Our Year of Living Adventurously

I’m sure my wife would agree that when she married me 26 years ago, she had no idea what she was signing up for. Poor woman. But, lucky me.

On that unseasonably cold, early Spring day over two and a half decades ago, standing together in the outdoor gazebo at the Saddleback Inn in Lake Arrowhead, we said our vows before God, my favorite uncle (who just happened to be a Presbyterian minister) and a handful of family members who drove up the winding mountain roads through pea soup fog for the event. Sometime later, as we planned our future plans and dreamed the dreams of the just-married, we promised each other that upon reaching our 25^th anniversary, we would celebrate by taking a trip to Europe, specifically Austria and Switzerland.

Surely by then our kids would be grown and independent. Surely too, my upward career path in the ad biz would have provided enough financial stability by then to afford such a romantic getaway. Surely we would have the time to relax with an overseas trip in celebration of a quarter century of wondrous wedded bliss (we were newlyweds, okay?).

But as Leslie Nielsen once said in the movie, Airplane, “Don’t call me Shirley.” I’m also reminded of the sage Yiddish saying, “Man plans, God laughs.” If so, they must be holding their angelic sides and gasping for air in heaven.

I’m pretty sure we were at least right about our kids. Yes, our four progeny are healthy, independent, wise beyond their years and, for the most part, well on the way to realizing their own dreams of family, faith, careers and a fulfilled life. May it be ever so. Amen and amen.

As to my career? Bwah-hahaha. Chortle. Guffaw. Snort. Titter. That’s a good one. You know that steep, upwardly mobile rise to a creative corner office on Madison Avenue West I mentioned above? It quickly began looking more like a dive off a steep cliff not long after I left the ad (mad) agency world and went freelance nearly 16 years ago.

And so a year ago this week, our 25^th anniversary was upon us and there was no way in financial fantasyland that we would be going on any European adventure. I mean, if we couldn’t afford the gas to drive to San Diego, flying to St. Moritz was absolutely, ridiculously out of the question.

So, instead of letting the 25 year milestone pass like “just” any another anniversary night out with a nice dinner, some flowers and a card –  we decided to celebrate in an unusual way for an entire year – by attempting to complete 25 low cost, semi-local mini “adventures” during the 12 months until our next anniversary. (Yes, ladies, I did the dinner, flowers and card routine, too. I may be challenged in the disposable income department, but I’m not an idiot.)

One year later, how’d we do on our adventure quest? We made a valiant attempt, to be sure. Although we didn’t quite make it to 25, we came awfully close, including making several long bike rides (one as far as 65 miles round trip from Duarte to Long Beach and back), an attempt to summit Mt. Whitney, the highest peak in the continental U.S., cross-country snowshoeing in Mammoth Lakes, hiking to the top of Mt. Baldy, riding with the CV Weekly team on a “float” in the annual Montrose Christmas Parade and quite a few others. It’s been an adventurous year, to say the least.

So, how did my wife and I celebrate our 26^th anniversary this week? Here’s a clue: it wasn’t in the Alps, but it did involve the Matterhorn (which, unfortunately was closed for renovations … arrrghhh!!). And even though the gas to Anaheim cost almost as much as airfare to see the real thing, can you really put a price on true love? (Men, the answer to that one is “Absolutely not!” Got it?)

I’ll see you ‘round town.

Note: This is a repost of my column first published yesterday, 4.12.12, in the Crescenta Valley Weekly newspaper.

© 2012 WordChaser, Inc.

The Adventurers Next Door

Writer and philosopher, Henry David Thoreau once observed that “the mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation.” Being self-employed for the past 14-plus years (not to mention raising four kids, two of whom are still in college), I know intimately about being in a state of quiet desperation. Trust me.

And yet, I tend to think that the flip side of that condition is the life led in quiet adventure. I got to thinking about that recently when a friend (and CV Weekly reader) emailed to comment on my column and new blog. In the course of her email, she casually mentioned that her husband was away in Nepal in his first bid to scale Mt. Everest.

Say what?

I vaguely remember hearing some time ago that my friend’s husband had set a long-term goal of summiting the fourteen tallest mountains in the world (give or take a legendary peak or two). I had no clue that he was as accomplished or as dedicated as to actually wind up in the foothills of the Himalayas on what arguably is the adventure of anyone’s lifetime. To think that living right here in La Crescenta we have our own American version of Sir Edmond Hillary.

Then again, another local friend and frequent subject of CV Weekly articles, Mike Leum, is the kind of guy who competes in triathlons and physical feats of daring-do like the rest of us trek to the mailbox. I mean, talk about adventurers among us – Mike relaxes by climbing hundreds of vertical feet up frozen waterfalls in the winter – that is, when he’s not saving lives in the wilderness and rappelling off hovering helicopters with the Montrose Search & Rescue team. As if that isn’t hair raising enough, Mike and his wife, Nancy are also raising two teenage boys. Oh, my!

While in no way have I ever done anything that rates as high on the adventure scale as climbing icy waterfalls, much less Mt. Everest, I have been known to do some things that might raise the eyebrows of more safe and sedate folks out there – or at least my mother. For example, many years ago I backpacked the entire 219 mile length of the John Muir trail through the great Sierra Nevada wilderness. The last day of this three-week adventure featured an oxygen-deprived trek to the 14,505 foot high summit of Mt. Whitney, the tallest peak in the continental United States. Granted, it’s not even as high as even some of the acclimation camps on Everest, but, it’s certainly enough for me.

I also spent most of one summer at sea as a crewmember of a 45-foot commercial fishing boat, once not seeing land for six weeks straight (I couldn’t eat a tuna sandwich for years afterward). That particular adventure included having to transfer myself, a backpack and my guitar in a teeny tiny plastic dinghy one hundred yards across open water with 15-foot swells to another heaving and pitching trawler while two hundred miles off the coast of Astoria, Oregon. Despite having drifted under the outflow of the ship’s bilge pump and nearly being swamped by its rolling, barnacle-covered hull, I somehow survived that experience, although it didn’t do a whole lot to decrease my lifelong fear of deep, dark water. To this day, I can’t watch an episode of the Deadliest Catch without reliving that summer at sea.

That was all years ago, of course. These days I find more than enough adventure in hiking and biking with my wife, in watching our adult kids chart their own careers and lives, and – most enjoyably – in watching our four (for now, at least) grandkids growing up right before the reading glasses on my nose.

My question is, what do you do for adventure? If we have neighbors who climb the world’s highest mountains or save lives as a hobby, what other adventurous and not-so-desperate lives are being led out there? Let me know.

I’ll see you ‘round town.

© 2011 WordChaser, Inc.

[Note: This is a re-post of my column first published in yesterday's (4.21.11) CV Weekly newspaper, www.cvweekly.com]