As was mentioned in the post, expeditions/adventures need not be temporally long nor geographically far.

As for needing lots of money, I rode a bicycle from England to Armenia over the course of 10 months for the total cost of ~5 K, including airfares from and back to Australia. Pretty cheap.

Those who wont, find reasons they can’t.

This kind of adventure is not important enough to everyone to make it a priority, but that doesn’t make it any less so for those of us who do. The comment about needing a lot of money is overstated. Plenty of adventure to be had for next to nothing.

Finally, even if someone reads this and doesn’t want to rush right out and buy a plane ticket, that shouldn’t keep you from enjoying it as an armchair traveler.

Nice article, Bryan.

It’s easy to come down on Bob for his remarks but his remarks have merit. We can’t all be screewriters and drifters because society is a machine that requires productive people to run it and no offense a society composed of those components would be a lot of things but productive is not among them. Teachers, police officers, nurses, etc can’t take off for months at a time and just drift around. Men with families shouldn’t just drift around. Responsibility can be the antihesis of adventure but a responsibility must be honored because your responsibility to your family is more important than your need to play Tarzan.

Does that sound harsh? Perhaps but it’s an honest assessment. I would say if you want adventure join the military, few things will help you discover who you are faster. If the military is not your bag than try to get this urge out young, nothing sadder than a listless 30 something still trying to find himself. If you choose to abandon responsibility and drift or walk across the country what have you more power to you, each person is free to choose their own path, but do not belittle those who have chosen a more responsible path of working and raising a family who simply do not have the resources or time to drop everything.

Just yesterday I saw a man at our local sandwich shop talking to one of the workers about how he had just quit his job “with no backup plan” and was going to see “where life took him”. He seemed quite proud of his irresponsbility whereas the worker seemed put off by it as I was. Is that an adventure? I suppose it is. The problem is with society as it is now his “adventure” is likely to lead him to unemployment, Medicaid, food stamps, welfare, or homelessness and lead him to becoming a burden on us all. So yes have your adventure but do not abandon responsibility for it.

To Bob I say this. Look for everyday adventures as so many of us in the working world have too. It could be something simple like joining a local sports team, hiking or camping with friends over an extended weekend, take up hunting, or as Elanor Roosevelt once put it “do something every day that scares the hell out of you”. Your adventure doesn’t need to uproot your life as the ones discussed here would but don’t give up on finding adventure because you don’t feel the adventures are big enough.

I think you miss the spirit of the article. Yes the people who accomplished these amazing expeditions did have to have money and they had to leave their friends and families for the duration of their trip. These are, however, only examples of adventure.

The article is trying to convey that there is adventure for people of every level. Yes we often only hear about these crazy 3 year intense expeditions, but the spirit of adventure is in all of us. Maybe adventure for you is taking a week off and backpacking through the rockies, or riding your bike 300mi along the Oregon coast, or traveling to Ecuador for a trek in the Andes. The point is that adventure is personal.

It is always sad to me when I hear opinions like yours because it means to me that there are people that have given up on seeking adventure. ‘It’s too hard’ ‘It costs too much’ ‘I just can’t do it’ These are all excuses. If you desire adventure all you have to do is look. I took my bicycle to Japan and my girlfriend and I biked and worked on farms for 10 weeks in Japan. Did it require money? Yes, but maybe not as much as you’d think. Did it require me to give up on my family friends and career? Hardly. Imagine 20 years from now when you are talking to your grandkids, would you rather tell them how you never decided to seek adventure because it cost too much and took to long, and that your greatest stories are about that one office prank?

Adventure is something that should be important to everyman it is part of what makes life worth living. Adventure is personal. Each person has a different opinion of adventure and what it means to them. Just don’t give in to the excuses that come so easily. You can find the adventure of your life anywhere, you just have to look.

@bob

I have to disagree with you on both accounts. An adventure doesn’t necessarily have to eat up a lot of money. Plenty of charity organizations around the world need help (such as the peace corp, invisible children, habitat for humanity, your local church’s outreach missions) and working with these charity organizations can often times lead to great adventures that cost little or no money.

On your second point I think you forget that many, many, many people don’t choose to have careers that happen from 9 to 5 five days a week.

As a screenwriter and filmmaker my industry exists entirely on the idea that for several months we will work intensely, receive our pay and then choose the next instance we want to continue working. Many of us make career choices that allow us to take time to pursue our other dreams and vocations. The important thing is being able to find a career that is fulfilling but also allows you the time necessary to expand yourself as a person (whatever that may mean for the individual).

In any case, I remain confident that adventure is out there for every man if he is creative with his time and commitments. Best wishes.
-Travis

at least for some of the bigger expeditions you need money, or a corporate sponsor, or a sugar-daddy/momma or maybe milk it by ostensibly raising money for a charity …

for some of these “explorers” doing their thing under corporate sponsorship, etc. *is* their career