I drove up to Lancaster in about 3,5 hours from Fairfax
which was nice and calm drive. I was on my way to come and meet up another
Southern Pacific sailing friend. He was one of two brothers that did a
circumnavigation (around the world sailing) who we met during our first part of
sailing trip back in 2010. Bret & Chad Van Roden. Now Chad was still back
on the boat in the Caribbean while Bret came back to Lancaster to work and save
money and plan how he could get back to the boat!
It’s a funny thing. Sailing and traveling that is. I’ve seen
it so many times now that once you start the lifestyle where you can just
decide for yourself what to do and there’s just no hurry around you, once you
come back to “real world” it just feels so empty. All the hurry and stress
around you. We talked a good while with Bret about the lifestyle and once
you’ve seen that your way is just your way, your culture and your country’s way
is just your culture’s and country’s way, it’s so much easier to see through
what we’ve learned is often just one way of seeing or doing things. And then
you can decide how you want to live instead of just following the general
example. Note to that though that nothing wrong with doing what other people
do. I find myself missing it every now
and then as well. As long as you are happy with what you do! Wow.. this ended up now being a morning session of traveling
philosophy.. back to the travel stories.
So after catching up the last two years of travels, sailing
and working. We decided to go “Amish spotting” since I’ve never actually seen
one before. And after driving awhile to the country side granted there was a
lot of them driving their little bogies with horses.
I really wanted to know more about their culture and habits
so we found ourself an Amish Farm (that of course was a fake Amish farm for
tourist but it’ll do) where we got an interesting tour around a “very similar
house” than an Amish house and farm would be. Well.. I know now a lot about
their clothing culture and how they are made. The tour guide talked probably 30
minutes out of 45 about their clothing! Anyway – I got the cultural information
I was looking for. But right after the tour as we were exploring the farm we
got greeted by a Man who was asking us to come and give him a hand.
As we said yes and started following him he explained that
one of their goats had just given birth and they didn’t even know that she was
pregnant! So now he had to move the baby goat and the mother away from the
other goats so that they would not hurt the baby. So I got to hold a baby goat
that was less than 3 hours old (all smudgy still) while Bret and the farmer
chased the goat mama.
Now the whole situation reminded me of a movie. Remember
Jurassic Park, It was 2 or 3, not sure, where they found the T-rex baby injured
and brought it back to have it’s leg fixed? And then Mama Rex came and ate half
of the crew? As I was holding the baby goat that was the exact noise it was
making and that was the exact feeling I had: soon the mama goat is gonna come
and then I’ll be in trouble holding the baby!
Well, all ended good they got the mama and I brought the
baby and we put them inside the barn so that they could be at ease in there.
The same guy also happened to be somekind of master carver
with his pocket knife and also he had a thing about slingshots. Well – as I am
doing this whole “Angry Bird around the US” I figured it would be perfect to do
a little video about shooting the Angry Bird with his enormous Slingshot he’d
fixed on top of his car!
After all this Amish culture and goat babies the rest of the
night was filled with good food and some local “refreshments“ in a good
company.
Next up NYC
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