Maxed Out


 

We had the good fortune of getting together with Max Marble this week. Ann and I may pretend we’re traveling light and untethered, but Max is the OG when it comes to a Missouri Conference staff person leaving the desk to go into the wild.

Max has been traveling the country in a van named Henry. Max pretends Henry is an RV, so he can


hang with the NOMADS, an OMC (Outlaw Methodist Club) that requires RV ownership to join their gang. They respect Max for his street cred, so they turn a blind eye to the fact that Henry is not an RV. If you were to examine Henry’s DNA, you would find him to be much closer kin to the chartreuse microbuses the long-haired friends of Jesus used to travel the country back in the 1970s.

Max bounces around all over the country, but one of his favorite places is house sitting for friends in Port Townsend, WA, about an hour and a half from our humble abode in Tacoma. This is also my good fortune. Max would occasionally pass through Columbia, but he had so many friends there, getting to spend any time with him on a visit would be akin to getting Taylor Swift tickets. Max’s dance card was full (to the max) when he was in COMO, so I didn’t even try to get a line ticket to que in.


But here in the good old PNW, Max doesn’t know a lot of people yet, so we were able to get him for a whole day. He’s house sitting, and on Saturday he stopped by to see us in Tacoma and we shared a cup a coffee and visited the farmer’s market. Then on Sunday we went to see Max, and he showed us around Port Townsend.

When most people show you around town, it means sitting in the car and looking out the window. When Max shows you around, you get to do some walking. That was much appreciated. When we’ve been on a car ride, we like to walk. I think we got in a few miles with Max. I’d call it an urban hike.

And Mary was with us. Max’s hike took us over the hill and down to the beach. There wasn’t much beach there, but the tide was dropping so we braved it and were able to make it to the campground and marina while keeping our feet dry.

We looped back through town, and ended up at a new Indian restaurant. The restaurant owners were sitting outside, and said the restaurant was closed for a short break between lunch and dinner. But Max charmed them by speaking Hindi, so they invited us and gave us water.

Max shares his adventures online. He gets a lot of things right on social media, like his NOMAD Max name, and Rolling Marble Productions for videos. Those are both golden. But he misses sometimes, too. On a recent video, he talked about driving Henry across the loneliest road in America. Ok, that sounds adventurous. Maybe rank it 6 or 7. But toward the end of the video, he goes to a natural hot spring. You promo that video by showing some clothes hanging on a cactus, and suddenly you’re scoring a 10 in world of click bait. Missed opportunity, Max.

We were happy to get to spend time with Max, and hope to do it again. Maybe someday we’ll wander as Max does. For now we’ll enjoy catching him when we can.

You can read about Max and other NOMADS in a past issue of The Missouri Methodists at https://www.bluetoad.com/publication/?i=721694.

To view Max’s latest video, go to https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wf4c3jac9Oo.

Find all of Max’s videos at  https://www.youtube.com/@NomadsMax.

For more on the Indian restaurant in Port Townsend, go to https://royalmasalaporttownsend.com/. 



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