Off the Grid Dream

This is something I want to do while I'm still young. To just completely fall of the grid for a few months and travel. Just pack a backpack, get on my bike, and go somewhere I've never been. Backpacking through Europe is very popular, but I want to see America the old fashioned way, when people didn't have cars, credit cards, cell phones and computers.

I recognize that I'm highly romanticizing this, but I do realize that this would be hard in this day and age. However, I believe that people are most capable of extraordinary things when placed in extraordinary circumstances. Training would be involved; I have to get comfortable riding my bike everywhere I go, which I'm actually starting to do now. A bike is actually simple to maintain, really; when I first moved to college, a bike was all I had, and I made due. I plan to start changing my diet to more healthier foods, or to stuff I could carry and prepare easily from a backpack.

Books and journals would be a must have for this trip, too. No great journey means anything if you have no way to share the experience; just ask Lewis and Clark.

Some of you have probably wondered "why" at this point. I have a path lined up, a plan to graduate college in a year with a teaching certificate. But there was a time when people lived their lives with no assurance. They didn't know if famine would strike, or if they got sick if they would survive the night.

I also remember the story of Dreamworks' The Prince of Egypt movie. Highly paraphrased here, Moses left his life, a comfortable life, for a life of hardship but fulfillment, and in that he grew as a person. I want to teach, but I want to be the best teacher I can, and I want to be worldly.

I don't know, sometimes its just amazing to realize how fast life can move when I'm just standing still.