What Have I Gotten Myself Into?

I’m going to devote my first post to explaining my tagline or readers may be disappointed. I’m using the term “adventure” in the broadest sense of the word so if you’re waiting to read a post written from the top of Mount Kilimanjaro or the depths of the Amazon jungle, you should probably look elsewhere for that. I find adventure in the new, the unique, the slightly quirky, and in assorted degrees of low-key excitement.

Heck, just starting a blog is a new adventure for me. I’ve never done one before. It’s true that as I’ve gotten older, I’ve gotten more adventurous. Over the last several years, I’ve taken a luge lesson in Michigan, ridden a zip line in Costa Rica, ice skated on the Rideau Canal in Ottawa, ridden in a hot air balloon over the Sonoran Desert, and hiked in the German Alps, which isn’t bad for a middle-aged klutz. I’ve also sung at Carnegie Hall, which was in all honestly simply because I knew the right people. The point I want to make is that my “adventures” will hardly satisfy true adrenaline junkies. And that’s OK. I did those things for me and I had a wonderful time but it seems only fair in the interest of full disclosure to tell you that it probably won’t get much more exciting than that. If you read this paragraph thinking that what I do is pretty lame, you should probably find yourself another blog.

As far as looking for humor in travel, I look for humor in most situations as any sensible person does but when we travel, it’s absolutely essential to be able to laugh at ourselves and the less-than-ideal situations we all find ourselves in from time to time. It helps us to be flexible, keep our tempers, roll with the punches and not have an expensive vacation ruined by something beyond our control. Since so much of my travel is for business and I don’t necessarily have time for sightseeing, many of my travel stories—and some of my best ones—are about travel itself. While it’s not generally true that half the fun is getting there, when things go wrong, it always cheers me up to figure out how I can turn a travel disaster into a good travel story. Please come along for the ride.