The spirit of adventure

'The spirit of adventure is propagated only by contagion', wrote Paul Tournier in his book, 'The Adventure of Living'. He wrote this as he started reading books by other people inclujding Teilhard de Chardin to see if he could catch the adventure bug. That is what we need to do in order to rev up our game plan. But for many of us 'routine' is just fine. For the rest of us, we need to feel more alive. Sometimes we watch TV just to satisfy that craving of being more alive but that only mean watching other people's adventures and not experiencing our own.
The whole idea of adventure is to embark on our own. According to Paul Tournier, every adventure has a starting point, a climax and an ending, they don't last and new adventures need to arranged again. Fine by me! While life is long, it needs to be punctuated by big and little adventures and sprinkle in the daily grind of commuting and work, bosses to please, sales numbers to meet and a whole host of other problems.
Usually life is more about problems than adventure. I'm always putting out a fire somewhere. I tell my intern, 'every problem (of the customer) is an opportunity (for service and the making of some money)'. Correction....it's more work, really! As I write this, I'm in a car dealership having my car worked on. It's not even 10 am and the plumber has already been to my house to work on the sewer system. Where's the adventure in living?

My companions at home are a stack of books about the Silk Road in China. I'm hoping to catch the contagion of one day visiting these places on the ancient Silk Road. I'm reading Ella Maillart's books, 'Forbidden Journey' and 'Turkestan Solo' slowly because if I finished them I wouldn't anything else interesting to read. These are amazing accounts of travel along the Silk Road before the second world war. She did these journeys on horses, asses and camels. Not that I want to follow in her physical footsteps..hmmmm..why not? But definitely I want to follow her spirit, the spirit of her trips, the spirit of her adventures. I want to embark on these trips by taking advantage of modern travel - the use of motorized means of transportation, rooms and restaurants. I, definitely, don't want or need to, buy a horse or camel, pack a bunch of supplies and cross the Gobi desert! But then, why not...hmmmm... am I catching the spirit of adventure by contagion?
The trick to embarking on any adventure is to make the commitment. Buy the plane ticket. I'm even at this moment putting the finishing touches to my next adventure (in 2 weeks) to Eastern Europe. I had wanted to go back to China, to Xinjiang province but instead I'm going to London, then hop on Eurostar and to Eastern Europe.

We celebrated our niece's embarking on a huge adventure, going to college. Wow, she said, she wants to be like me, 'have a high paying job and travel.'

We broke out the bubbly.... a few bottles of Elderflower Presse....

Roasted some Manila clams....

....and some more bubbly....

Life is good!