Wow, that’s so cool that you did that bike trip through Vietnam way back then! Your crazy overstuffed panniers really illustrate how hard that must have been. I thought riding from Heidelberg Germany to Amsterdam by myself was a big deal in 89 but there were bike paths and great roads and stores and easy to understand people everywhere and it wasn’t even very far.
There’s nothing better than looking back on some challenging thing like that that you accomplished. Doing big things like that gives you a life well lived.
So impressive!
It’s type 2 fun, where it’s only “fun” after the fact and feels scary and hard while you’re actually doing it.
Makes me think back to all the things I naively jumped into when I was young. Great essay.
My kid is 18 and I keep trying to encourage him to just set off on some crazy adventure and go. I was 19 or 20 before I traveled alone and it changed my life, so I hope he’ll do it too.
Thanks for your soulful and substantive note. It feels like I could have written it...about someone else's essay, given that I have similar fond and nostalgic feelings about the big things I launched myself into, somewhat naively (but that's really the best way to do it, isn't it?). I love the idea of "type 2" fun...the kind that isn't fun in the moment but becomes a pillar of your life story.
My story could have been very different, and less adventurous, I think. Because I got the deep hunger for travel only after I took 2 months after college graduation to backpack through Europe (do people still do that after college? I hope so....), but the only reason I took that trip is because my high-school friend, Phil, told me he was going to do it and invited me to join him. Absent his invitation, I wouldn't have even thought to take such a trip. And if I hadn't said "yes" to his invitation, there's little chance I would have had the desire, much less that hunger, to explore Vietnam on a shoestring, with no language or cultural skills to speak of. And without the Vietnam experience, I definitely wouldn't have gotten that job, upon my return from Vietnam, with The Orange County Register, in So Cal, covering the Vietnamese community there, the largest outside Vietnam (I told them I was fluent in Vietnamese, after only 5 months in Vietnam...I wasn't but had a good accent, and they never tested me). And without that experience covering this fascinating and complex immigrant community, I doubt Columbia University's Graduate School of Journalism would have accepted my application. And without that experience, I certainly wouldn't have had the opportunity to apply to, and be awarded, the Fulbright scholarship to Germany, straight out of grad school. And without that experience, living in Berlin for a year and covering the Yugoslavian uprising against Milosevic from Belgrade, (thanks to having a German student card, via the Fulbright) as a freelancer for Newsday, a newspaper in Long Island, NY, I probably would not have been in the right place to be hired by The New York Times as a staff reporter. And so on and so on.
So, accepting a casual invitation, on a lark, to backpack through Europe when I was 21 set the course for my entire career and adult life, arguably. We each have a similar thread, probably, that if pulled unravels our personal histories almost entirely. That's mine.
Wow, that’s so cool that you did that bike trip through Vietnam way back then! Your crazy overstuffed panniers really illustrate how hard that must have been. I thought riding from Heidelberg Germany to Amsterdam by myself was a big deal in 89 but there were bike paths and great roads and stores and easy to understand people everywhere and it wasn’t even very far.
There’s nothing better than looking back on some challenging thing like that that you accomplished. Doing big things like that gives you a life well lived.
So impressive!
It’s type 2 fun, where it’s only “fun” after the fact and feels scary and hard while you’re actually doing it.
Makes me think back to all the things I naively jumped into when I was young. Great essay.
My kid is 18 and I keep trying to encourage him to just set off on some crazy adventure and go. I was 19 or 20 before I traveled alone and it changed my life, so I hope he’ll do it too.
Thanks for your soulful and substantive note. It feels like I could have written it...about someone else's essay, given that I have similar fond and nostalgic feelings about the big things I launched myself into, somewhat naively (but that's really the best way to do it, isn't it?). I love the idea of "type 2" fun...the kind that isn't fun in the moment but becomes a pillar of your life story.
My story could have been very different, and less adventurous, I think. Because I got the deep hunger for travel only after I took 2 months after college graduation to backpack through Europe (do people still do that after college? I hope so....), but the only reason I took that trip is because my high-school friend, Phil, told me he was going to do it and invited me to join him. Absent his invitation, I wouldn't have even thought to take such a trip. And if I hadn't said "yes" to his invitation, there's little chance I would have had the desire, much less that hunger, to explore Vietnam on a shoestring, with no language or cultural skills to speak of. And without the Vietnam experience, I definitely wouldn't have gotten that job, upon my return from Vietnam, with The Orange County Register, in So Cal, covering the Vietnamese community there, the largest outside Vietnam (I told them I was fluent in Vietnamese, after only 5 months in Vietnam...I wasn't but had a good accent, and they never tested me). And without that experience covering this fascinating and complex immigrant community, I doubt Columbia University's Graduate School of Journalism would have accepted my application. And without that experience, I certainly wouldn't have had the opportunity to apply to, and be awarded, the Fulbright scholarship to Germany, straight out of grad school. And without that experience, living in Berlin for a year and covering the Yugoslavian uprising against Milosevic from Belgrade, (thanks to having a German student card, via the Fulbright) as a freelancer for Newsday, a newspaper in Long Island, NY, I probably would not have been in the right place to be hired by The New York Times as a staff reporter. And so on and so on.
So, accepting a casual invitation, on a lark, to backpack through Europe when I was 21 set the course for my entire career and adult life, arguably. We each have a similar thread, probably, that if pulled unravels our personal histories almost entirely. That's mine.
Thank you for sharing your thoughts with me.