Early Retirement Extreme Forums

@GandK, My initial reaction was to say, who cares what others think. But then I realized that one of the reasons I'm excited about the apartment building we're going to be managing is because it will provide me the opportunity to practice violin without subjecting others to my screeching attempts. It is THE reason I have up to now been reluctant to pick it up again.

Ego said: While I agree somewhat with what you are saying, my skept-o-meter starts pinging when I hear someone preach service-before-self. More often than not the preacher is being served.

Well, I'm certain I am motivated by some form of self-interest, however convoluted or irrational, in all things that I do. However, in this instance, I would assume that I am preaching to the choir since what I am largely concerned with here is resource conservation. Fills me with dismay to see potentially useful structures rotting away. Anyways, it is the nature of the mature feminine to reply to something like "Guess what? I climbed Mount Olympus today!!" with "That's nice, dear. Did you remember to pick up some rash ointment for the baby on your way home?", and since I am now 50, I am entitled to speak as the blue-haired matron on occasion.

It is the level of impracticality of an endeavor that makes it an adventure.

TheAnimal is spending the winter in a cabin in Alaska. That's an adventure! If he was in Allentown rather than Alaska and he was fetching baby ointment it would be.... the opposite of adventure.

GandK wrote:When ridicule (loss of status) is the greatest sports injury you can think of, aren't you safest in a jersey that has someone else's name on it?

Yes, but the wrong kind of safety. The kind that stunts your growth, not saves your life. Grown men shouldn't were other grown men's jerseys...it's a rule I have.

GandK wrote:I've met unhealthy women who won't go to the gym because of the way they look in workout clothes. They feel like they'll be making a spectacle of themselves, so they stay home. And IME the fear of ridicule is even stronger in guys.

The spectacle is those people in their daily lives. No one really cares what they look like at the gym. This is especially true if it's obvious they are working hard. Though, I saw a fat trainer at the gym the other day. Her I will judge. It's like being an account who can't do simple math.

The ridicule with guys may or may not be stronger, but it's different. It's more about being an athlete than how you look. It's just stunning to see a guy who can't do a basic athletic move, such as throw a ball. It's unfathomable to me how someone can't do this. Of course, this in turn leads people to not learn how to do the athletic move, because it's so embarrassing to try and overcome the gap.

Ego wrote:It is the level of impracticality of an endeavor that makes it an adventure.

Impracticality?!? Tying your feet together and hobbling 5 miles to get baby ointment in Allentown would be rather impractical, but it's not an adventure.

I'd rather generalize adventures as pushing the boundary of one's experience in directions that are exciting, challenging, and risky to that person. I'm trying not to insert any personal prejudices by using too many adjectives, but I think all three need to be present.

Exciting, challenging: Learning calculus is not an adventure.
Exciting, risky: Betting everything on Red-22 is not an adventure.
Challenging, risky: Rappelling is not an adventure.

Actually, a fourth qualifier may be needed. An adventure also needs to be a coherent set or journey of experiences. If a journey---a narrative---is involved, I'd be willing to give a half-free pass on one of the other qualifiers.

edit: Yet, this may be condensed into just two qualifiers. Thus, an adventure is an "unusual journey". In fact, anything that's exciting, challenging, or risky tends to define "unusual" for most people most of the time.

Only Jacob would say that learning calculus meets the "exciting" requirement but rappelling does not.

Rappelling might be an adventure for one person but not an adventure for another. For a new climber who has never rappelled it would be exciting, challenging and risky. For an experienced climber who has successfully rappelled hundreds of times it would no longer be exciting, challenging, or risky.

As a person gains experience the same experience can change from an adventure to not an adventure.

Ego said: TheAnimal is spending the winter in a cabin in Alaska. That's an adventure! If he was in Allentown rather than Alaska and he was fetching baby ointment it would be.... the opposite of adventure.

Don't disagree. I am an ENTP, so my personality is centered in the juvenile masculine quest for adventure even though my appearance and social role is mature feminine. My point was that fixing up an abandoned house in the inner city could be exciting, challenging and risky, but also productive and possibly profitable. Climbing a mountain in search of a rare alpine flower or gold or to see the thing that has not been seen by anybody on the other side would be more appealing to me. Maybe because I also think that there is a 4th adjective necessary for the definition of adventure and that would be "novel." You can't have the same adventure twice. Anyways, my life at the moment is teetering on the thin edge between adventure and mis-adventure, likely due to my irrationally optimistic calculation of risk factors. Affluent men getting their ya-yas out engaging in risky recreational activities with their spare time and money is a total yawn in my book compared to having to deal with hordes of disadvantage children at work, mentally ill and decrepit relatives at home, handsome thugs in bed and besotted lovers on my phone, crime, litter and decay. Just a couple hours ago, I was toe-to-toe with a very large teenager who took offense because I told him to "Save the gossip for after school." to which he stood up in my face and replied "I'm a man. Men don't gossip." Surprisingly, my reply of "Okay, then stop the chit-chat." worked. My adrenal glands are just about pumping on empty.

jacob wrote:
Impracticality?!?

Absolutely. 7Wanna was speaking from the perspective of the adventurer's wife. Anyone other than the adventurer him/herself sees other people's adventures as at least a little bit impractical, otherwise everyone would be doing them. An adventure isn't all that adventurous if everyone is doing it.

What you say is true from the perspective of the adventurer.

Frank and the Tower
https://vimeo.com/141843181

Peter Gostelow just passed through the grueling parts of Ethiopia and is now poised to cross the border into Somaliland. By bike!

http://petergostelow.com/thebigafricacy ... rom-addis/

Cycle Touring with 13-Year-Old Zeke, by Willie Weir in Adventure Cycling Magazine

All PDFs

Part 1
http://www.adventurecycling.org/default ... e_Weir.pdf

Part 2
https://www.adventurecycling.org/defaul ... e_Weir.pdf

Part 3
http://www.adventurecycling.org/default ... e_Weir.pdf

An interview with his parents...
http://www.adventurecycling.org/resourc ... parenting/

Ego wrote: Part 1
http://www.adventurecycling.org/default ... e_Weir.pdf

Part 2
http://www.adventurecycling.org/default ... e_Weir.pdf

Those first two links are the same!

I get that magazine.

Link fixed

Better than dying in a barcalounger watching other people live life.....
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/12/09/busin ... .html?_r=0

Yeah, but that's also what men over 70 who mix alcohol, Cialis and nitroglycerin say.

7Wannabe5 wrote:Yeah, but that's also what men over 70 who mix alcohol, Cialis and nitroglycerin say.

Interesting. I try to stay away from them so I wouldn't have known. I wonder if it is possible to come so far around on the circular-spectrum that choices begin to look similar to those of the opposite outlier.

I wouldn't be nearly so sure that a man like Tompkins wouldn't fall into both of our categories. What a man reveals or how he behaves in relationship to his kayaking buddy, his physician, his wife or his lover can vary. However, level of risk-aversion does seem to be somewhat hard-wired. I was having coffee recently with a man in his 60s recently who looked approximately as fit/young as the picture of Tompkins in 2005, and he was joking about the line in the ad that goes something like "First ask your doctor if you are healthy enough to engage in sexual activity." in a manner that led me to believe that he would walk out into the deep woods and shoot himself in the temple before he would accept such medical recommendations/limitations on his behavior.

7Wannabe5 wrote:Yeah, but that's also what men over 70 who mix alcohol, Cialis and nitroglycerin say.

Gives new meaning to the phrase "going out on top."

http://www.sidetracked.com/great-himalaya-trail/

The Great Himalaya Trail (GHT) is a proposed route of over 4500 km of existing trails stretching the length of the Greater Himalaya range from Nanga Parbat (Jam-mu & Kashmir, Pakistan) to Namche Barwa (Tibet) thus passing through Kashmir, India, Nepal, Bhutan and Tibet. When completed, it will be the longest and highest alpine walking track in the world. As of July 2010, only the Nepal and Bhutan sections have been walked and documented thoroughly. The other countries are still being researched. Winding beneath the world’s highest peaks and visiting some of the most remote communities on earth, it passes through lush green valleys, arid high plateaus and incredible mountainous landscapes. Nepal’s documented GHT has 10 sections comprising a network of upper and lower routes.

http://greathimalayatrails.com/about-the-ght/