Sir Ranulph Fiennes may have a rightful claim to being the most badass person alive, but that doesn’t change how impressive it is that he just climbed Everest at 65. After hearing the audio from him at the summit I feel exceptionally lazy and guilty that I didn’t go to the gym this morning. It serves as a powerful reminder that with dedication and determination, you can be as awesome as you dare to be.
A few nights ago I was out for drinks with a friend of mine who began expounding about the joys of getting a drink with someone to forge the bonds of friendship. I disagree as I think that travelling is the best way to make friends. Not wanting contradict, I tried to build open the sentiment. Drinking together and travelling together both involve leaving your safe zone and taking risks together.
Once said shared risk, I couldn’t shake the feeling. That really is what drives bonding while you’re on the road. I’ve travelled with people in very safe environments and had a great time, but even a few months after the trip we had lost touch. On the other hand, when I’ve taken really risky trips with people we’ve built strong friendships.
For example, take the group with whom I rode through back trails in Senegal on shoddy bikes. We took on a great deal of risk together. We were short on water, didn’t know where we were going to sleep, and spent half our time fixing broken bikes. It was great. We can got months, or even years, without talking to each other and pick up like not a moment passed – all because of that one week. That’s the bonding that shared risk provides.
Sharing risks demands and creates trust. Whether drinking or travelling, you’re trusting the people around you in a situation that is a bit beyond your control.
Of course, this isn’t exactly a novel line of thought. There is a whole school of philosophy around risk – and they would say that I’ve sloppily lumped risk and uncertainty together here. And M. Scott Peck summed to the value of risk to forming bonds in The Road Less Traveled; “There can be no vulnerability without risk; there can be no community without vulnerability; there can be no peace, and ultimately no life, without community.” He may have written some crazy things, but I certainly agree with this bit.
Burger King and STA have teamed up for a hilarious and expensive round the world trip: tracing the history of the hamburger. It’ll set you back over £3,000 for just over a month on the road. So it’s not the most practical way to go around the world. Also, probably because it is a promo for a BK, it doesn’t include visits to great burger joints around the world – which seems like a massive waste of opportunity.
Piggy-backing on the idea you could end up with a pretty sweet trip though. If you took a couple of months and traveled a bit more frugally you could follow the burger production chain and eat the best burgers in the world. Places that I know my tour would include that aren’t listed in the Bk tour are:
Of course, the best burger places are those treasured by locals and hidden from the taste buds of most tourists. The trick to a world burger tour would be to ask around and find those secret burger places. I think I could handle the challenge, of course my blood pressure might disagree.
The 6 month island reef job is certainly the travelers gig of the year. But if you’re looking to have a job going into 2010, then Outside magazine has a much better list of jobs that you’ll want. That’s not to say that there are actually jobs available, but you might as well send a resume and pray, right?
Intrepid Travel tops the list of 30 of the best companies to work for, and it’s not surprising looking at the line up of benefits:
Not too shabby. And it doesn’t really get any worse as you go down the list. I’m sure that it’s a daunting challenge to get hired at any of these places, but we adventuresome folk like challenges, right?
Orbitz is getting into the fight to lift the Cuban travel ban in a serious way. They’ve launched a petition to Obama, Biden, and Congress asking them to lift the Cuban travel ban. But the petition comes with a sweetener: if you sign it, Orbitz will give you a $100 travel coupon for Cuba when the ban is lifted.
It’s not the only one who thinks the Cuban travel ban is nuts. Along with the petition comes some polling showing that 67% of Americans are in favour of lifting the ban. I’d hope that most adventure minded souls are in that 67%, so sign the petition and lets hope we can finish this thing.