I traveled the back roads of my county on two wheels before I could even ride a bike. Dad built a rack over the rear wheel of his three-speed, padded it to protect my tender behind, and welded pegs onto the bike frame in just the right spot to support my feet.
I spent many hours with my fingers hooked onto Dad�s belt and watching the world go by in slow motion. Eventually I learned to ride myself, and I grew up bicycling, hiking, riding horseback, and generally spending most of my time outdoors.
Most of those free-spirited activities were curtailed when I married and started having kids, and I entered what I figured was the expected �normal� grown-up life. I kept house, cooked, cleaned, and took care of the kids. That was fine until the kids grew up and started their own lives with their own families. (I have 3 kids and 6 grandkids, and they are so spread out in this world that I rarely get to see any of them.)
I ended up a divorced participant in the daily grind, feeling there had to be more to life than punching a time clock. Eventually I began to wonder why I kept working 40 hours a week and never doing the things I�d dreamed of doing. I no longer had kids to take care of, so why not take care of me? I took the leap in 2001, quitting my job and backpacking the length of the Appalachian Trail. From then on, life was never the same.
I did go back to work for a time, but now that I knew what was possible, I wasn�t content with a normal life. I wanted adventure. In 2003 I backpacked the International Appalachian Trail. The following year I sold and gave away most of my possessions and moved into an Astro cargo van. Since then I�ve traveled across the country, doing seasonal work in Arizona in the winter, filling in at my old job in Ohio in the summer, and having as many adventures and experiences as I could. |
