Profile
Blog
Photos
Videos
The Plan
Author's Note: I'd like to apologize in advance for the sheer scope of this post. Future entries won't be nearly this long, but this one concerns the planning process, and the planning process…was long.
"Remember Cotopaxi"
"I can almost see it, that dream I'm dreaming, but there's a voice inside my head saying 'you'll never reach it'." - Miley Cyrus, "The Climb"
April, 2013
Here's what they don't tell you about following your dreams: You will be told to follow your dreams, and then, when you actually try, you will be told many more things; that you are crazy, that you have a death wish, that you are being reckless, unrealistic and frivolous, that you won't be able to make it happen.
The look I received from the travel agent the first time I sat across from her at her desk was one I had grown accustomed to, a kind of suspended reaction punctuated with a silent blink or two of the eyes, as though she were patiently awaiting a confession that I was pulling her leg. "You want to purchase a Round-the-World Ticket," she parroted finally, "to nine countries?"
"Ten if you count the States," was my even reply.
To her credit, she didn't immediately demand to know, as most did, how I planned to pay for this adventure-of-a-lifetime, or who I planned to go with, or whether or not I had life insurance, or a mental health practitioner. Instead she stared me down for one more minute, then tentatively agreed to make a few phone calls on my behalf to airline representatives who would be able to put together an itinerary and price quote. At the time I was planning a straight shot east around the globe (RWT's didn't allow backtracking) to three countries in each of three areas - Sardinia (which I know technically isn't a country in itself but referring to a Sardinian as an Italian will in all likelihood earn you a knife in the throat), Italy and Greece in the Mediterranean; Thailand, Singapore and Indonesia in Southeast Asia and Brazil, Peru and Ecuador in South America, all capped off by a few days of sunbathing in Arizona before flying home to Detroit. Estimated time away from home: four months. Budget: ten grand, give or take. This "Gap Trip", as I had come to start calling it, was something I had been planning and saving for since I started earning money. Fantasizing about it was at times all that kept me going through five gruelling years of sleepless nights and cramming for University exams. I wasn't about to renege on that promise to myself now, with graduation finally within reach.
I wasn't naïve. I suspected, as I stood to shake Lisa's hand and leave the travel agency, that my dream would get worked and reworked perhaps to an unrecognizable extent before the planning stages were up, that there would be endless lists of details to be figured out like transportation, finances (not to mention out-of-country access to funds), accommodations, international data plans, vaccinations, travel medical insurance and countless other things I hadn't even thought of yet. Was it overwhelming even to think about? Absolutely. But I also knew that the harder this next year of organization was, the better the resulting experience was going to be.
I may be young, but there are plenty of examples from my past I can refer to of things I couldn't imagine how I was ever going to accomplish and did. I have a mantra for summits like these: "Remember Cotopaxi". Located in the Ecuadorian highlands in South America, Cotopaxi is renowned as the world's tallest active volcano, the most challenging adventure tour activity offered by International Student Volunteers, and the hardest thing I've done to date. Whenever faced with any doubt (my own or that of others) in my capabilities, all I have to do is think of the glacial wind blowing dust in my eyes, the thin air causing suffocating altitude sickness and crippling muscle weakness, and the steep slopes composed exclusively of ash which had me sliding back two steps for every three I took. I level gazes with the mirror, the travel agent, or any other face from which the message "you can't" is emanating, and I respond with two dogged words: "Watch me".
October, 2013
Planning a Round-the-World trip turned out to be every bit as stressful as I'd anticipated, and more. The budgeting calculations, medical and financial game plans, emergency credit card applications and travel documentation was something akin to doing quantum physics, not least for an English major who shuddered at the mere mention of math. A new bank account with international access had to be opened, projected medical prescriptions written and filled, a travel visa prepared to get into Bali and portable internet devices researched and purchased. Meanwhile, my budget was swelling in proportion to my consideration of things to take into account. Ten thousand became fifteen, then twenty, then twenty with a several-thousand-dollar buffer, in case of emergencies and unplanned expenses, of which I was sure there would be plenty.
Lisa got back to me with a price quote and itinerary from the collaborating airlines. Their fixed routes would require me to revise nearly half the cities I wanted to visit (if I still wanted to visit them I would have to spend more travelling overland), I would have to book all of my departure dates before I left Canada, and it would cost almost all of what I had saved for the trip as a whole. I toyed with alternatives. I could cut out Sardinia and Thailand perhaps, as the RWT airline flew only into Bangkok, and not Chiang Mai, the city I was primarily interested in, and extend the layover they had scheduled in Madrid to the two weeks I would have spent there. As long as I was adding Spain to the list, why not tack on Greece as well? They were two places I wanted to see anyway… I didn't like the idea of simplifying. I just wanted the whole world - was that too much to ask?
Upon consulting recent travel blogs and websites, I ultimately came to learn that Round-the-World Tickets were antiquated and unjustifiably expensive. Nowadays one could book the exact same trip without their help for a fraction of the cost. Furthermore, not only would purchasing the flights on my own from separate airlines mean I could fly into whichever cities I wanted, it also gave me the flexibility to book as I went, coming and going as I pleased, free to stay in this or that place longer or not as I saw fit, which was the whole point of this trip in the first place, wasn't it? So I composed a gracious and apologetic novel of an e-mail to Lisa the travel agent, emphasizing how much I appreciated all of the time and effort she'd invested on my behalf and letting her know that I'd decided to take the booking of this trip into my own hands.
By winter, my revised (and re-revised and re-re-revised) plan stood as follows: On April 1st, I would fly into Rome. Having spent two or three weeks in Italy, I would take a train north to Trieste, to which the Istrian peninsula in Croatia is well-connected by bus. From Croatia I would fly to Athens, Greece, spend some time touring the ruins and maybe see the islands, then fly to Singapore and Bali, spending a couple of weeks or so in each. Finally, I would fly to Peru, where I'd already reserved a spot on a five-day horseback ride culminating at Machu Picchu (because I'd climbed enough f***ing mountains in my life on foot to know it wasn't something I enjoyed). The trip would conclude with an idyllic few days in the temperate Flagstaff/Sedona area of Arizona, from which I would fly home. Estimated time away from home: Approximately three-and-a-half months. Total budget: Twenty thousand dollars, plus an emergency cushion. And with that, I doubled my to-do list for the spring.
March, 2014
Here's what they don't tell you about following your dreams: you will be scared s***less. But you will do it anyway. That is how you will know it is right. I've experienced this odd, somewhat possessive surge of intuition before in my life - when I signed up on-the-spot for a month-long volunteer excursion to Ecuador, when I hit the self-destruct button on a relationship that would have made us both very unhappy in the long run, when I submitted my resume at a job fair booth for ESL teaching in Korea…. I am by no stretch of the imagination an impulsive person, but when an opportunity comes along that will lead you down a certain path in life, something else takes over. Your brain goes suddenly silent, and, all traces of logic temporarily suspended, you act. You might be fully aware of the consequences, but you are also somehow fully confident that they are worth it.
I was met with my fair share of opposition in the months leading up to April 1st. It seemed at every opportunity someone new felt the compulsion to share with me another story they'd heard about a traveller being robbed, scammed, kidnapped, arrested, murdered, date raped, gang raped, and every other kind of raped imaginable. Frankly, I didn't want to hear it anymore. I was sick of having to defend something that had been my dream for so long. Often my response was to point out the fact that, statistically, the most dangerous place I would be during the months I was away was Detroit, that Singapore had an annual homicide rate of 0.3 - that's 16 people a year versus the United States' 14,612. You could run naked through the streets at 3AM screaming that you were a virgin and all alone in a strange country and no one would bother you. Not that I would.
I just wanted people to stop being scared for me. That was my job, and believe me, I was scared enough for everyone. But, as I'd learned as a child from one of my favourite Disney movies, "Courage is not the absence of fear, but rather the judgment that something else is more important than fear." The way I saw it, the safer alternative to this life-changing and incredible learning experience was staying home because I was scared of what might happen and regretting it for the rest of my life.
Even more vexing than the accusation that what I was doing was dangerous, was the one that it was unrealistic. Millions of people enjoyed this kind of lifestyle, and for years I'd worked two, sometimes three jobs while going to University full-time in order to make this dream a reality. I wasn't about to let anyone cheapen it by comparing the effort their own ambitions.
In the months between my graduation and departure, I was pulling twelve-hour midnight shifts as a temporary Casino employee because an extra grand or two could mean the difference between making all of my dreams come true and only most of them. I spent that time preparing in other ways as well. I went to the gym every day, bolstering my endurance for overnight layovers, long hikes hauling luggage and maybe even self-defence. I lived on fat-free yogurt and carrot sticks, determined to enjoy every pound I gained in Italy to its full extent. I abstained from alcohol, saving myself for the ample vino della casa to come in trattorias. I signed up for yoga classes and chiropractic appointments in an effort to attain as much physical and mental balance and centeredness as possible. But sure, I didn't know what it took to live in the real world.
A week before my flight out, I'd had my going-away party, said my goodbyes, tied up as many loose ends as I could. There was only one empty mark on my checklist.
After one of the most brutal winters on record, the world was finally beginning to thaw. For the first time in far too long I was able to show up at the barn (where I had now been riding for sixteen years) in only one pair of pants and without the coat which often prompted my instructor to playfully refer to me as the "Michelin Man". My current mount was one of my favourites to date - a stunning, steady grey gelding with a dreamy, floating-on-air trot and a stride like a metronome. Simple and solid-as-a-rock over fences, he was the kind of horse equestrians referred to as "bomb-proof", capable of cradling my every worry in the seasoned slope of his back as if to say, "I got this, kid. You just hang tight and relax." A horse like this was long overdue for me, a love affair begun too late.
Before I got on I set the jumps in the indoor arena to a comfortable height for myself. Acting once again on that crazy impulsion that seemed to come from nowhere and everywhere, I also took down the barrier rope that was always slung across the big end door when it was open, not entirely sure what I was doing or why I was doing it. After riding inside for so many months, perhaps I was just desperate for as good a view of the snow-free hay field out back as possible. Compared to the veritable swamp the rest of the property became every spring, I knew it was still relatively dry. Besides having efficient drainage, the field's frozen base also meant that the ground remained hard longer than the paddocks or outdoor riding rings. Given another week, the rising temperatures would turn it to sludge, too. After that, hayseed would be planted and it would be unrideable. Outside, early evening was just beginning to flush the sky coral pink.
I took the big grey over the fences inside. By the second time through, I could feel him gaining momentum, perking his ears and taking the double combination in three strides instead of four, enjoying as much as I was the fresh spring air drafting in through the open door. I sensed in him a craving to stretch his wings, one I sincerely empathized with. Then I did something that went against all of the barn safety protocol and horse-sense that years of pony club had so deeply engrained. I landed the second jump, and instead of steering the gelding in a wide circle around the outside track of the arena, as I normally would, I pointed him straight at the big end door. I gave him his head, hugged his sides with my calves, and opened the throttle. I never could stand riding in circles. Tonight especially, I would much rather ride off into the sunset.
- comments