Don't Fear the Reaper

Seasons don't fear the Reaper, Nor do the wind, the sun, or the rain

-Donald "Buck Dharma" Roeser

13 Winters? A Progress Report

Two years ago, I wrote this post called 15 Summers. It generated a good deal of buzz. Which is to say, two or three people I know commented on it, breaking the previous record by 250%. (Buzz is relative at Ramble On World Headquarters. We get excited when the mail gets picked up these days.) In case you forgot to read the post, I can summarize it for you here: It was about aging. Basically, you get old. And right quick it turns out.

There is a realization, usually about the time that someone calls you "Sir" for a third time in a single day—and when the fuck did that start?—or, you wake up after a solid night's sleep that followed a perfectly ordinary day and you can barely walk. When did sleeping start to make me feel like I have just tried CrossFit for the first time? And, in those moments, it finally dawns on you that you had better stop assuming that: "I'll have time for that, at some point."

Because, and here was the point, you probably won't.

It wasn't meant to be morbid. Well, technically, it is morbid because we are talking about "mortality" (the Latin root for worm food). But it's not morbid morbid, if you know what I mean. It was just a call to arms. LFG folks! Let's go do all, well most, okay some, of those things that we have always said we wanted to do, because the hour is much later than you think. It's almost freeing in a way because you feel like: "Right, time to stop worrying all the trivial crap, like should I be embarrassed that I have put my underwear on backwards again? No! Time is short."

It's easy to forget you are getting older sometimes because you look in the mirror every day and it looks a lot like yesterday (unless it was a boozy one last night). This can be deceiving.

So, to just confirm my suspicions, I dug up an old photo of myself.

This is me in 2016.

And this is me now.

Maybe not a massive difference, but enough that you begin to take stock all the same.

I think even my children have started to clock the fact that time may not be on our side. Our eldest recently suggested that we actually do the hiking trip to Italy that I had been pestering him about for a few years and that he was always too busy with his own far more exciting young-person things, like destination weddings in Fiji and frisbee practices, to sign on for. And then out of the blue he's like: "Hey pops, maaaaybe we should do it this year?"

I don't know why the sudden urgency, but I suspect it had to do with when Lori and I (playing as a team mind you) failed to get "PIZZA" on Wordle after six tries. He thought: "uh oh." I know I did.

In the 15 Summers post, I helpfully ticked off my personal bucket list of things to accomplish before the big sleep, having exhausted the philosophical component of the topic in a few short sentences. And being a highly evolved soul, I listed first my plan to work tirelessly to get the first woman ever elected as President of the United States. Or, failing that, just an orange colored, jowly golf cheat re-elected (nailed it). Also, I was looking forward to fixing the climate crisis by writing a rather sternly worded letter to my elected representative (alas, I was too busy to get to that one).

Ha, ha, I'm kidding. My list was just a bunch of selfish, bougie things like: buy a sports car (check) and ski in Europe (sadly, the glaciers all melted this past summer). One out of two ain't bad. But now, there are only 13 winters and 12 summers left to get the rest done and the pressure is on. Most of the remaining items on my list are travel related.

Down at the Crossroads

Inside Stanley the Airstream, we have magnet boards on our closet. When we go somewhere cool, we try to get a magnet to remember it by. Lots of the time the board is on the floor having rattled itself free from the double-sided tape and deposited the magnets all over the place. But when it is up where it belongs, and I actually stop and stare at it, I honestly can't believe it. I really mean that, I can't believe we've been all those places. It feels like it must have happened to someone else. Life can be weird that way.

We have travelled a lot in the past 5 years. The first year it was nine months, then six, then five. Just in the first three years, we slept in Stanley over 500 nights and put 60,000 miles on Buck. That's a lot of magnets, and a lot of not so magnet-worthy places too (Amarillo, I'm talking to you now). Last year it was just three months, and finally this year, a single month in Stanley (plus a few other places in airplanes). We didn't even leave New England, tallying no new magnets.

This pattern of declining road time inevitably raised the question during our morning coffee conversation ritual of hurkle durkle (sitting in bed well past the point when you should have gotten up) of: "are we done?" Or kind of sort of done? Are we coming off the road at last?

This is a consequential and existential question for me. Heretofore, I don't think it's unreasonable to say that travel has largely defined us as people. We are travelers. If you met me at a cocktail party, I might try to sit you down to watch a slide show. I've even been called a Travel Bore (or Travel Boor if you will), which is a Swedish term that means: fascinating conversationalist who shares their engaging travel stories unbidden.

When we set off back in 2020, I thought we were going sell the house and live out of Stanley full time, always moving. At the time, I couldn't imagine a more desirable existence; crisscrossing the continent, from one amazing place and adventure to the next. It was quite literally my dream.

But as the ancient Chinese curse states: "May your dreams come true." Wait, that's not it. That one is: "May you live in interesting times."(And boy do we! A bit too interesting for my taste.) But yet another wise man said (and I think it was me): "dreams that come true are no longer dreams; they are just life." Let that one settle in for a second.

So what changed? Well, the contrast, for one thing.

It used to be that when we would take off, even for a weekend of camping; it felt like being shot out of a cannon. We were leaving frustraing jobs, endless to-do lists, and the often-miserable human beings who might be our bosses and colleagues, behind. The sheer juxtaposition we felt to go from the burlap-cubicle-head-in-hands-dispair-pose to reposed in a camp chair in front of a lake, cocktail in hand, was just pure euphoria. In those moments, all we wanted, all we desperately desired, was to not have to go home again on Sunday and just "keep going." So we did (eventually).

That dream came true. And we loved it.

But, over time, the beauty, the leisure, and the cocktails became, well, normal, and therefore not so exceptional. We have largely eliminated some of life's aggravation (the work part, not the sludge of the 2-factor authentication soulless bot chat slaughterhouse of bureaucracy that we've all been frog-marched into grows like an angry cancer cell.). So, there is no more travel-induced cannon blast. It's just the road now. Still lovely as heaven, but it's not so different from just being in our lovely home as it once was. Same life experience, different locations.

This really came to a head when I pointed out that I still really wanted to take Stanley to Alaska (it was on the big list). Alaska is one of our United States. We bought it fair and square from Russia for some seal skins or something. Weirdly, we failed to lock up the connecting part which is called Canada. Canada is still an independent nation (for now), and must be crossed to reach Alaska. It's very large I'm told.

And then you get to Alaska. As you can see from this totally accurate map, Alaska is rather sizable too. You can fit both Rhode Island and Delaware into it and still have a little room left over.

Large state short, Lori was a bit less sure than I that this was precisely what she wanted to do with one of her remaining summers.

She said, and I quote: "I think I want to spend my remaining summers with my family."

To which I said, and I paraphrase: "How much more family can you get than traversing 9,768 grueling miles in the cab of a truck with your husband?"

I think I won that one on points.

But just to be on the safe side, I also offered: "Lori, dear..., we have to keep travelling because I have a highly successful travel blog, for which I am paid nothing but that costs me a good bit of money to host. What about that?"

And she said: "A. Not my problem and B. Just write about something else."

And, so, here we are. I'm writing about death, which worked out quite well for Blue Oyster Cult I might add. But fear not dear readers, more rambling and rambling stories lay ahead.

I'm not dead yet. More cowbell.