Tuesday, March 31, 2009

Kindling for the fire...

The contest, for better or for worse, has really made it clear to Laura and I that we want to travel in a big way. Even if it doesn't pan out with this way, we're going to go. We had an official brainstorming session last night on how to make it happen. The decision has been made to go. In my head were the words of Lyn and Larry Pardee from Cruising in Serrafyn:

"The decision to go is the hardest part of the whole project. There always seem to be so many reasons not to go:children, aging parents, a business or job you've worked so hard to develop...But if you are determined to go, you'll analyze each of these factors and probably discover that each problem can be solved. If not, it may be just an excuse to hide your fear of heading into the unstructured existence that a cruising life seems to represent."

The spark has been lit, not here's some kindling...

“Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things you didn’t do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines, sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover.” - Mark Twain

“Our battered suitcases were piled on the sidewalk again; we had longer ways to go. But no matter, the road is life.” - Jack Kerouac

“He who does not travel does not know the value of men.” - Moorish proverb

“When we get out of the glass bottle of our ego and when we escape like the squirrels in the cage of our personality and get into the forest again, we shall shiver with cold and fright. But things will happen to us so that we don’t know ourselves. Cool, unlying life will rush in.” - D. H. Lawrence

“To awaken quite alone in a strange town is one of the pleasantest sensations in the world.” - Freya Stark

“All journeys have secret destinations of which the traveler is unaware.” - Martin Buber

“To my mind, the greatest reward and luxury of travel is to be able to experience everyday things as if for the first time, to be in a position in which almost nothing is so familiar it is taken for granted.” - Bill Bryson

“Do not follow where the path may lead. Go instead where there is no path and leave a trail” - Ralph Waldo Emerson

“A good traveler has no fixed plans and is not intent on arriving.” - Lao Tzu

“Not all those who wander are lost.” - J. R. R. Tolkien

2 comments:

Laura Crawford said...

Sheesh... Are you trying to make it that much harder for me to be at work? :)

Justin Mullins said...

Do you have an idea of when you're leaving? That's the only plan that should be made right? ; ) I'm coming east to west in the summer of 2010. canNOT wait! : D