In early 2012 I was gainfully employed with plans of working until I was 65, doing all the “right things” and trying to squirrel away savings for the future. I was so busy trying to stay abreast of everything that I not only thought life was passing me by in a blur, I knew it was. But everyone else seemed to be on the same treadmill and so I persisted. And then it all changed in a day. My job was gone, I had no other source of revenue, and so I did what most people would do, I prepared a resume and started looking for work.
It actually felt wonderful to be free for the first time in decades – I didn’t have to go in every day to work, no daily onslaught of emails and problems to be solved, just simple, glorious freedom. Days passed and then weeks. People everywhere had stories to tell me, and I read about it in the newspaper and magazines too – stories about the tough economy, and how difficult it was for people over 50 to find work. I suddenly felt I was ‘over the hill’ and my heart sank so low I was afraid that one day I would have to shake it out of my gumboots.
But that all changed one morning around 2:00 am, that crazy scary time of the night when the brain goes into worry mode and blows up every little issue and accumulates them into something insurmountable. This time, I had a new stunning thought – what if I created my own adventure? And that’s how it all began, my 43,000km trip across Canada and down the eastern seaboard to the southernmost tip of Florida – just me – towing a 14-foot trailer and sharing it with my four-legged pal, Baloo.
Here are my travel stories…