Thoughts on Reaching My Half-Century

Tbilisi, September 12, 2018

The spirit of travel:  Western Australia, 1996

Tomorrow I will reach a temporal milestone that once seemed unimaginably distant:  50.  I don't think that I ever agreed with The Who ("Hope I die before I get old"), but I just don't think I imagined that I would reach this milestone of decrepitude while still feeling roughly the same as I did when I was 30.  This blog is mostly about travel, but travel through time is another type of travel, one that all of us, even the most homebodyish, undertakes, so I thought I'd look back briefly on my half-century. 

0-10:  Childhood in Thunder Bay (mostly)

With my mother in Ottawa

I was born in Ottawa late on a Friday the 13th; the woman in labour next door to my mother was trying to keep her baby unborn for another half hour to avoid bad luck, but my mother was just glad to get the entire experience over with.  (My high school friend Katherine was born on the same Friday the 13th, and the hospital in Thunder Bay burned down during her labour, so maybe there's something in the superstition?).  I was the first-born, and my first year was spent living in an apartment at 12 Somerset Avenue West, just across the street from where my mother now lives, 50 years later.

With my doting father, 1968

12 Somerset East

After a year in Ottawa, my father quit his government job in Ottawa and drove himself, my mom and me down to Ames, Iowa to do a PhD in forestry.  I spent 2 years in Ames, and then in 1971 my father took us back to Canada, to a job as a forestry professor at Lakehead University in Thunder Bay, where he would work until his retirement.  I spent the next seven years growing up on the shores of Lake Superior, with one enormously enjoyable interlude in the summer of 1977 when my father taught summer school at the ETH in Zurich and took the family along to explore Switzerland while he worked.

Thunder Bay, early 1970s

Sailing with my cousin Cris on Lake Superior, 1973

Triumphantly riding my first full-sized bicycle

10-20:  Thunder Bay, Morogoro, Waterloo, First Travels

All four siblings together, 1980

First summer playing baseball, 1979

At age 12, I headed off to Morogoro, Tanzania, where my father had taken a 2-year contract teaching forestry at an agricultural university.  I was unhappy to be uprooted from Thunder Bay, but eventually grew to appreciate the incredible wildlife and adventure of life outside the comfortable confines of Canada.  This experience, more than anything else, got me thinking about travel as a way of life.  As well, since I was doing correspondence courses for high school, I had ample free time to read voraciously for 2 years, something that was far more educational than the formal courses I was taking.

Graduating from Hillcrest High School, 1986

I returned to Thunder Bay at age 14 for the final three years of high school.  I attended an excellent high school, with a number of top-quality teachers, and made a plethora of life-long friends.  I played tennis, played Reach For the Top (quiz bowl for high school), took part in mathematics contests and graduated in 1986 eager to study mathematics and physics in university.

Portrait of the traveller as a young graduate, 1986

Reach for the Top team, 1986

My best friend Hans and I headed down to the University of Waterloo in September, 1986 as roommates.  I enjoyed my first year at Waterloo, but burned out a bit in my second year and took a mid-degree gap year.  I spent three months bartending in London and gorging on theatre, musicals and other art in my free time, then spent a month Eurailing around Europe before heading to Budapest to start my Budapest Semester in Mathematics, a truly transformational experience both in terms of travel and in terms of learning.

My first semester in the dorms of West Two, Waterloo

20-30:  Further Studies, Further Travels

Budapest, 1988

My 20th birthday happened in Budapest, and I felt as though those 4 months, in the days before the Iron Curtain fell, were the most intense experience of my life up until then.  I learned a ton of mathematics while feasting on Hungarian food and wine and developing a taste for opera.  I headed back to Canada poorer in monetary terms, but immensely enriched in experience and knowledge, and certain that I wanted to travel a great deal more.

Off to the rink, Christmas 1989

With my sisters, 1990, rocking the big curls

My last 2 years at the University of Waterloo were largely enjoyable, with lots of tennis, beer-brewing, mathematics contests and socializing, and my first-ever bicycle trip (around the Low Countries, France and Germany) in the summer of 1990.  I did well in my courses and assumed naively that any graduate school would be glad to have me.  I applied only to a handful of places, and wasn't accepted anywhere, so I took an extra year off, applied to far more grad schools and then headed to Australia for eight months.

I had a great deal of fun in Australia, especially travelling around with Hans and another friend, Inder.  After a month in New Zealand, I arrived back in Canada penniless and spent my third summer treeplanting to rebuild my finances before heading off to Harvard to study astrophysics in the fall of 1992.

I had assumed for years that I would be a brilliant academic and win a Nobel Prize for decoding the secrets of the universe.  Instead, although I had a wonderful time socially, played a huge amount of tennis and squash, brewed barrels of beer and learned lots of Russian, I was a poor excuse for a graduate student, unable to motivate myself to work hard enough to succeed.  I was already on my way out the door when I got myself onto the game show Jeopardy, won $17,000 and decided that the money would help finance the start of a world travelling career.

July 1994 saw me headed to Egypt and Turkey on my first foray alone out of the Western world.  I had intended to teach English in Prague after that, but instead returned to Canada to earn a bit more money.  I tried my hand at writing code that winter in Ottawa, and it almost killed my soul.  I was rescued by a job offer from Japan to teach English on the JET program, and headed there, via a couple of months in the UK, Spain and East Africa, in July, 1995.

Fuji, 1996

I loved my life in Japan, working not terribly hard during the week and exploring Japan on the weekends, especially the mountains, either on foot or on skis.  After a year, though, I had itchy feet and headed off on a year-long traipse through Southeast Asia, Western Australia and South Asia.  My first view of the Himalayas in Nepal was life-changing, resulting in numerous return trips to High Asia and its high-altitude magic.

Summer of 1997, Thunder Bay

I rounded out my 20s with a year spent cycling around Europe, getting a TEFL certification, working in Toronto and spending a few months working as a bicycle guide in the Netherlands and France.  I spent much of the summer of 1998 on my first long-distance expedition bicycle trip with my sisters and their partners (the XTreme Dorks) across Pakistan, Xinjiang and Tibet, and celebrated my 30th birthday in France in September, back at work as a bicycle guide.

K2 Base Camp, Pakistan, 1997

Entering China over the Khunjerab Pass, 1998

The XTreme Dorks, Lake Manasarovar, 1998

30-40:  Getting Serious About Travel

Palmyra, 1999, long before the ravages of IS

The next decade was fruitful in terms of travel, much of it on bicycles.  I spent the winter of 1998-9 on a long swing through Morocco, Tunisia, Egypt, Israel, Jordan, Syria and Lebanon, then headed to Chile to teach English.  The Chilean gig didn't pay much and the English school folded, but I had a lot of fun, learned Spanish, skied a lot and then headed back to Japan to earn some money.  I returned to South America for several months of travel, including climbing Aconcagua with the XTreme Dorks, then went back to Japan to refill my coffers.

Family hiking trip to Macchu Pichu, 1999

Bolivia, 2000 with the Xtreme Dorks

With my sisters in Kathmandu, 2001

Nepal, 2001

Silk Road ride start, Xian, 2002

2001 was spent travelling with my girlfriend Joanne, cycling through Southeast Asia.  Eventually Joanne decided that cycling wasn't her thing and I carried on alone across Tibet.  2002 was supposed to be the year I cycled the Silk Road, but I was felled by rheumatic fever in Urumqi, China and had to abandon the plan 

for the time being.

Cross-country skiing, Thunder Bay, 2004

2004, Pamir Highway, Tajikistan

Another reunion with my sisters, Ladakh 2005

Two rather disappointing years followed, one rebuilding my health and strength in Canada and my bank account in Japan, and one spent slogging through a Bachelor of Education degree in Thunder Bay, as I had had my fill of English teaching and needed to engage my brain a bit more.  In 2004 I rode the central third of the Silk Road, from Urumqi to Tehran, and then went to Egypt on my first teaching gig, but lasted only 4 months as the students were too much to handle and I did more zoo-keeping than teaching.  I went back to Japan, my regular financial fallback position, one last time, after being caught up with Joanne in the great Boxing Day tsunami in December 2004.  I spent a year in Japan, with the summer being set aside for a Himalayan cycling trip in India with my sisters, then rode through Vietnam in the summer of 2006.

Mongolia, 2007

Nepal with my mother, 2007

The next three years were spent teaching at Yangon International School in Burma with Joanne.  It was a wonderful time to be there, and I finally got to enjoy the long holidays of the teaching lifestyle, with summers spent cycling in Mongolia and backpacking around Europe, and shorter breaks in the Himalayas, skiing in Japan and diving all over Southeast Asia.  I played tennis most days of the week, playing better than I ever had in my 20s. I welcomed in my 40s at a huge party organized expertly by Joanne at our palatial apartment in Yangon, glad to be where I was.

40-50:  More Travel, and Five Years in the Alps

Made it!  End of the Silk Road ride, Ayas, Turkey, 2009

The last decade started with my last year in Yangon, and then a year of travel.  I finished my Silk Road ride on Halloween 2009 in Turkey, then rode through the chilly Balkans, toured around Italy, Libya and Malta with Joanne, then flew to Ethiopia for some challenging cycling there.  I got back to Canada to find a job offer waiting for me at a school in Leysin, Switzerland at a school that my mother had taught at years before.

Ethiopian highlands, 2010

Terri in Ladakh, 2012

Latvia, 2011

My five years in Leysin were wonderful from the point of view of lifestyle and travel, although teaching at a boarding school eventually proved too intense for me as I burned out, had a nervous breakdown and was off work for 2 months and on reduced hours for another 5.  The rest of the time, though, I skied, ski-toured, hiked, cycled, played tennis and travelled compulsively.  2011 saw me cycling from Tbilisi to Tallinn, 2012 saw Terri (my partner since arriving in Leysin) and I hiking across Ladakh, then my heading to Kyrgyzstan to try to climb some high mountains (Peak Lenin and Muztagh Ata), an experience that made me conclude that mountaineering was not my thing.  2013 was a year for Togo, Benin and Iceland, while 2014 saw me exploring Indonesia, the Solomon Islands, East Timor and Papua New Guinea.

South Georgia, 2015

Wild camping out of Stanley, Botswana, 2016

The past three years, after leaving my job in Leysin in 2015, have been a whirlwind of "pretirement" for Terri and me:  hiking in Europe, a cruise to the Falklands, South Georgia and Antarctica, cycling in South America, a year spent driving around southern Africa in our beloved camper Stanley, and another year spent diving and writing a book on the northeastern corner of Bali, after the death of my father at age 85 in Thunder Bay.  Another spin around Namibia with Stanley, after a tour around New Zealand, and it was time to return to work, this time in Tbilisi, Georgia.  

49th birthday, Bali, 2017

I have to say that I feel relatively youthful at 50, although the onrushing sickle of the Grim Reaper does whistle in my ears occasionally.  My hair is noticeably greyer now, as is my beard, and my physical recovery time from strenuous exercise is enormously longer than it was in my 20s.  I tire more easily, and my memory isn't as razor-sharp as it once was.  But I can still cycle long days, hike over mountain passes and ski tour, so I'm not ready for my rocking chair just yet.  I hope to get another 20 years of active travel in before my body gets too old for this sort of thing, and to get some travel books published.  I'm not sure I'll see out my second half-century, but I am certain that I will have fun trying!

Atsunta Pass, Georgia, 2018