"What is a journey? A journey is not a trip. It's not a vacation. It is a process; a discovery. It's a process of self-discovery. A journey brings us face to face with ourselves. A journey shows us not only the world but how we fit in. Does the person create the journey or does the journey creates the person. The journey is life itself. Where will life take you?" Louis Vuitton
Even thou these photos are copyrighted and many have date, time and GPS location embedded in them I know that there is no way from preventing anyone from taking these photos and passing them off as their own. Anyone could do that but they will never be able to steal the experience and joy I have experienced taking them; nor the knowledge, insight and self-awareness I have gained with each trip I have taken. So if someone wants to take any of these photos and pass them off as their own, they aren't really stealing from me; they are just robbing from themselves. Life is meant to be lived, to be experienced. However, life can only be lived though your own eyes, feelings, emotional and experiences. If anyone tells you different they are lying.
There will come a day when every one of us will come face to face with our own mortality. While for the great majority of people that day will come much sooner than they wanted or they expected but at least it will come much closer to the end than the beginning of their life. Many people will spend most of their lives trying to earn the most money, collect the most toys, gain the most status, gain as much power as possible. It usually isn't until the day comes when they come face to face with a catastrophic event in their life, such as live-threatening illness, loss of a love one, being let-go from work, finance ruin, or being voted out of office do they come to realize that they just weren't as important as they once believed, that they weren't as powerful as they once believed, nor were they as irreplaceable as they once thought.
It
is usually after such an event (s) that people usually take stock of their lives
and ask themselves, where have I been, where am I going, and most of all is this
really where I want to be heading at this point in my life. If they have their
health, time and resources along with the desire they can determined where they
want to go, not where others want them to go.
For some unknown reason some people are force to face their own mortality numerous times and far too early in their lives. For some it will be is a self-imposed death sentence and they will spend the remainder of their lives in fear being consumed with regret and self-pity as they wait to die. In many ways they are already dead. For others is it a totally new outlook on life. One gets to understand that there are so many things that are just not that important. That you are not as important as you think, that you are not irreplaceable and that people just don't have the power over you that you once believed. Or as I have often told myself, they can't kill someone who has already been dead.
If you are force to confront your own mortality far too early you come to understand how precious, how important your time is, you learn can to value others but most of all you can learn to value yourself. You can become aware that you have been given a 2nd, 3rd, 4th and sometimes more chances. It is a gift that very few others will ever get.
Life Pivotal Choices With Cover Page.pdf
Last updated June 26th, 2011
My Great Adventures
“I congratulate you on your leisure. I recommend you keep it as your gold, as your wealth, as your means, out of which you win the leisure you have to think, the leisure you have to be let alone, and the leisure you have to throw the plummet with your hand, and sound the depths and find out what is below; the leisure you have to walk about the towers of yourselves, and find how strong they are, or how weak they are, and determine what needs building up, and determine how to shape them, that you may make the final being that you are to be. Oh, those hours of building!” President James Garfield
The Wrong Era?
Sometimes I often wonder if I was born in the wrong era. I would have enjoyed the opportunity to be an explorer with the ability to follow the sun at my own pace, the ability to stop when I wanted and to pack up when I desired. To be someone like the Lone Ranger someone who comes into town help people to overcome the bad guys and then leave the people wonder just who was that mask man; just some guy driving through town in a beat up car, dressed in jeans or shorts, someone that no one seems to notice. Or someone like Shane who comes along; confronts the bad guys, allows some local person to take the credit, and then just moves on.
Someone who leads when it is necessary, rarely takes credit, “stays when he is needed but not wanted, and moves on when he is no longer needed, but wanted.” Someone like Washington who was willing to lead a revolution because it was the right thing to do, but knew when it was time to go.
I enjoyed the ability to hit the open roads, to get loss in
the great unknown. The ability to turn off my mobile phone, to pay cash for gas
and food for about three or four days, sometimes being almost 2,000 miles from
where I was last electronically pinned point.
Just heading out on the highway of life, you have a pretty good idea where you want to be end up but you make sure that the road is really wide, has numerous traveling lanes, and that you are allowed to get off the fast lane, take different roads when you want too or need too as long as you are heading in the right direction, on the right time schedule, Or as Star Trek’s Captain Jon Luc Picard of the Enterprise tells Number One, out there.
I know that most people think I am crazy, sleeping in my car or camp grounds or at the Wal-Mart motel, taking showers in national parks, eating fruit and vegetable from cans, stop at grocery stores in order to get fresh fruit and bread so I can have “Goober sandwiches”
I know that I have pushed the limits on more than a numbers of occasions, getting caught in a big blizzard in New Brunswick, struck in 113 degree weather in Death Valley, drove rocky road up a 13,000 plus foot mountain in a small car, wear shorts and short sleeve shirt; 90 degrees at the base, about 40 degrees at top. Blew out tire and had to drive back down in dark with little donut. Had to stop at rest area and sit in bathroom for about 10-15 minute to recover from altitude sickness. Went walking along side a road miles from anywhere and found myself with feet of a rattlesnake get ready to strike. Found myself on an old mine road miles from nowhere, no mobile phone services steep drop-offs on both sides. Went off the main roads on to narrow dirt road overgrown with brush and trees partly flooded, had to drive car at a sharp angle just to make sure I had two wheels on semi-dry soil. Drive up past 12,000 foot level at Rocky Mountain National Park, suffered from altitude sickness so bad that my pacemaker was racing like crazy, couldn’t breathe very well and was losing eyesight, forgot to bring rescues inhaler, and had to drive a very narrow road, with about 12-18 inches to spare, nerve as hell, under cold, wet, and windy.
Drove the Panamanian Highway from Panama City to Colon then the dirt position into the Darren Rain Forest near the Columbian boarder; lucked out and found gas station to make it back to Panama City. Had tire blow-out changed tire, had another blow-out, drove in pitch dark on rim; lucked out; ran into an small house in the middle of the jungle where an old retired Army sergeant lived with his Panamanian family. He had a bunch of old inter-tubes. He had his son crack the tires and put inter-tubes in the tires allowing me to make it back home. Once I drove from New Hampshire with my two daughters who were 8 and 11 at the time. Somehow I forgot my wallet, I had been buying gas and food with cash and had only a few dollars left by the time we got to Utah. I was going to use my ATM card but I had no wallet and was almost a 1,000 miles from home. I found my Shell Credit card in the glove compartment. I went to next Shell station and asked if I could buy food and drinks with my card, the lady said yes and we stop at Shell stations from Utah to Southern California so we could gas up and eat.
I really hate living in a prepackage world where everyone is expected to comfort to society’s expectation of whom he or she should be. That is such a heavy price to pay for security.
The excitement is in finding a solution to the crisis, the reward is in the accomplishment, and the freedom is in the ability to define oneself; not allowing the world to define you.
I am not a professional Photographer, I haven't had a single class on photography; I know that some of these photos have blemishes on them. Due to injuries I have a left sided lean, and sometimes I have so many floaters in my eyes it is like stand in a shower. I don't have expensive thousands of dollars camera (s), I don't have expensive high-power lens, or super-fast computer or powerful editing programs. Matter of fact some of these photos were shot on cheap Kodak cameras. If I was to tell you that I don't at times get jealous when I see some people with expensive equipment, I would be lying, but I have always gotten over it. If I don't at times get jealous when I see some people traveling in comfort, or having good meals I would be lying. I don't really enjoy sleeping in my car most of the times, I don't like freezing or sweating my butt off either or enduring bad weather. If given the opportunity I would rarely refuse a more comfortable means of traveling as long as it didn't mean I would have to spend less time out doors.
A warm bed, a great meal is quickly forgotten, but the joy, excitement and experiences I have enjoyed as the result of my many trips; the photo collections, are priceless. Each photo is like a person you meet just for a moment but provides you with some important insight or a friend that you make along the way. And as with any good friend it doesn't matter if he or she moves on, they always leave a part of themselves with you. We grow, we become a better person because of the good friends we make on our journey through life.
Someday; maybe I will photo-shop them to clean them up, but until then I won’t let the imperfections get in the way of the good. I have over 100,000 digital photos and a few thousand film photos. I have been told I should start sharing some.
20 September, 2011 17:02:45 -0400