A real book I found in a Bronx Thrift Shop
In a thrift shop in The Bronx, I saw the book above. Inside the book are hundreds of places and
activities that could form a personal Bucket List. Just for good measure there are a dozen blank
pages if skydiving naked and swimming the Bering Strait in the winter aren’t
enough (I made those up.)
I don’t have a Bucket List. I don’t like Bucket Lists. To have a Bucket List, you have to plan,
stick with the plan, and believe you need to do or see a specific thing before
you die.
The stick-with-the-plan part is tough for me. And all of my travel has deeply convinced me that
nothing leads to further travel like the overwhelming impression many trips
have made on me.
It turns out, I am too optimistic to think I need to see and
do this list of things, and I am unable to stick to a long-term plan so I could
not have a list of Must-Do-Before-I-Die activities even if I wanted to.
I am a confirmed enthusiast as a personality type: Enneagram
Type 7, Myers Briggs ENTP, and Strength Finders Woo. So, the thing I want to do
right now is something that flowed from the last thing I did. And then there is
a strong need to do what I think is being taken away from me. When I perceive
my freedom or freedom of choice is inhibited, that motivates me to do things—sometimes
awesome things, sometimes not so awesome.
My re-enlistment in the Army a dozen years ago was an idea I
held loosely for months until I broke my neck and nine other bones in a near-fatal
bike racing crash. In a neck and chest brace, I saw enlistment being taken from
me. I got angry and wanted to enlist. I was angry in a way that has happened in
races when I crash and jump back on the bike, determined to finish, ignoring as
well as I can the injuries.
On my recent trip to Israel, I had planned to ride the
length of the country. It’s a small country so the ride would be the equivalent
of riding from Philadelphia to Boston. But
my recently replaced knee swelled up the night before the trip. So instead of riding the length of the
country, I drove the length of the country and then spent a week riding in and
out of Jerusalem.
My next trip overseas begins in Jerusalem with my friend
Cliff and ends with visiting the Dachau and Flossenburg concentration
camps. In between I will be in Athens
and Macedonia and Rwanda. I was going to go to Russia or Azerbaijan, but I
wanted to go to Rwanda and just read a book about the Rwandan Genocide. I can
get a relatively cheap flight and spend a week there.
I know people who travel by a plan and I realize the
benefits of what they do. I admire them. It’s just that I know myself well
enough that I can’t be them.
I was delighted planning my 2017 trip across Eastern Europe
visiting the worst Holocaust sites and many memorials. I had planned to see and pass through 20
countries. I did. But seven of the countries
were different than the countries I planned to see.
At one point I was on a morning train from Prague to Warsaw.
My plan was to get to the Baltic States and St. Petersburg, then back through Lviv,
Ukraine, to Auschwitz and back to Germany. But the ride from Belgrade to Prague
had taken days longer than I planned. I realized that if I went north, I would
not be able to spend a week at the Monastery where my friend Cliff is Franciscan
Monk.
As I thought, the sign board above my head said Katowice in
five minutes. Katowice is 30 miles from
Auschwitz. I could leave the train, ride
south and be there by early afternoon. I pulled my bike from the hanging rack,
grabbed my bags and left the train, throwing the bags so I could get the bike
through the narrow door easily during the brief stop.
I rode from Auschwitz to Lviv and back to Krakow with a new
plan and saw different countries.
And from beginning to end, I was and am delighted with the
trip.
Beyond this year, I want to go back to Hong Kong and to southern
reaches of South America, but maybe I will end up in Iceland or Mumbai or North
Platte, Nebraska. (Actually, I’ve been to North Platte, probably not returning.)
