Solo Travel and Living on the Road in a Skoolie
The recent polar vortex which has hit the US and Canada recently has made me feel fortunate to already live in a place where we are in a constant polar vortex. But, I thought I would share some of my thoughts and experiences for anyone out there who needs to hear it.
We set out on a Friday morning with clear blue skies and dry roads, heading North to Wyoming just a half hour out of town. On the drive, bald eagles perched on dormant cottonwoods on the side of the road. The weather got chillier as we headed into Wyoming, stopping off in Rawlins for fuel and breakfast. In the Walmart parking lot, we witnessed a raven eating a tomato that had fallen out of somebody’s bag.
I am making renovations as I go and hope to share some of the progress I have made here. This house has been in my family for over 80 years. Six generations of my family have lived here. The building itself started out as a dance hall in 1913 and later evolved into a bowling alley, then a storefront for my family’s trucking business in the 1940s. It’s a weird old building, featuring a dock for freight, and some other quirky details.
My efforts of pushing Frankenbike up the hill were rewarded in a terrifying descent down the back half of Swan Rd, where bikes have to share the county road with cars as you wind down the mountain to Frisco. Hitting speeds of probably around 40 MPH, I had to lay on my brakes for a lot of the ride down with the image of my bike dismantling itself at speed like a Buster Keaton gag, and my health insurance a distance memory.
First off, that age thing is a weak excuse. I have met people in their eighties who are traveling happily, continuing to test their traveling skills. The others are challenging, but not impossible obstacles. In future posts, I will work on creative ways to work around those, but here I want to just flat out say it. The only obstacle age throws in your path is when you are too young to do all the things.
Once you have decided you want to travel, here are some more things you can do before you actually decide to purchase those plane tickets or book your stay. It’s a gradual process and doesn’t have to happen all at once. Pace yourself and have fun with the experience. The learning curve gets steeper from…
The old cliche says the longest journey begins with the first step. Last year I took my first international solo trip and though I did plenty of research on what I needed to do once I got there, only experience could really prepare me for any of it. The path to get to that point…