It took me nearly two hours to get to Manchester yesterday morning. This is unusual as it normally takes me no more than an hour and a half! That means that I travel the 38 miles to work at an average of around 25 MPH, and nearly all of that is along motorway. Stop, start, stop, start. Naturally when you spend this amount of time sat in a car every day you get to thinking a lot, and yesterday I thought about how much of my life I have wasted sat in traffic just going to work. It is frightening. If on average I have to go to the office twice a week (although sometimes it is more) then in seven years at this place I have sat in traffic for 91 days, or 3 months, or a quarter of a year!!!
So it is at junctures in life like this that I wonder why I bother working hard and wasting so much of my life simply to live in a rented place and scrape a living. Don’t get me wrong, I earn a decent wage, but at the end of the month I am still struggling to last till pay day. I wonder why I bother sometimes when friends of mine cruise through life and seem no worse off than me! I suppose it comes down to pride in the end. At least I can hold my head up high and say I have worked for the things I have in life. But am I confusing pride with stupidity? Who is right and who is wrong? Me for wasting months of my life sat in a stupid car going nowhere but holding my head high and saying at least I have worked for what I have, or my mate for screwing the system and still having as much as me?
The Wannabe Traveller.
A few weeks ago I went to the local Hein Gericke store for an evening event featuring Nick Sanders. Nick holds the record for travelling round the world solo on a motorbike, just short of twenty days on an R1. I suppose you would call him a modern day adventurer. He has travelled round the world on numerous occasions both by cycle and motorcycle. He was giving a presentation about his life as an adventurer and I have to say it was fascinating. My earlier rant about being sat in traffic for so long go me thinking about the type of person I actually am. Deep I know, but like I said, you get a lot of time to think when you are sat in traffic. I came to the conclusion that I am the kind of person that moans about stuff rather than doing something about it? What’s happened? Have I taken a turn somewhere in life that has lead me into some kind of comfort zone? Why do I moan about the things in life that do not matter rather than actually doing something about changing them? In front of me at the presentation was a man who was not willing to do that, not willing to put up with the mundane things in life and all the shit that goes with it. Here was a man that dared to be different and dared to actually live his life and do something different. How many people do any of us know personally that have ever or will ever have the balls to do that?
An example of how he got started in the game was quite funny. For his first trip round the world by push bike in the early eighties he wanted to mark the occasion by doing something special. As he was basically a nobody at the time he called the Daily Telegraph newspaper and said that the Nolan Sisters would be waving him off and that they should come and do an article about his adventure; then he rang the Nolan Sisters agent and said that the Telegraph were coming to do an article on his adventure and would they like to come and wave him off? Free publicity and all that. I suppose your mind has to work a certain way to pull something like that off, but it worked and he got his send off printed in the nationals.
I am not putting myself in the same category as this guy, but part of doing the kind of thing he does must be having an iron will to do it, and as time go by and the hours, days and months sat in a car rack up, my will to do something different with my life increases to the point that something is going to give and I will have to do that one big crazy thing in my life and just fuck it all off and go out and start living MY life for ME. After all, maybe, you only get one. Until then though and in the meantime I will have to content myself with fulfilling my ambitions through reading the travel tales of the likes of Nick, Ted Simon and Mondo Enduro as well as the real world people on the road now having their own adventures and updating their blogs on the Horizons Unlimited web site.
So it is at junctures in life like this that I wonder why I bother working hard and wasting so much of my life simply to live in a rented place and scrape a living. Don’t get me wrong, I earn a decent wage, but at the end of the month I am still struggling to last till pay day. I wonder why I bother sometimes when friends of mine cruise through life and seem no worse off than me! I suppose it comes down to pride in the end. At least I can hold my head up high and say I have worked for the things I have in life. But am I confusing pride with stupidity? Who is right and who is wrong? Me for wasting months of my life sat in a stupid car going nowhere but holding my head high and saying at least I have worked for what I have, or my mate for screwing the system and still having as much as me?
The Wannabe Traveller.
A few weeks ago I went to the local Hein Gericke store for an evening event featuring Nick Sanders. Nick holds the record for travelling round the world solo on a motorbike, just short of twenty days on an R1. I suppose you would call him a modern day adventurer. He has travelled round the world on numerous occasions both by cycle and motorcycle. He was giving a presentation about his life as an adventurer and I have to say it was fascinating. My earlier rant about being sat in traffic for so long go me thinking about the type of person I actually am. Deep I know, but like I said, you get a lot of time to think when you are sat in traffic. I came to the conclusion that I am the kind of person that moans about stuff rather than doing something about it? What’s happened? Have I taken a turn somewhere in life that has lead me into some kind of comfort zone? Why do I moan about the things in life that do not matter rather than actually doing something about changing them? In front of me at the presentation was a man who was not willing to do that, not willing to put up with the mundane things in life and all the shit that goes with it. Here was a man that dared to be different and dared to actually live his life and do something different. How many people do any of us know personally that have ever or will ever have the balls to do that?
An example of how he got started in the game was quite funny. For his first trip round the world by push bike in the early eighties he wanted to mark the occasion by doing something special. As he was basically a nobody at the time he called the Daily Telegraph newspaper and said that the Nolan Sisters would be waving him off and that they should come and do an article about his adventure; then he rang the Nolan Sisters agent and said that the Telegraph were coming to do an article on his adventure and would they like to come and wave him off? Free publicity and all that. I suppose your mind has to work a certain way to pull something like that off, but it worked and he got his send off printed in the nationals.
I am not putting myself in the same category as this guy, but part of doing the kind of thing he does must be having an iron will to do it, and as time go by and the hours, days and months sat in a car rack up, my will to do something different with my life increases to the point that something is going to give and I will have to do that one big crazy thing in my life and just fuck it all off and go out and start living MY life for ME. After all, maybe, you only get one. Until then though and in the meantime I will have to content myself with fulfilling my ambitions through reading the travel tales of the likes of Nick, Ted Simon and Mondo Enduro as well as the real world people on the road now having their own adventures and updating their blogs on the Horizons Unlimited web site.
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