If traveling is a passion of yours, then you understand the urge to move. Traveling got a hold of me at an early age. My parents owned a stationary caravan (RV) situated in the picturesque coast town of Conway, North Wales, where each summer we vacationed for the six to eight week school break. While the drive was only three hours from our rented council home, it seemed like forever in the back seat of my dads Ford Anglia.
Back then I didn’t care that much for sandy beaches or the ocean (nothing much has changed in 45 years), I loved freshwater rivers, the countryside and the mountains. I’d trout fish, hike a mountain top or go milk the cows with the local farmer. Those summer weeks in Wales set the tone, and by the time I was fifteen I was hooked on seeing new places,
My first trek to another country came at 17. A friend and I took off for France and Holland on a skateboard trip. He worked for the local supermarket and I ran a small furniture business next door selling sofas and love seats. I closed my shop for a week and he called in sick! Neither of us were that good at skateboarding, and on our first day across the channel we had already both come off our boards at 30-miles per hour and messed up our knees and elbows badly. That was it for skateboarding – we spent the rest of the week hitch-hiking.
By age twenty my business had grown, and if it hadn’t have been for a fire that wiped out both my shop and the supermarket, I would have probably just taken trips here and there in-between business. With the shop in ashes and me down on my laurels, I was reading a newspaper article that featured The Travelers Century Club – an organization founded in California in the 1950’s for people who had visited 100 countries or more – I wanted to be a member, so off I set as broke as a church mouse!
For the next eight years I enjoyed my life traveling, working, starting businesses, and experiencing cultures. I never did make it to 100 countries, I came to California in summer of 1986, my 62nd country, and the rest is history – I’ve been here since!
I still love traveling and with business and pleasure I’m on a plane somewhere at least twenty times each year. I’m still short twenty or so countries, but haven’t given up the goal of being a member. Maybe we’ll run into each other some place if you’re a travel bug too?
Alex
Playing it safe has never been my style, I always go for the gusto. Everyone knows that Icarus’s father made him wings and told him not to fly too close to the sun. But he ignored that warning and plunged to his doom. People have retold this myth (and others) for generations and stories like this have the same lesson: Play it safe. Obey your parents. Listen to the experts. But there’s another part of the myth that those in power hope you’ll forget. Icarus was also warned not to fly too low, because sea water would ruin the lift in his wings. Flying too low is even more dangerous than flying too high, because it feels deceptively safe.
The safety zone has moved. The propaganda has been exposed, and the old promises have been broken: Conformity no longer leads to comfort. But the good news is that creativity is scarce, and more valuable than ever. So is choosing to do something unpredictable and brave: Read The Icarus Deception by Seth Godin, I think you’ll enjoy it. Get it HERE
There are some amazing places on earth. Watch HERE
