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When I finished undergrad I started teaching middle school, and after two years of teaching I finally had a summer off with zero obligations. I had read A Walk
by japhyr 6y ago
When I finished undergrad I started teaching middle school, and after two years of teaching I finally had a summer off with zero obligations. I had read A Walk Across America, about a guy who walked across the US. It sounded fascinating but it took him several years. So I settled on biking, because you can get all the way across the US on a bike in a summer. I did that a couple times, and then spent a year living on a bike. I rode from Seattle to Maine (through northeastern Canada), down to Florida, over to California, and ended in Alaska.
That led me to move to Alaska a few years later, which led to mountain rescue work. Teaching led to writing. Living in a coastal fishing town led to boating. Each adventure leads to the next. :)
I wouldn't want to live forever, but I'd happily live a thousand years and spend ten years on a hundred different things.
- gcanyon 6y agoSerious question: do you think there are only 100 things that would be interesting to learn?
- japhyr 6y agoNo. It's a simple way of saying I'd love to live longer than a human lifetime, but would never want to be immortal.
- vram22 6y agoCool. I read A Walk across America, in serial form (2 parts) in the National Geographic magazine, long ago. It was great, and the first time I heard of the concept of such a long journey on foot, although I knew about people driving across America. It was fairly common in those days when gas was much cheaper. Some of my older relatives settled in the US had done it too, and used to tell us kids about it. A couple of points I remember are him guzzling a liter or more of soft drinks at a stop after a long walk on a hot summer day, and his stay with and warm welcome by an African American family. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Walk_Across_America https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Walk_Across_America https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Jenkins_(travel_author) https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Jenkins_(travel_author...