Traveling. Who doesn’t fantasize about traveling and getting a job that requires you to prance from country to country, on someone else’s dime? Okay, fine: I’ve never been out of the country (unless you count literally stepping a foot into Canada at Glacier National Park), but that doesn’t preclude me from the fantasy.
Ideally, I’d like to roam around Europe with a pack back, Mike Lavigna or Jeff King, and gift cards to the most extravagant restaurants in Spain, Italy and France. I’ll have my doorman waiting outside tomorrow for gift card reception. Please address to Eli ‘The King’ Kallison so I know it’s not spam (oh wait…).
This summer I’ve decided to be adventurous. I purchased a one-way ticket to Paris leaving from SFO on May 16th. I’m going by myself (yes, I get it, I actually do have friends), and I only have two concrete plans. For the first two weeks I’m staying with a French host family and taking a class at a French language school to brush up and make my accent irresistible. Afterwards, I’m planning to be homeless for a couple of weeks (good thing I just got my featherweight sleeping bag in the mail), and backpacking to Barcelona or Ibiza.
The ace in the hole, however, is the hike that I have planned. I’m going with Pablo (a homie from the World Wide Web) on the Tour de Mont Blanc. The TMB is a 100 mile loop in the Swiss Alps that goes from France to Switzerland to Italy and back around to France. The travel system is called ‘hut – to – hut’ hiking where, if you feel particularly downtrodden one day, you can stay in one of the many huts spaced every few dozen miles along the TMB. Because we’re on a budget, Pablo and I will not be taking advantage of any of these ‘amenities’. Just remember, SOS is six long toots on your hiking whistle. Shit, I need to get one of those…
No comments:
Post a Comment