The Adventurer

There are, it seems, so many things I haven't done and places I haven't visited. Things, perhaps, I should have done; places I should have visited.

"You've never been to Paris? Oh, you must --"

"Downhill skiing in Colorado with the wide slopes and the deep fresh spring snow--."

"The Louvre--"

"The catacombs--"

"We got tickets for --"

"..this hidden hotel in--"

"Cancun--"

"..sailed our schooner into the port at --"

"..the chute opened at 1200 feet--"

Not that I blame friends and acquaintances for telling me of places they've been, things they've done. Half the fun of adventure is sharing the stories afterward.

It's just that it seems that I've never done anything worth talking about. Nothing unusual. "Just an ordinary life"--that could be my epitaph.

I did go to Iceland, once. My only trip beyond the confines of the United States. Went to Hawaii. But not Alaska.

Not just travel but other places I haven't been as well. I never took an acid trip. This didn't bother me until, years after the Sixties when I might have tripped, I learned that the CEO of a hip company customarily inquired of new hires when they'd tripped. So I never applied.

Climbing a ladder to the roofline of our second floor to clean out the gutters makes me week-kneed. So I haven't scrambled up mountains, dived from planes, jumped with bungee cords tied to my ankles.

I learned to live a vicarious life. I wrote a theme in freshman English about riding a bucking horse that threw me off. It never happened but I got an "A" and the instructor read it aloud to other classes. I learned to live a vicarious life and write about the adventures in my thoughts. This kept me at home with my dog and family while my imagination roamed into weird places on Earth and in far galaxies.

I'm a quiet-looking guy. You can look at me and see nothing unusual. Indeed, you could sit next to me at dinner and not hear of anything I've done. But I could show you things I've written and pictures I've drawn, of extraordinary things and places and people--I've been there; I've done that.