Prior to embarking on this world adventure I sat in my cabin in Alaska pondering all the reasons why I shouldn’t GO. The pondering session lasted 5 years. I pondered my way to Ponderossa and back before I was finally ready to GO.
The thought of not being able to financially afford it lingered like the stench of cooked bacon in the center of my cabin for quite some time. Today, I got out my calculator and did some math. In the last month, my daily expenses here in Indonesia have been $8.56/day. These expenses encompassed total costs for hotels, camping, bottled water, visas, stove fuel, laundry soap, shampoo, insect repellent, SPD shoe repairs, groceries, restaurants, a ferry to Borneo and an expensive coke-cola consumption problem. That’s $8.56 a day, that’s less then I would spend at home and at those costs how can you afford not to GO.
I thought I was too old to travel. Now the funny thing about that is that 5 years later I still wanted to GO and the only thing that had changed was I was then 5 years older. I have since met a 70 year old French man cycling SE east Asia averaging 200km a day and doubling my daily distances. Another remarkable women I met is Jill, a 71 year old kiwi women trekking her way through the Himalayan Mountains in Nepal. I asked Jill about hiring a porter to carry her backpack like the 20 something year old crowd was doing, she laughed and said why would I want a man following me around all day. Jill trekked for 3 weeks and the last I saw her she was climbing the final leg of her adventure to a village at 4000 meters in the Mt Everest range carrying her huge backpack. You GO girl!
I have a house and responsibilities. Here’s where the pondering to Ponderossa thoughts lost their bearings. At the moldy age of 36, I had bought land, paid it off, learned carpentry and built myself a house. I had a boyfriend who was far too easy to part with, my friends and family and a good paying job that I didn’t realize I hated. My favorite person who I have been lucky to have known is my grand-ma, my Gram. My gram traveled until she was 90 and one day while on her way to a senior’s bus trip from Canada to America she said every day I wake up and say thank you for one more day and then I get off my duff and do something. When she reflected upon her life, she remembered with the biggest smile, her 2 around the world trips in the 70s she took with my grand-pa, the time she spent at her cottage and her daughter. So the question is when you are sitting in your rocky chair at 90 reflecting upon your life what will YOU remember?
