Intro to a Forty Year Old Backpacker

Mid-Life Crisis at Forty

If you would have asked me when I was thirteen, "What do you think your life will be like when you are forty years old?"  I would have probably guessed by the time I turn forty, life would be boring, really boring. By my twelfth birthday,  I had already given up on my dream to be an MLB player and didn't really know too much about being an adult. The only grown ups I knew were my parents, teachers,  and friends' parents.  In my head, the teachers mostly gave us detentions and wore a shirt and tie. Neither of that sounded exciting to me. The other grown ups took us places in their Minivans, and spent all of their money on us. That didn't sound fun either. I also remembered them talking about  jobs they hated.
I had no comprehension of the love my parents had for me, my teachers had for me and even my friends' folks had for me. To my  brain, Love was just a word that made me feel uncomfortable

 Instead of appreciating their love for me,  I spent my energy convincing myself that I would be leading a boring life as a grown up. I thought that is just what you do. I am talking as boring as considering eating a piece of chocolate cake on my birthday to be an event to look forward to. That's right. Chocolate cake for fun, year after year, was what I thought my future held for me. 

I got lucky  enough to exceed my nightmare of being the Chocolate Cake guy shortly after I turned forty last year. I don’t think I could have guessed how lucky I got. I bagged a two hundred mile trek across Southern Maine, a ten day silent meditation, a Buddhist pilgrimage in Japan, and journeys to three  Asian countries   In my opinion, that's a pretty cool mid-life crisis. 

 I'm aware that this all sounds like self-boasting so far,  without a valid reason. I am so aware of it that  I can actually hear thumbs scrolling to the next link as you read this. Nobody liked when they were kids when Aunt Marge & Uncle Phil came over to show their five hour slide show of their trip to Florida , and nowadays nobody definitely wants to read about a guy bragging on the Internet about his vacation. 

If you are wondering why would I bother then to write about it? The answer is simple. If I only knew two things, one of them is that some people really want to travel but are scared to to do it. Maybe, they might read this and go, "Hey if that guy can do it, I can too." 

I also  know one more thing. Some people accept that they will never travel, but still enjoy reading travel stories. So, I hope to help them out too. 

         Again, I know I have to write this carefully without sounding like a dick.  After all, what did I actually have to do to take this trip? I  quit a job. Then, I paid airlines money to take me places that Uncle Phil & Aunt Marge never got to go to.  People do much more admirable stuff than that every day.  Even Uncle Phil and Aunt Marge were more admirable  than me just by lugging the big sideshow projector into the back of their car, and putting up with annoying kids not paying attention to their photo album. 

On this big mid-life crisis trip, I adventured mostly like a twenty year old kid. The feedback can be a bit varied as a forty year old guy hoisting a backpack around. I stayed in hostels, and drank cheap beer.  Some of my travel companions looked at me funny. Other pals on bar stools chuckled when I said I was forty years old and had never been married nor had a kid. I spared them the story that a former partner of mine lost a baby of mine in a miscarriage  I really didn’t take much offense to their insults. The more sincere and experienced people told me they were incredibly envious of my adventures. The better people also never asked about my age, my relationship status, or my income. These kind people mostly asked questions like, "What do you want to do tomorrow?" They treated me like, just another guy

As hinted at earlier, the places I went to weren’t the most valuable part of the trip to me. Places are just places, really. But, the fun came from the conversations and the stories.  Every spare moment I got I was jotting down the profound, and the profoundly dumb that I heard into the Notes section of my phone. Unfortunately, I had some tech issues with my phone and I lost my notes from about sixty percent of the trip. During the excursion, I was still certain I could turn this information into a fantastic memoir of a great trip.

I pondered for five months now of the different ways I could produce my literary gold, at least it was gold in my head. To gauge interest, I pounded friends on road trips into the mountains with live readings from my phone of stories about robbery on the Greyhound, Greyhound passengers  spraying their luggage with perfume to kill the smell of weed, more debauchery, and sometimes inspiration.  I thought about writing an  E-Book just from the stuff I heard and saw on the Greyhound. I experimented with using the material to produce some fiction. I mostly cranked out some really terrible fiction. I contemplated  a Book of Bearbo Quotes. Bearbo was a Kentucky guy I hiked with for a few weeks that asked me, “Is this the White House?” when we were standing out of the Office of The Treasury in D.C. That wasn't even the most ridiculous thing he said to me either. 

Today, I came to the conclusion to keep it simple. Over the next few weeks, you will get the top ten tales from my backpacker’s journey as a forty year old posted on this blog.  Most of the tales will revolve around things people said and did. I don’t have much interest in giving detailed and technical descriptions of the places I saw. Tales like writing a story in the Boston Train station about Midgets in the Soda Machine with a guy who was convinced the CIA was watching him are just a tiny part of the deliciousness you will be dining on over the next few weeks and months.

Look forward to sharing more!