Epilogue: Reflections on an XC LNT Adventure - Biloxi, MS
Biloxi, MS
This Epilogue post for my XC LNT Adventure will contain some review and rehash of some of the material I've already posted in previous entries, as well as some new thoughts. Hopefully it will put a proper wrapper around it all. Settle in and make yourself comfortable, because as you can see, I got on bit of a roll.
It all starts with a nod and heartfelt thanks and love to my wife Lowana for understanding for many years why I’ve felt the need to take this break from work and embark on this adventure, and then for actually being OK with my taking it and holding down the home fort while I was gone for such a long time. Not every spouse would have been as understanding, and then not every spouse would have actually gone through with it. As I documented in the first post of this blog, our original plan was for her to fly out to meet me for a few days at some point along the way, but as the weeks progressed and due to logistics and scheduling, that never happened…so we ended up apart for the full 7 weeks (although we were in contact in one form or another just about every single day). This is the major reason why the final few days seemed like I was “rushing home”…it’s because I was.
Next, I have to thank my friends and extended family for the amazing support and encouragement I received from them through social media and direct correspondence as my adventure progressed. It gave me the motivation to keep going, and also to keep writing and sharing images. Although this was a “solo road trip”, I really was never alone. This was a bigger deal to me (and an unexpected one at that) than any of y’all might have possibly imagined.
As an extension to that, I’m incredibly grateful to those friends with whom I met IRL (In Real Life) along the way during this journey…some as “reunions” after a long time since our last visits, and others with whom I had previously only corresponded on-line and thus was meeting in person for the very first time. Your hospitality and willingness to make time for me when I passed through your areas, often on short notice and in some cases offering to put me up for a night, added so much to this trip and to my life…in every case and without exception, our visits were wonderful, and now add depth and color to our future communications. There’s no substitute for eye contact, facial expression, and vocal intonation.
As my long-term consulting gig was finally coming to a close, I started putting this sabbatical and this trip together. Really the only intentions I had for it were to (a) take a much-needed extended break after 8+ years on this particular job, and the past 30 altogether in the IT business, to recharge my batteries and figure out my next move(s), and (b) take a “dream road trip” to include my longtime “road trip bucket list” item of driving the Alaska Highway, and then riding the Alaska Ferries for part of the return portion. After that, I had some loose ideas of where I wanted to go from there, but it would be pretty much improvisational…I planned neither exactly where I wanted to go nor how long I planned to do so. Once I added the Northwest Territories to my early-in-the-trip agenda, I charted out and made reservations for the first week of the journey, but again after that it would be made up on the fly with follow-up destinations only set a few days in advance, at most.
On a side note, during a conversation with my Mom whilst driving down an Interstate one day during my journey, she reminded me that when I was a child, my Dad used to bring home boxes of pens and pencils from his office, and I would sprawl out on the carpet and make "pencil roads" with them and then drive my Matchbox cars along those roads. Her observation was that my "bucket list road trip" was a 49-year-old's logical extension of my lifelong fascination with roads and maps.
The only way to make such a journey a reality and to still enjoy it was to have an open-ended, extended, and variable amount of time. For most Americans, this means either waiting for retirement, being independently wealthy, or doing what I did: Planning and setting aside time and dollars to make it happen between jobs and while still young enough to accomplish it. It became clear to me at an early point along the way that very few Americans ever have either the chance or the moxie to do something like this at this point in their lives; my sabbatical and trip were a source of fascination to pretty much everyone I encountered when I told them about it.
I heard many people both in person and on-line tell me that they envied me for doing this. I was (and am) very consistent in responding to that as follows: Don’t envy it…instead, ask yourself what YOU want to accomplish while you’re still young enough to make the most of it, recognize that that youth is growing shorter every day, and think about what adjustments you can make in your current lives to meet that goal sometime soon. It’s easy to say you have financial constraints, family obligations, young children, college-age children, elderly parents, health issues, trapped in a job, etc etc, and those are all legitimate reasons. However, does this mean that you won’t get that opportunity to do the MEANINGFUL travel (as opposed to just squeezing in a rushed weekend/week here or there), or whatever else you want to accomplish (make a real difference to others, write that novel, etc etc), until you’re 55, 60, or older, and your health might not be there to allow it?
I turn 50 next year. I had to stop and take a short nap within many different days of my trip because I’m not as durable as I was just a few years ago. (To prospective future employers/customers who may be reading this: Don’t worry, I don’t do this during my work days…but maybe you should ask yourselves about the value of the 20-minute afternoon “power nap” for your team members.) I chose not to attempt some things physically during this trip that I might otherwise have chosen to do because I’ve let my overall physical condition get away from me a bit in the past few years in favor of focusing on my work, not always eating right, and being too lazy to properly look after my body. I know people my age, or younger, or just a touch older, who can’t do what they want to do because of any of the reasons I cited just now and in the previous paragraph. EVERY ONE OF US knows those people. I’m not independently wealthy by any means…now that I’m back home I have to find my next job to replenish the funds I’ve just spent and the income I’m currently missing while I’m on the bench. However, I set a goal for this and I planned for it and made it happen. I’m proof that it’s possible. Don’t envy me…what do YOU want to do, and what can YOU do to make it a reality SOONER rather than later?
I also heard, either directly or via the grapevine, the occasional sarcastic “must be nice” commentary about my journey and the time off that I took to make it. Well guess what: Yes, it must be nice. I’ve spent 30 years in IT developing a few skills that some employers/customers have been willing to pay me a comfortable wage to do for them (and hopefully will do so again despite my taking this risk of benching myself for this period of time). I’ve also spent a significant number of those years on projects whose management treated their deadlines (and by extension me and the other members of those project teams) with the same stress and urgency as an open-heart surgeon, when in fact the only goals those implementations had were to help companies count their money. True, careers and livelihoods may have been on the line, but not actual life or death. I married a woman who also made her living in IT for many years (and eventually got out of it in favor of a less-stressful line of work), who “gets it”. Over the years and for various reasons we missed our window to add to our immediate family and at first regretted it, but then came to accept it…so it’s just the two of us, and in recent years we decided to make the best and the most of our empty nest. Also over the years, we worked to overcome some self-inflicted financial challenges earlier on in our relationship, and we survived being wiped out by Hurricane Katrina with only fraction-on-the-dollar insurance compensation only 8 short years ago.
So, some of it is about skills and the ability to find a buyer for them, and some of it is about circumstances, choices, and sacrifices we’ve made that have allowed me to accomplish this lifelong “bucket list” objective…and to use this time to think not only about my next move in the IT business, but also about what ELSE I might want to do, in what may be a short time to do it. Yes, it must be nice. What choices have YOU made, and what circumstances have YOU had, that have stopped YOU…and what can YOU change NOW to make something happen that YOU’VE always wanted to do (and it’s not necessarily travel)? Check the calendar. Check the mail for that AARP membership application. Tomorrow is guaranteed to no one, and even if tomorrow IS there (hopefully for every one of us), health and quality of life are also guaranteed to no one.
Now in addition to my original modest intentions for this journey that I documented above near the top of this Epilogue post, this break from day-to-day reality has provided me with so much more than I could have ever imagined or expected. For one thing, there’s this blog and the reactions to it that I received from so many people.
As I documented in some of the early entries in this blog, I got my original inspiration for choosing to include a blog in my experience from a young travel blogger with whom I first corresponded, and then met, during a trip my buddy/brother Marc and I made to Newfoundland a couple of years back; her name is Candice Walsh and she writes a blog called Candice Does the World. (Since we first met her, she has since become a much more accomplished writer and social media correspondent for other companies and publications, and on other media, making a real go of turning her dual passions for writing and for travel into a career. When she becomes a superstar in the travel and/or writing business, I’ll be proud to say that I knew her “back when”.) As I originally documented in the "About this blog” page of this blog, when I embarked on this trip and decided to follow Candice’s lead and also blog about it, I hoped I would maintain the focus and discipline to keep regularly writing it.
Well, after a few days I started to find that it was becoming an integral part of my journey. The blog first provided (and continued to provide) a way to document each day just for myself while the experiences were still fresh (as well as providing an outlet for commentary where it felt right to add it within the context of my travels), and then once I had a few days’ worth of content written and I decided to start sharing it with my FB correspondents and a separate non-FB Email list on a daily basis, the interest, feedback, and encouragement I regularly received provided continued motivation to keep writing and keep sharing. It became apparent that sharing my experiences in this blog was also having a positive impact on other people’s lives, whether by providing ideas for their own future travels, providing an “escape valve” for their everyday lives, or just enjoying my particular style of written ramblings. I’m genuinely grateful to everyone who has gotten something worthwhile out of this part of my experience, and has chosen to share that feedback with me in the process.
Solo travel, or travel without one’s spouse/life partner, is not for everyone. You have to be self-motivated. You have to adjust and prepare for what you might want to do during the travel experience to doing so alone, including accounting for personal safety factors. You have to prepare for contingencies that might include not having a travel companion (such as roadside emergencies, etc). You have to be prepared to confidently interact with strangers more often along the way. You have to be prepared to find yourself in settings where the majority of other people around you are with companions (having a smartphone and/or other reading material on which to focus, like in restaurants, makes this easier). You have to be prepared to spend a few more dollars in some venues because you don’t have a travel companion with you with whom to divide the costs.
Despite our 24-year marriage, I have been traveling solo for years. Lowana and I have certainly done our fair share of travel together, but we’ve also learned that we prefer some very different things when we travel, and so we travel separately as well, and then happily share our solo experiences with each other along the way and when we reunite. One thing we are certain of is that we are not extended-road-trip compatible. I consider the road trip an essential part of the experience; Lowana prefers to just “be there” at the eventual destination and then go from there. And even when we do travel somewhere together via air, we’ve learned to set aside some “solo time” during each trip so that we’re not in each other’s faces 24/7. Your partnership may vary.
The solo travel experience can be incredibly rewarding. You set your own schedule and agenda for each day without having to establish agreement with your travel partner(s). When one person is “ready to go”, he/she doesn’t have to wait for the other(s). The car radio is solely controlled. Think about how these seemingly insignificant factors have affected your own travel experiences over the years. I’m not saying solo is the only way to travel…I love traveling with my wife and also others with whom I’ve shared wonderful journeys over the years. I AM saying that those who reflexively say “Oh, I could never travel alone” and thus sacrifice some of those experiences need to open their minds to its benefits.
One of the recurring themes that I cited throughout multiple entries in this blog has been my affirmation, through chatting up strangers as a solo traveler as well as just listening to the accents of other nearby travelers, that the overall American workplace culture regarding time off from work JUST PLAIN SUCKS. I spoke to traveler after traveler at venue after venue from Europe, Australia, the Far East, South America, and Canada, who were all on some sort of “extended holiday” of 2 weeks or more (and in some cases 6 weeks or multiple months), fully paid, happily encouraged by their employers, often mandated by their governments (see my vignette about the couple from Denmark I met during my day at Grand Canyon), and with no concerns upon their return to their jobs about whether the extended absence would affect their job security or the pressure of having to deal with whatever pile of work was left on their desks back home. In every case when I pursued the topic further with them in conversation, they observed that by contrast, almost every American traveler they encountered seemed rushed, harried, and not having the flexibility to simply “enjoy” wherever they happened to be…they were just trying to “hurry up and get it all in” in between looking at their smartphones and often taking calls or answering Emails from their workplaces.
I fully admit that I have done this in the past; it was only in the past small handful of years that I learned to turn off my work Email from my smartphone and not check it at the end of each vacation day, and have the confidence that it would not cost me my job upon my return, having chosen to be “incommunicado” during my time away. However, how many other Americans do you know, if you’re not one yourself, where regularly staying in touch with the office during a so-called vacation is fully expected either by implication or by direct management request? And how many other Americans do you know, if you’re not one yourself, who never, ever take more than a single week at a time off, even if many more weeks are available to you each year, because of that insecurity of being away for more than a week, or worrying about the growing pile of work waiting for you upon your return, or because your workplace manager says they “just can’t spare you for longer than that”? And during one of those precious single weeks off, have you noticed that you spend the first 3 of those days first trying to unwind from work, and then when you finally do start to unwind, you realize your vacation is already half-over and you spend the next 4 thinking about what’s awaiting you when you return?
I have incredible admiration for folks who are making their living actually making a real difference in folks’ lives and deaths: Health and emergency care professionals and workers at ALL levels of the care process, medical device manufacturers, LEOs and firefighters, educators, WORKING members of the military who are protecting our nation and putting their lives on the line for their fellow brothers/sisters standing next to them, and so many others. As for the rest of us who are working in offices or retail or service establishments just helping companies count money (and to be clear, there's nothing wrong with that either...hopefully we're all helping to produce or sell goods or services that help enrich others' lives, while getting paid (either by the hour, or via salary with benefits) to take care of ourselves and our families), it’s only somewhat different. In the end, we should WORK TO LIVE, we shouldn’t LIVE TO WORK.
No one ever lay on their death bed and reflected, “I wish I had worked more.” No one’s life ever “flashed before his/her eyes” at the final moment and included an extended clip at yet another project status meeting. (Well, OK, I can only presume that...if someone spent an entire career in that pointless mode, maybe that’s ALL he/she saw – and how sad would THAT be as one’s last vision?) There’s a big difference between having a strong work ETHIC and doing the best work we can do and getting real personal satisfaction from it and being fairly compensated to do so, and merely doing the minimum required to KEEP the job because we fear the consequences of the alternative. The former is how America achieved its greatness; the latter is why we are declining from it.
The other modern/industrialized cultures outside of the United States, while not perfect, do “get it”. They consider time off to recharge, and providing health care for all, to be part of the SOCIAL CONTRACT…RIGHTS, not PRIVILEGES. They see time off and universal health care as an ADDED VALUE to moving their cultures and economies forward, not a COST or an IMPEDIMENT or a “liberal entitlement”.
In so many ways, America IS “the greatest country on earth”. I traveled from state to state without having to “show papers”. I visited the most incredible natural and man-made wonders. I benefited from the efforts of generations before mine in driving Interstate, US, state, and local road systems. I toured and learned about one of the most incredible public works projects, the Hoover Dam, which was undertaken DURING THE GREAT DEPRESSION and with the technology of that time, how it benefits millions of people throughout a major part of this nation to this very day and will continue to do so into the future, and how it was paid for by the income from the power it has produced and continues to produce.
And still, we’re working ourselves to physical, mental, and emotional exhaustion, while in so many ways the rest of the world is forging ahead of us. We’re allowing our precious and once-innovative infrastructure to deteriorate and crumble, and our leaders consider it “too costly” to invest and re-invest in it, while we continue to sink countless excessive billions into an overbuilt military industrial complex where spending perhaps only a fraction of it would still yield the most prepared fighting force in the history of the world to date. We similarly fail to invest in our educational system at the rate the rest of the world does, and so we continue to fall behind on that front as well, and we de-value erudition, nuance, detail, and critical thinking, in favor of platitudes, chest-thumping, sound bites, “TXT-ese”, "teaching to the test", and dumbing everything down to cater to the least common denominators and short attention spans among us.
I had many of these thoughts well before my XC LNT Adventure; my sabbatical and trip and the real-life interactions I had with fellow Americans and folks from other cultures have only crystallized them. I also had many of these thoughts before I saw this clip from The Newsroom a couple of years ago and this clip from Real Time before that; that Aaron Sorkin verbalized it through the lips of Jeff Daniels, and Bill Maher through his own, and that they have resonated with so many other folks, only validates that I’m not alone on this.
Another recurring theme and observation I made during my journey and in multiple blog entries, related to my overall commentary regarding our lack of “American exceptionalism”, is our nationwide tolerance for disgusting restroom facilities, and (among men, anyway…I haven’t frequented all that many ladies’ rooms), our collective disgusting use of same, perpetuating the problem. While this may seem trivial and almost humorous, in fact it speaks directly to our declining culture…and all one has to do is travel throughout Canada to immediately notice the difference.
American travelers take for granted seeing on the occasional highway travel stop billboard: “We have clean restrooms!” Well, if you think about it, by highlighting that feature, what that business is NOT saying is, “The American norm is a dirty, disgusting restroom…we feature something better than that norm!” As a matter of course, American men urinate on the floors and on commode seats, don’t properly clean up after themselves, and places of business or public facilities don’t adequately or frequently enough have their people clean up the facilities for the next travelers/customers. If the users don’t care, and the owners/management don’t care, then it becomes self-perpetuating tolerance of unpleasant and unsanitary conditions…in a venue – the restroom – where “all men are created equal”. No wonder businesses that actually care about exceeding this norm feel the need to advertise it…because it’s unexpected.
By contrast, travel anywhere in Canada, and you never see the “clean restrooms” ad…because every business or public venue to which I’ve traveled on this trip and on many previous trips is universally clean and pleasant in their washroom (the Canadian term) facilities. It speaks to culture: The people take care, and the businesses/public providers care. And travel both countries enough and you see that the ******* could be a microcosm of the overall culture…if the restrooms (the common connector for everyone) are clean and pleasant, that extends to quality of life most everywhere else. Look at what happened to NYC in the early 90s when things were finally “cleaned up”…it extended to almost every other aspect of the quality of life. Nationwide, we Americans need to do better…let’s start by treating our restroom facilities with more care and respect.
By absolute fluke of the calendar and not through any prescient planning, I happened to be in Canada during the majority of the Congressional temper tantrum otherwise known as the Government Shutdown. It was a great period to (a) be able to experience a country’s (Canada's!) National Parks and actually have them open for business for all to enjoy, and to gladly spend my hard-earned-in America money supporting them, (b) talk to Canadians and have them shake their heads in bewilderment as to why a portion of our population could so disrespect the OFFICE of our elected leader, let alone the man himself, and (c) listen to Canadians MOCK our culture for allowing universal health care to continue to be litigated as a PRIVILEGE for some rather than a RIGHT for all as part of the SOCIAL CONTRACT, and to watch our elected leaders throw this temper tantrum at the expense of all Americans in order to try to perpetuate this privilege rather than make a CHANGE for the greater good…one that our friends to the north have enjoyed for decades.
Now as of this writing on November 18, 2013, I’ll be the first person to agree that the rollouts of the program and the website have been a complete debacle, but that second part (the website/technology implementation) happens to be personal to me because I make my living being part of teams that do rollouts of other types of business information systems – I live and breathe overcoming the kinds of failures of technology implementations that the Healthcare.gov rollout has been experiencing to date. However, in the context of my XC LNT Adventure, to be sitting in universal-health-care-providing Canada in early October watching the Congressional temper tantrum over the INTENT of the program from afar was as deeply troubling to me then in October as the so-far-failing rollout of it is now in November. On yet another level, we are NOT “the greatest country in the world” – we need to do better…and no one’s hands are clean on this one – maybe they’ve all been using those disgusting American restroom facilities.
I was fortunate that by the time the Congressional temper tantrum was over, that’s when I was back in the States and was able to experience some of the finest National Parks and natural wonders our still-great-in-many-ways country has to offer: Places like Bryce Canyon, Zion, and Grand Canyon National Parks. They were reminders of what was possible back when we understood the value of preserving and exhibiting these wonders and set up our National Parks to do so, and what might still be possible going forward if we would only revive our collective willingness to have this sort of pride again.
When we travel outside our own borders, it’s so important to develop an understanding and respect for another nation’s culture and societal norms, rather than imposing our own…the latter is how we get the worldwide reputation as “arrogant Americans”. In Canada, it can as simple as learning that the “restroom” to us is called the “washroom” to them, or in French/bilingual areas of Canada, simply learning and using the phrase “Parlez-vous Anglais?” (“Do you speak English?”) rather than just blurting out American English and expecting it to be spoken in reply. Locals will genuinely appreciate that we’ve made the effort to take these simple measures…because so many others do not.
To that end, in both Canada and in the States I have reached a complete no-tolerance point for large groups of Pacific Rim-based tourists who descend on a photo location and have NO consideration for anyone else who might already be there composing and taking photos. I get it that in Tokyo and elsewhere it’s a shoulder-to-shoulder life and you do what you can, when you can, but on this side of the Pacific, if a 6’3” 300-lb man is already in place composing a photo, he’s obviously NOT the Invisible Man and you can’t treat him as such…you wait the 10 or so seconds for him to finish and THEN you mob the location. Same concept applies: You’re on OUR turf now; show a little consideration for OUR social norms.
On the subject of travel photography, whether traveling solo or with a partner or group, occasionally one wants to get into one’s own photos. You can almost always rely on the kindness of a stranger to snap said photo for you; you trust your instinct that the person you ask is not a “run off with your camera or smartphone” sort of person, and you offer to reciprocate, and it pretty much always works out…except for one problem: Even on quick review of the photo through the camera’s display, you can’t truly tell if the pic is any good until you get it home onto your computer’s bigger screen, and you can’t ask the kind stranger more than once or twice to try to take it again for you. The way to ensure that your “money shot” is not at the mercy of a stranger who may not have your camera eye or equipment skills is to be self-reliant: Carry a collapsible conventional tripod such as this in a shoulder strap case, and/or a "selfie stick” such as this, in order to compose and take your own photos the way you want to. You can feel confident in your own ability to get the shot you want, and if it turns out to be sub-optimal when you get it home, you have only yourself to hold responsible.
I accomplished all my photography during my XC LNT Adventure using a point-and-shoot Canon ELPH 115 IS as my primary camera, and my iPhone 4S as my secondary. Perhaps not as much control or precision as I might have had with a DSLR, but I was able to carry either/both in my pocket everywhere I went, and I had enough zoom and settings to play with on the Canon to get almost all the results I wanted. Your mileage may vary, of course (especially for shooting in challenging lighting conditions where you need both the right equipment and the right skills to utilize it), but I’m pretty happy with my overall results. The key to the success I did have, especially with my primary Canon, was in having my conventional tripod with me, as well as a spare charged battery, a 16GB-capacity digi-film card, and digi-card reader to load up my pics to computer (and thus also my cloud-based backup) each night, at all times.
I repeatedly marveled at the utter stupidity of some people in using their iPads or other tablets at a specific venue where they’re clearly just NOT the right tool for the job: At windy scenic overlooks, hundreds of feet above whatever is below. I further marveled at the fact that in none of the cases I witnessed did the users actually drop their tablets into the abyss below, but I figure it was only a matter of time. Let’s see: A 9-inch flat rectangle not secured to the body by any strap or other connection mechanism, barely held only by fingertips, in windy conditions over a chasm where retrieval after an accidental drop would be impossible…gee, what could possibly go wrong?
The flaws of credit card company fraud indicators are exposed when taking a journey like this. I gave my credit card company (one of the major national providers) a heads up that I would be traveling to Canada as well as numerous American states, but that my wife would be staying home with her cards during the same period. That didn’t stop the automated fraud systems from still detecting out-of-pattern charges and causing embarrassing “card declined” situations for both of us on opposite ends of the continent…requiring us to call each other on short notice to verify each other’s charges before I could then call the provider and get the holds unlocked. There’s a point where “for your protection” morphs into “defeating the purpose”…my trip was just the sort of journey that reveals this shortcoming. I wonder if the government hired the same contractors for Healthcare.gov as those who set up these fraud-warning systems: Well-intentioned and noble in purpose, but implemented without a proper view of the entire scope of the requirements.
On the whole, gasoline is considerably more expensive in Canada than it is in the States, despite Canada’s rich oil supply and reserves. Apparently it’s primarily due to increased national, provincial, and local taxes levied at the pump, combined with the Canadian Dollar exchanging virtually at par with the US Dollar at this time. However, I did observe one specific and interesting characteristic of the fuel-buying experience in Canada: Within every town or municipality through which I passed, the price between stations throughout that immediate area was either identical, or within a penny, per liter. There was never (and I do mean never) that 10-cent variation between stations within blocks of one another like we have anywhere in the States. This meant that I had no hesitation in filling up anywhere in a given area and then regretting two blocks later that I’d just paid a dime more per liter than at the next place. Now I saw significant variation between municipalities; it might be 20 or 40 cents more in one AREA than another, but not WITHIN each area. Can’t decide if this observation was (is) a good thing or not, but it was noteworthy.
I’ve been a subscriber to SiriusXM radio for over a decade, in every vehicle I’ve owned during that time; it provides me with the programming I prefer, and I won’t even listen to terrestrial radio in any location anymore except in major metro areas when I want local news. There was a time early on in satellite radio’s history when the signal was not beamed into Canada; I don’t recall if that was because of technical limitations or licensing issues, but in any case in recent years that problem has been rectified and I was able to keep listening to SiriusXM even as far as every part of Canada and Alaska to which I traveled. This was another way I felt like I was “never alone” even in remote areas where I did not have cell or Internet service.
However, I can report that during the period of my trip the past 2 months, I obviously must not be part of any of the “target demographics” of the not-commercial-free stations to which I routinely listened. I do not owe the IRS any back taxes, I do not have Low T, and I am not looking for “God’s match for me”. These purveyors of fine latex products must have bought quite the ad packages from SiriusXM – I endured these same commercials all day, every day, on every one of my usual channels.
Here are some of the vital statistics from my journey:
- Total miles driven: 12,763
- Approximate gas mileage yielded by my XC LNT Volvo XC60: Around 24.5 MPG
- Lifetime travel goals achieved: Have now set foot in all 50 states plus DC (joined the "50 before 50" club), and every Canadian province except for Nunavut. (Bonus: Have also found Geocaches in all of same.)
- Speeding tickets: 0 !!
- Total pounds gained/lost: Somehow the scale says I lost 2 pounds...can't quite figure that one out considering the way I chowed down the last couple of days of the journey.
The jury is still out on just how much my XC LNT Adventure has been a life-changer for me, but I can say with confidence that it's been an eye-opener and a focus-enhancer. I return to my "real world" with the renewed energy I hoped to find, and I intend to apply that energy to my next opportunity in the IT world as well as in whatever other endeavors I might pursue to hopefully make a greater difference. I experienced first hand some of the areas where it's clear that our nation has to do better sooner rather than later...before our decline progresses to the point of being unrecoverable. I affirmed existing, and learned new, lessons about the value of TIME and of making the most of it. And I similarly affirmed, and learned new, lessons about the value of quality interpersonal contact both in person and in the on-line world.
And there you have it. I hope this blog was as enjoyable for you to read as it was for me to write.