second time around

The road goes ever on and on, down from the door where it began…

A long time ago a friend talked me into considering an adventure, and so against my parent’s better judgments I took a year off of college and with $4,000 I travelled east. We crossed the USA together in a ’58 panel truck until we split up in New York, where he wanted to stay awhile and I wanted to get to Europe. Six months backpacking there and then I continued East; sharing a house in Iraklion, third class passage across the Black Sea, Iran, Iraq, across Afghanistan in a Jag, dysentery, Pakistan, India, Thailand, Hong Kong and the biggest culture shock of all returning to the US. It took another two months driving across country and back for me to wrap my head around this strange land. For thirty-seven years I have been waiting to get back to travelling. Now I am making the plans for the second time around the world. This time I will be headed west and I will have a bit more money and a bit less strength.
It isn’t like I haven’t had a lot of vacations and been to many places around the country and the world since then, I just haven’t “travelled”. To me there is a difference between a couple of weeks on a tightly planned itinerary from one hotel to the next, from one “must see” sight to the next and real travelling. It involves the need for a length of time which allows for spontaneity, flexibility and a certain anxiety. It needs some arrivals without reservations. It involves the balance between being tired, cold and wet, dreaming about home and laughing right out loud at one more “best time of my life”.
These days there are certainly a lot of reasons to not quit working, take off for a year, risk illness or injury, spend the money, and possibly end up sick, tired and alone in some God forsaken backwater s***-hole. But if I don’t do it now, I will get too old and will forever regret what might have been. My wife will be meeting me from time to time along the way. My children are grown and I may meet them from time to time as well, depending on where they are living. So who knows, perhaps you and I will meet and share a meal or two along the way.
This blog is for my friends and relatives to follow along and know that I am well and happy and for those who may wish to follow their hearts to know it is always possible. I will certainly be asking for advice and while I may not always take it, I will always be appreciative so please feel free to offer up your pearls.

Tags: Travel

This entry was posted on Saturday, October 2nd, 2010 at 10:09 am and is filed under Travel. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.