Do You Need To Travel With a Gorilla Grip on Your Agenda? It May Not Go So Well

You're Too Old to Spend the Rest of Your Life on the Couch: Let's Adventure!

Photo by Laura Seaman on Unsplash

In search of the “happy accident:” the best part of travel

“Sometimes clients come to me with spreadsheets marking to the minute where they should be, what they will see, where they should stand for photos. I gently say I’m not the travel advisor they need. My favorite clients always (make) room for the happy accident.”-

Judith Kitzes

(used with permission)

The above marvelous comment landed on a piece I published this weekend about having frozen my dentures in a beer cup full of water in Mongolia. That got my fair share of chuckles, but I guarantee you:

Nobody laughed harder than I did.

As a travel writer and adventure athlete who didn’t even begin to do serious adventure sports until I was sixty, I was guaranteed to have every kind of mishap, accident and sideswipe imaginable.

First, I am no graceful athlete. Think: drunken camel, and I don’t even drink.

Second, I was trying out all kinds of sports I’d never done. Admittedly I’d already racked up well over a hundred skydives and about 71 hours flying right seat and a fair bit of solo work in an ultralight, but once I launched my new career, I was taking a well-worn body into the wild.

Solo, too. Sure, I would join other groups of people, sometimes being the only “ol’ lady” in the group. I don’t travel en masse; that gets in the way of stories and making new friends.

Solo gives me options. It also gets me what I want, which is time with a guide, so that I can learn and write better stories.

The author, freezing in Croatia, at 61

No matter where I’ve gone, from Laos to the Svalbard Islands, from Croatia to Iceland, from Argentina to Kazakhstan, my absolute BEST moments have invariably involved a completely unscripted moment or hours or days.

Totally unplanned, wholly wonderful, and story-worthy.

Whether it’s the sudden, terrible urge to pee at exactly the wrong moment, waking up to three inches of rain underneath my sleeping pad, setting up my tent in the middle of howling winds on a mountain pass AND having to pee, those are the moments I remember.

Do I also recall the triumphant moment under the iconic sign telling me I made it to the top of Kilimanjaro? Brief as it was?

Yeah. But not as well as I recall that time, on the way up, I had to pee (this is a recurring theme with me, you’ll notice). My guides stopped.

I wandered off and peeled some eight layers down to piddle. Then when I jerked it all back up, (it is extremely cold, thank you) I found myself unable to walk.

I was hobbled.

When I called out to my guide, he threw a harsh light at the base of my feet. My pants were up. However, as he pointed out between guffaws,

“You forgot to pull up your underwear.”

There were my tighty-whiteys, the elastic caught on the metal lace hooks at the tops of my Lowas. Acting precisely like prison shackles.

I nearly fell off the mountain, I was laughing so hard. Fair enough, part of that might have been that there was little oxygen at seventeen thousand feet, but still.

That. Was. Funny.

If you want complete control over every second of your travel, stay home and watch NatGeo.

If you want to endear yourself to your guides and have the time of your life, find this sh*t funny.

When the experts on your trip understand you are up for the full adventure, including getting filthy, breaking a nail, falling in the mud or getting sprayed in the eyeball by an elephant, they will make sure you get your money’s worth.

To that, this from Thailand in 2022 where I was doing some stories about the elephant camps. It was terribly important that I look dignified and professional:

Watch your step…..Julia Hubbel, Thailand 2022

Oh and here, TAKE THAT. Julia Hubbel, same trip

You get my drift. I’ve had to climb trees to pee in the Amazon (told you), I have gotten into wicked-ass water fights with a Maasai team on a camel adventure. I’ve been severely injured, the trip got cancelled, and one more than one occasion that event led to an even better adventure in my host county.

Losing control is the whole point.

I’ll be writing more about these; the stories are worth sharing.

You really want to JUST LET GO.

Courtesy Crater Lake Zipline

There’s a terrific zipline outfit down in Crater Lake which uses that as their motto.

And yes, I’ll be visiting Crater Lake Zip Line this year. You betcha. And yes. I am Just Letting Go.

Travel is the single greatest teacher on this good earth. It returns you to wonder, reminds you of how gorgeous it is to not know, to be curious and open and willing to be embarrassed and wrong, and utterly dumbfounded.

I wrote this elsewhere:

Travel allows us to return to that giddy, luscious, wobbly-as-a-toddler kind of beginner experience.

When you and I are willing to do that, we are living. Really living.

Needing a carefully-scripted trip where you know PRECISELY where you’re going to be, PRECISELY what you’re going to be doing and PRECISELY what to expect tends to put a serious damper on the happy accident.

Not only that, it would be fair to say that unless you travel with like-minded people, your need for silverback control over every aspect of your experience might put a damper onto everyone else’s experience as well.

I’m quite sure that there are some cruise lines which will offer something like this. Which is likely why, along with their impact on climate, you’ll never find me on one.

I like my happy accidents, for those happy accidents drop me in the lap of a thousand new experiences.

If you aren’t that justletgo person, I hope you don’t end up as a happy accident on one of my trips. Because you never know when an elephant’s trunk - full of mud - might be pointed your way.

Just a happy accident. Just saying.

Fer cryin’ out loud, let’s PLAY.

the author, 64, with a broken back after a horse threw me at the full gallop in Kazakhstan. Hey, I got a private charter flight to Dubai out of it!

With thanks to

Judith Kitzes

for allowing me to piggy back on her comment and quote her for this piece. She gets it. So does

Kristi Keller

.

Thank you as always for reading my work. I hope I made you laugh, think, hopefully not drink (that might have already happened, sorry) and consider heading out with a heart full of hope for more happy accidents. If this was valuable, please consider

If you know someone who might need to lighten the grip a bit to get out in the big wide world, and needs to know that yes, sh*t happens and buy insurance, it’s all good, please also consider

Finally, this is how I pay my bills. If you’re happy with my stuff and can toss a few quarters onto my deck, please consider it. Either way, whatever you do, seek adventure, seek life, and celebrate both.