Seize the Day

I'm so excited for my trip next week! I can't wait.

I just finished reading Unlikely Destinations by Tony and Maureen Wheeler, the founders of Lonely Planet. The book irritated me because I wish I had thought of their damn idea first and founded a multimillion dollar company based on my passion for travel. However, I readily acknowledge that I am unwilling to suffer the kind of uncertainty and scarcity they endured (they arrived in Sydney at the end of a cross-Asia voyage with twenty-seven cents to their names) in the hope of getting to that point, so I will content myself to live vicariously through them. I thought that reading the book might help me see how to reconcile the kind of travel I need to do to be happy (at least one passport stamp per year, preferably more) with being a mother, but it didn't exactly succeed. The Wheelers have two children who received matchless travel opportunities during their lives, but this came at the cost of lazing around on school breaks with friends and generally having more normal, sedentary childhood experiences. So much for that. But the Wheelers have gone to some undeniably cool places (or, more or less everywhere on earth), and I am jealous of them for that.

One thing Tony Wheeler mentioned that he did in his book is to make a list of "must do" trips. I think that is a brilliant idea, mostly since I have also done that and enjoy when anyone validates something I have also done. I am obviously implementing my chain of most important "must dos" next year (pyramids, Taj Mahal, Moscow and St. Petersburg, and Angkor Wat), and I hope to follow up that flurry of trips with China. I'd also love to go to Damascus, the Galapagos (or South America in general) and a safari in Kenya and/or Tanzania. I think it's so important to start doing the things you really want to do and not put it off. Unfortunately for me, every time I plan to tick something off of my list, I think of something else that needs to go on it.