little wet. Umm...

Tessa and I got out our tarp (aka, our new home) and hung it up over my "little wet" tent. We named our new home "Judy", in honor of my intrepid old gardening boss who got lost with her eighty year-old sweetie in a national park and ended up having to spend the night in one of those dingy park bathrooms.   

Judy. Judy will keep out the "little wet". 

I woke up dry this morning (thank-you, Judy), ate a little breakfast of milk and apple, journaled a page or two of "I'm scared of hitchhiking, I'm scared of hitchhiking, I'm scared of hitchhiking", succeeded in wearing myself out with all that negativity and stress, so promptly went back to bed until seven thirty. As Ivan hadn't given Tessa and me any work to do, we decided to charge our phones at the local cafe (Tessa has googlemaps on hers. Vagabond WIN) and then babystep our hitchhiking adventure to Trogir and back.

"I bet we'll get a ride right away. I mean, we're the least threatening demographic there possibly is. Two smallish girls who look totally nonthreatening. We'll be fine."

We were not fine. We waited three hours for a ride. Drivers honked at us, waved at us, and two even smiled as they whizzed by, but none of them slowed down to give us a lift.

This does not bode well...

We stopped in a mall of sorts and purchased a picnic of peanuts, cheese, peaches and a Somerset hard cider.

Tessa and I will keep each other accountable on this two month adventure. I will help her not spend so much money on extra tasty food bits (chocolate, bottled water, ice cream) and she will help me cool my jets about spending a little of extra money on the extra tasty food bits. 

Tessa will be very good for me. I must learn to cool my jets as far as spending money goes. In my head, each dollar is part of a day. Every time I buy a chocolate bar or a bus ticket, I think, am I willing to lose half a day for this splurge? 

I would like to stop thinking like this. I need to be aware and mindful of my spending, but I ought to extend that awareness to an understanding that when I need to make money, there will be a way to make money. At this point in my life, my back pocket is stuffed with working under-the-table tools. Yoga. English. Thai massage. Gardening. I need to learn to be more proactive in finding a way to use the tools in my pocket to put money in my wallet.

Running out of money doesn't mean I'm running out of days. It just means that I should start thinking about my back pocket and listening for money-making opportunities. I'm going to allow myself a value judgement and say that this is a good thing.  

We bought new batteries for my headlamp and a fat black marker for writing our destinations on cardboard.

Then we stood out in the sun again, smiles pasted on and thumbs airborne.

And waited.

And waited...

And waited........

We took the bus to Trogir.

Maybe we just need to find better places to hitch from. Maybe small roads through little villages aren't our best option... so....highways? 

We ate our picnic (the first of many!) by the sea and discussed what we'd learned from the morning's less than fruitful attempt at soliciting a ride.

Tessa was actually quite happy about this picnic. She's smiling on the inside.

We went for a walk along the coast, waded/swam in the sea, admired our epic sunburns, and then succeeded in hitchhiking back to Ivan's. Along the highway. Just as we were about to give up, put away our sign and take the bus, a made-up lady pulled over and offered us a ride nearly all the way to Solin.

She was a sweet museum librarian who'd studied art history and philosophy in Zadar. Not a creepy old man with a mustache who wanted to molest us before stealing our bags and leaving us stranded on an abandoned back road.

Giuseppe made risotto for dinner with salami and mushrooms Tessa and I had purchased from the shop down the road.

I want to make a special compartment in my backpack so that Giuseppe can live there. And cook risotto for me every day.

Ivan didn't join us for dinner.

Tessa and I leave the art park tomorrow. The environment here is simply too morose, Ivan isn't giving us work to do and we feel useless in all the worst ways. So we spent the morning researching hitchhiking and wild camping, and are adequately nervous (wild camping is illegal in Croatia) about our future.

But we're doing it anyway. Because this is how we want to live. Couchsurfing is risky. But that's how I want the world to work, so I do it. Volunteering risky. But that's how I want the world to work, so I give it a try. If we don't live the way we want the world to be, perfection will always stay in our dreams and never in our reality.

So. We're doing it. Tomorrow.

Yes.