Travel Update

First, I'm so excited for Maggie to come home in 5 days.

SE ASIA still on the table for me.

Maggie and I continue to give thought to a big Road Trip.  She sent me the link to a blog by Randy Olson who computed the optimal route for a road trip around the USA.  He's also done them for Europe and South America.  Wonder why he hasn't done Canada? ha ha

I really need to crunch the numbers for road tripping.  I looked a little into the cost per day of living in Asia and am thinking I could live there quite nicely on my pension.  Travel costs are pretty fuzzy right now.






  

Fitness Training Update

Spring Training began March 9.  Aim was:

• Pilates 3x/week
• Swimming 6x/week - minimum 20 mins; goal to swim 1500m
• hike or walk 5k 3x/week
• meditate 2x/day

I'm having new respect for verbalizing intentions ... I told people at work and others about Spring Training Camp with the hope that it would increase the likelihood that I would achieve these aims.

I might also be on the verge of new respect for "goal setting".

So far I'm mostly on track.  I'm behind 2, maybe 3, meditation sessions (although I set out to meditate 2x/day, I'm now aiming for 1x/day for now) and 1x swim session.

I've completed 6 hikes on the North Shore, including Lynn Peak and this morning swam 1200 m.

Feeling pretty good.

SE Asia in February 2016

While The Road Trip is still on the table, thinking about and planning for a trip to SE Asia has taken over as my default mode for being.
Out of the blue, Ann proposed that we go to Thailand next winter and mentioned a yoga & meditation retreat in Cambodia.  At first I was (hugely) hesitant ... bedbugs, dirt, depression ... but am now totally stoked.  I'm so glad it's a year away as I have a lot of things to put into place before I leave:

• memorial bench for Mom
• sell apartment on Charles Street
• store stuff
• remove all expenses not associated with travel
• save enough money for flights and emergencies
• get as strong and fit as possible
• find someone to care for the dogs

The trip, for me, will be on a one-way ticket, entirely open-ended, which I hope will include:

• yoga/pilates/exercise & meditation retreats
• trekking in the Himalayas
• surfing
• Tibet
• taking the Trans Siberian train across Russia
• lots of beach time

With retirement in June and this trip on the horizon, I feel like I'm graduating university; I'm going to bum around and do interesting things until I find something I want to commit to "for the rest of my life", something to do "when I grow up".  My only other idea on the horizon is to take liberal arts classes at university.