At least one journey of redemption begins...

Kaeley on the hard

Well, we got a vessel. A proven ocean-crosser having already made the journey from Finland to the Caribbean, she comes to me now as her new caretaker and ever-fawning sugar mama. Her name, as you might've guessed, is the Kaeley Aislin, the name of this website. Translated from Scot Gaelic, her name means "beautiful dream," something she tangibly represents to both of her new occupants and and soon-to-be world travelers.

Sitting here in a brewery in Petaluma, CA, (shoutout to the Crooked Goat) Kaeley seems as distant to me now in Kemah, TX as her eventual destination, the remote island of the UK and my late Dad's birthplace, Kilmarnock, Scotland. And the journey she'll take me on may yet still be impossible so let me tell you how this came to be...

In 1991, when I was a grunge-listening, grunge-wearing, grunge-minded individual trying to figure out how to be the next lead singer of Soundgarden, my father asked me if he could take me to his birthplace in Scotland and show me the places that meant so much to him growing up. From the wry smile on his face as he talked about his homeland, I think he wanted me to learn about the person he had become in the 30 years before I existed. His offer was genuine but my reply was quick...

I had grown up in the middle class of Dallas, TX, specifically Plano, and it's Stepford-like twist on suburbia. I hated the cookie-cutter houses in cookie-cutter neighborhoods where the parents whisked their kids around in cookie-cutter station wagons taking them to cookie-cutter schools and cookie-cutter malls. The name of the game in Dallas, and especially in Plano, was keeping up appearances to the neighbors that you're doing as well, if not better, than everyone else. Between the ages of 10 - 20, our family moved three times, each time into a bigger and "better" house. Each house and neighborhood were perceived to be more exclusive than the last, but I felt the moves only brought more exclusive problems to our family. Under the guise of upward mobility, both of my parents, and my teenage relationship to them, fell into a state of disrepair. In order to keep the lifestyle going, my father would take jobs in different states that kept him away from supporting my mother, who struggled to keep their so-called American Dream ™ going. Eventually, I learned to loathe suburbia with all it's make-believe trappings and fakeness. So much so, that my loathing soon spoiled* my relationship with my parents and everyone around me that eventually, disillusioned by teenage angst, I dropped out of high school and was sentenced to graduating in an even worse place than Stepford: the fully racist hills of Alabama.

At that time, I felt in my "enlightened" and attempted urban view that my parents were nothing better than overly-tired suburban hamsters running on an American Dream ™ exercise wheel in their cracking-from-the-outside glass aquarium. Looking at the wheel, I'm sure they felt that all they needed to do was keep spinning the wheel faster and longer to get to their promised land. But eventually, the wheel became harder to spin because both of them were too tired to keep it going. I felt like I could see this happening from the outside, so I detached from everyone, except a few friends and then fell into a depression shortly thereafter. Unknown to me at that time, the depression became the kickstart of a near 25 year parental relationship hiatus for me.

So in the middle of all of this family and personal drama going on, and with the fresh backdrop of my now semi-explained teenage years in your head, my father asked me to go to Scotland to experience his early years with him. The wannabe-grunge / Seattle-ite told him to fuck off and I'd get back to him at some point in the future. (Spoiler: I never did get to go to Scotland with him...)

So twenty-five years go by in what seems like a blink of an eye: I wean myself from alcohol and cigarettes shortly after my father's invitation to Scotland in 1992; After multiple attempts at college, I finally make it back and stick around for a bit in 1993, eventually meeting my tor/mentor at a podunk school in East Texas; My mentor gets me a summer gig at Texas Parks and Wildlife which I parlay into a move to Austin, TX and unbeknownst to me at the time, a long career in government that now fully enables my life today; Twenty-one ignominious years at the City of Austin grants me a pension and I head off for my take on #vanlife (see Mallory's World for some details); And one year after retiring, I'm now staring at a dirty boat with my best friend in one of the most climate-intolerable places on this planet, Houston, TX, and I'm actually considering purchasing it.

"So what do you think?", I ask Jon. "Will she make it?"

"Yeah, I think she will. No spongy deck issues, kevlar below the waterline, racer/cruiser design. Yeah, I think she will. I can fix what we've found so far..."

So one year into my pension and one year away from my pre-planned escape for what seems like an unavoidable second Trump presidency, I find myself making an offer on a boat. The offer's eventually accepted and Kaeley becomes my new #sealife partner...

And what a job this partner will have... Not only will she need to provide safe transport for me and her crew through some of the roughest seas on the planet at times, but she also will be taking me on an even tougher and ethereal journey: A journey back to one of my biggest moments of regret in my life. With a perhaps unattainable destination, Kaeley may help me rectify a misguided and rash decision I made to not learn about a man I eventually lost touch with. And regretfully, I only started to learn about shortly before he passed away. I'm hoping that with attempting to see where my father came from, I can not only learn more about him, but I can also learn more about myself to help resolve some guilt from a selfish decision I made 30+ years ago. That's a lot for a new life partner to bear but I'm confident Kaeley has it in her...

So with that cheery story as a kickoff, over the next few months, Kaeley will be getting a near full refit. You can follow along here, if you like, while we do our best to get her outfitted for her return to colder waters. See y'all for Stage Two!

* - I also had some pretty heavy personal issues going on at the time so it wasn't just suburbia that screwed with my head. It would be unfair to leave the impression that was the only thing that contributed to my death-spiraling relationship with my family.