“Stuff your eyes with wonder. Live as if you'd drop dead in ten seconds. see the world. It's more fantastic than any dream made or paid for in factories. Ask no guarantees, ask for no security, there never was such an animal. And if there were, it would be related to the great sloth which hangs upside down in a tree all day every day, sleeping its life away. To hell with that . Shake the tree and knock the great sloth down on his ass.” Ray Bradbury, Fahrenheit 451
Good old Ray B is my favorite author. And he said it perfectly.
Travel is one of those things that will take hold of you and create something new from the fibers of your being. Once you've dipped your toes in the world, you'll never be the same. You'll happily let it drag you in over your head, and there you'll be immersed in your own immense smallness.
You'll daydream about spice markets while you sit in a cubicle. There in that veal cage you atrophy, yearning for any hint of something vibrant to jolt against the dull hum of fluorescence and the non-smell of people's lives ticking away for a dime. You'll lose track of time as your mind wanders through far-off dense jungles, or get whisked away by the ruins of ancient worlds with each blink of your eyelids. Tides may rush in and threatening the productivity of your work day. And suddenly, that cubicle will become unbearably tight, gray, and repetitive, no matter how much you delight in the what of your existence.
For some, travel is a when-we-can kind of thing, for others, it's oxygen. And some few people have found ways to make it life itself. While I haven't quite hit that point, it is oxygen for me and I am bent on building my life on the banks of the jet stream.
Since we're bound to the reality of our present existence (mortgage, job, car, bills...), my husband and I have discovered ways to make travel a more common reality. We've determined what we want most from a given destination and what we can do without. And we've found that more often than not, it's the little things we take for granted that can be foregone for much larger, better experiences. We experience the world like royalty and move about it like vagabonds. We've quite literally dined at one of the world's top-ranked restaurants, but arrived on foot after miles of walking.
In our most recent ventures, we've foregone rental cars in favor of getting to do things that mean more. We ate better food and stayed better places because we searched off the beaten path. And we allotted time for walking miles on beaches.
We travel light and we travel often. Remember, it's oxygen for us, so travel isn't really something we can do without for long periods of time, despite the cultural notion that it's a once every few years kind of thing. For us, it's a desire that can be assuaged with less effort, cost, and time than you might think.
Right now, my husband has a wonderful job and the only catch is that he only gets 2 weeks per year for vacation. So we're working with that. We traveled in January for our anniversary, and we'll be going to Cuba this summer as well as Philadelphia and we'd like to plan an end-of-year trip someplace as well as a weekend away at a winefest in Palisade, CO. That's a lot of vacation for a single year. And we're going to make it work into a modest budget and tight time allotment.
We are currently living the veal-cage lifestyle. Even if we love what we do, when we perform these tasks from a cubicle or office instead of a coffee shop or airport, we feel a bit trapped. So we're trying to find ways to make this into a great adventure. Some day, we hope to launch into full-time travel in some capacity. And alongside that dream is the deep need to do something meaningful.
I look forward to sharing travel tips and learning from you as well. We've been so many places and we've seen lots of beautiful and stunning things. And the more the see, the more we long for the next venture.
Good old Ray B is my favorite author. And he said it perfectly.
Travel is one of those things that will take hold of you and create something new from the fibers of your being. Once you've dipped your toes in the world, you'll never be the same. You'll happily let it drag you in over your head, and there you'll be immersed in your own immense smallness.You'll daydream about spice markets while you sit in a cubicle. There in that veal cage you atrophy, yearning for any hint of something vibrant to jolt against the dull hum of fluorescence and the non-smell of people's lives ticking away for a dime. You'll lose track of time as your mind wanders through far-off dense jungles, or get whisked away by the ruins of ancient worlds with each blink of your eyelids. Tides may rush in and threatening the productivity of your work day. And suddenly, that cubicle will become unbearably tight, gray, and repetitive, no matter how much you delight in the what of your existence.
For some, travel is a when-we-can kind of thing, for others, it's oxygen. And some few people have found ways to make it life itself. While I haven't quite hit that point, it is oxygen for me and I am bent on building my life on the banks of the jet stream.
Since we're bound to the reality of our present existence (mortgage, job, car, bills...), my husband and I have discovered ways to make travel a more common reality. We've determined what we want most from a given destination and what we can do without. And we've found that more often than not, it's the little things we take for granted that can be foregone for much larger, better experiences. We experience the world like royalty and move about it like vagabonds. We've quite literally dined at one of the world's top-ranked restaurants, but arrived on foot after miles of walking.In our most recent ventures, we've foregone rental cars in favor of getting to do things that mean more. We ate better food and stayed better places because we searched off the beaten path. And we allotted time for walking miles on beaches.
We travel light and we travel often. Remember, it's oxygen for us, so travel isn't really something we can do without for long periods of time, despite the cultural notion that it's a once every few years kind of thing. For us, it's a desire that can be assuaged with less effort, cost, and time than you might think.Right now, my husband has a wonderful job and the only catch is that he only gets 2 weeks per year for vacation. So we're working with that. We traveled in January for our anniversary, and we'll be going to Cuba this summer as well as Philadelphia and we'd like to plan an end-of-year trip someplace as well as a weekend away at a winefest in Palisade, CO. That's a lot of vacation for a single year. And we're going to make it work into a modest budget and tight time allotment.
We are currently living the veal-cage lifestyle. Even if we love what we do, when we perform these tasks from a cubicle or office instead of a coffee shop or airport, we feel a bit trapped. So we're trying to find ways to make this into a great adventure. Some day, we hope to launch into full-time travel in some capacity. And alongside that dream is the deep need to do something meaningful.I look forward to sharing travel tips and learning from you as well. We've been so many places and we've seen lots of beautiful and stunning things. And the more the see, the more we long for the next venture.
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