Picking It Up Again

Well Hello.

Hoping you haven't forgotten me. I used to come around here quite a bit, but times took a different road than I expected. but I'm back and wow has it been an interesting few years.

Earlier this year I retired from what was a particularly stressful job. Actually, let me amend that. The job wasn't particularly stressful, though it had its moments. The people I worked directly for were stressful. In January my wife and I took a trip to Hawaii for a week and I was startled with how badly my physical and mental health were doing, and I made the fateful decision that despite having two more years to gain full social security retirement benefits, I was pulling the trigger at 65.

And now, having walked away from full-time employment on May 7th of this year, I am five months into what is becoming a comfortable rhythm. 

I have taken two trips this year, so far, both of which were to Hawaii. The aforementioned was to my favorite island, Kauai. The second, just a few months later, was to the Big Island. Both afforded me time to stop and reflect on what I want to accomplish and how I want to handle my semi-retirement going forward.

And a major component of that plan involves getting back to writing and photography. And travel, of course. Over the last eight years in which I've been badly remiss on writing my two blogs (this and the A Bartender's Tour blog), and need to resume both. I love doing it, it's simply tearing myself away from the unfamiliar pleasure of being a couch potato and watching too much tv.

Another motivator is a work associate who is himself starting to write. And several of my writer/artist friends have all had success at getting their words and art "out there" for people to read and see. 

So between lots of stories to tell from the last near decade of travel (and previous to that!), to motivation at not wanting to be lost in the pack while watching my friends produce, I'm back and raring to go. Between two blogs and studying for two different wine certification programs (for my "day job), that should sufficient to keep me away from the idiot box most days.

Anecdotes and other tales to come. 

And thanks for dropping by!

THE TAPESTRY OF OUR LIVES

Think about this: Each time we visit a new destination we add the fabric of that locale to the tapestry of our lives. It becomes a little part of who we are moving forward.

Sound a little prosaic? Think of it this way: I think it's relatively noncontroversial to state that we're all molded by our 

individual experiences. Everything that happens to us, every minute, hour and day, finds its way - we hope - into the long-term memories of our lives and creates for the future the people we become as we age and experience new things. It's a little along the lines of "tiny rivulets became streams become the mighty Mississippi." 

And there are very few positive experiences - let’s ignore the negative ones for the moment , even though they may be the most short-term instructional - that impact our lives more than going to distant places and seeing new things.

Years ago I worked with a woman who, on her own time, helped mentor inner-city kids in South Central Los Angeles. Growing up in that area isn’t easy, between street thugs/gangs, school pressures on an underfunded and understaffed district, parents who are often absent for work or just because they don’t care to be that involved. 

My father, as an adult, summiting Mt Fuji

It’s a difficult place to be as an adult, let alone a kid.

What this woman, and a core of other volunteers, did was to organize camping trips up into the nearby San Bernardino Mountains, a range which neatly borders the northern borders of nearly the entire Los Angeles metropolitan complex. And more importantly, those mountains are both visible from South Central and yet a world away.

So my friend and her associates would pack these kids up into school busses and take them up into the nearby mountains, to a place very far removed from the inner city of L.A. Thirty miles, maybe forty at the most. Not, in the grand scheme of things, very far. But a world away.

The effect differed kid to kid and experience to experience. Some felt too far out of their
element. Others didn’t like their lack of control, the feeling of being out of their element. 

But the majority of the kids, despite their inhibitions and social upbringing, dug into the experience and learned what they could, transforming their vision of the world around them and their place in it. 

According to my friend, the experience of being taken from the only world they’d ever known and being thrust into an environment where the reality they knew didn’t necessarily apply in the same way, changed some of the kids fundamentally, giving them the drive to exceed society’s expectations. They adapted and flourished, and quite a few of the kids in the program went on to get good jobs, go to higher eduction, and - in one case - become a city councilman.

That is what travel is all about. Adding to our experiences and giving us a new perspective as to our place in the world.

(Quick aside: In referring to travel I’m addressing the act of being somewhere. I’ll readily admit that the process of getting there, whether it’s a plane ride from Hell, a long road trip with screaming kids in the back, or cruising on a ship full of oblivious and self-absorbed touristas, the process of getting somewhere can be frustrating. I’m sticking to the act of being somewhere. Exploring and experiencing a new place.)

So new destinations add their fabric to our own. We learn, if we are open to it, new skills, new thoughts, new perspectives. The foods, the culture, the people, all slipping a thread into our world and making us the better for it. And, in turn, in a small way we add our DNA to them. That culture. By participating we add ourselves into the tapestry of each place.

And that is the purpose of travel. Adding to our thread. Adding to our Tapestry. 

What we are is the sum of our adventures.

My father and his parents traveled the West