Monday, February 26, 2018

The Air Is Breathable

The air is breathable.

They say that a journey of a thousand miles begins with one step. My thousand mile journey began with the steps of five very unlikely people.
How I roll

Let me introduce you to Kyo, Guo-Kwan, Kevin and Sevrin and Mathilda. They have never met each other but they each, in turn, affected my life in a very profound way.

Do a google search for budget travel and you will eventually find Couchsurfing. A worldwide community of travelers and hosts that offer accommodations for free with only the reward of experiencing a new culture and making friends, it’s called the ‘sharing economy.’ That's is how I met Kyo, Guo-Kwan, Kevin and Sevrin and then Mathilde.

Curiosity and the desire to meet people from other countries who were doing what I had only dreamed of prompted me to open my small two bedroom apartment to travelers. Couchsurfing allowed me to travel vicariously through the adventures of the many travelers that visited me. Their stories and their undaunting optimism slowly instilled in me this insatiable wanderlust. With each traveler my hope that one day I would set off on an adventure slowly became a not so impossible dream. That is what Couchsurfing did.


Kyo was my first guest. He was traveling after completing a university degree in the states and was returning to South Korea after a tour of America. He was the first step in my journey. He only stayed for two nights but he changed my life completely. He was the first to show me that life is what you make it and that life does not make you. I am not sure how he did that. Perhaps it was something that occured while he was there but I am certain that he spurred the revelation with his unending optimisms and youthful energy. It made me think; is the difference between his outlook and mine, this youthful energy and optimism, a product of our age difference? Is it an aggregate of our life experience? I’m still not sure, but what I do know is that once I began to change my mind set, regardless of my situation, my life began to change.

Kyo planted a seed that grew larger and larger every day. Guo-Kwan, a traveler from Belgium, showed me that Kyo was not alone. Guo, whos western name was Frederic, reaffirmed the excitement of youth that I had forgotten long ago. Frederic had been all over the world. He had been to China and Singapore. He had been all over Europe and had worked as a sous-chef in paris! He was even planning a trip to Nepal. He did not know the concept of impossible. The same mental state that makes you think you are immortal at that age makes you think that you can overcome any obstacle you will face. And that was a view I needed.

When Kevin and Sevrin arrived the energy in my apartment intensified exponentially. They were high school friends from Germany who were on their way to spend 6 months traveling the United States and Canada with only two backpacks and sleeping bags. They were planning their trip as they went. They did not know where they were going tomorrow. They had a map and as soon as they settled in and laid their backpacks down to relax a bit they picked a point on their paper map and discussed, in German, how much money they had and what they would do when they got there. When they had agreed on their next destination they asked me what there was to do there. It filled me with joy as their faces lit up when I told them that they would see and swim with manatees at Crystal River and that I had seen five the last time I was there. I was infected with that wonder.


Then there was Mathilde. A young lady from Sweden whose backpack was almost taller than her and, I would bet, even heavier, She arrived with all the hopefulness and energy of a raiding Viking. She had offered to make Swedish meatballs, everyone’s favorite. I watched as she prepared what to me looked like regular meatballs. When asked what made them Swedish, she very confidently looked up with a half shappen ball of meat cupped in her hands and said, "a Swede is making them.” How can you help but be inspired by people like this?

Mathilde would be the first couchsurfer that would host me at her house in Stockholm when I began my travels.

After just these these few guests I decided that there was no reason why I could not do what they were doing. As I met and hosted more and more travelers, the urge to go, the wanderlust grew from a cute and cuddly idea into an uncontrollable and unyielding beast.

I would go on to host more than 100 travelers in my home for the next year and half. All would continue to show me that travel was as much a state of mind as it was state of being.
A travel plan began germinating in the back of my head. I began to research budget travel sites and blogs. I downloaded travel apps onto my cell phone. I began to read blogs from different kinds of travelers who discovered, invented or hacked the perfect way to travel cheap. All had good ideas and all had developed and explained perfectly legitimate ways to travel with little money. But they all had one thing in common; they were all young and I wasn’t.

Discomfort is easy for the young, they take it in stride. We have all seen scores of young travelers sleeping on the floor of an airport waiting for a delayed flight. It’s practically summer camp to them. And let me tell you, it kind of is.

When we think of traveling with backpacks and on a shoestring budget we think of young and energetic kids trekking through some exotic destinations. You will probably not picture in your mind a 60 year old backpacker. At least I did not. And, besides, I had other, rather serious issues that could have held me back should I have let them.

In the summer of 2016, before I started hosting on couchsurfing, I was diagnosed with stage 4 prostate cancer and colon cancer. I had a particularly advanced and aggressive version of this ugly disease. It changed my life completely. Little-by-little I lost everything, my job, my home, my car and slowly, I was losing my will to live.

Cancer has a strange side effect that I had not been told about but almost all cancer patients experience. A perspective reversal. Your view on life changes 180 degrees. Your life is turned upside down but your view of the world and your place in it does an about-face.

What we used to call “the little things” are now the big things. Simple activities, meaningless gestures or unimportant details become an example of the value of life. When you are face-to-face with the prospect of death, a wilting rose can be a revelation of the magnificence of life. You develop a particularly serious sense of urgency.

I remember watching a 1950’s science fiction movie, one of those with really poor special effects where the astronaut, after stepping out of his spaceship, removes his visor and declares, “the air is breathable!”

September 11, 2017, I stepped out of the 787 Dreamliner at Helsinki airport as if stepping out onto an alien world and paused for a second at the threshold of the aluminum door, took a deep breath and thought with wonderous excitement, “the air is breathable!”

I will be blogging about my experiences, my trials but mostly about my triumphs while traveling through Europe. I hope to inspire those that may think that it is impossible for them to travel. I hope to be an example that you can do such things despite the limitations you THINK you have.

And so, welcome to The Air Is Breathable.

1 comment:

Nenz said...

Very nice Julio. I can’t wait to see more. Safe travels!