Adventure Clubs

I've always wanted to join an adventure club.

By adventure, I don't mean extreme sports or base jumping necessarily. I'm not even sure anyone's ever actually created an adventure club of the like I'm thinking, but I've always wanted to be a part of one all the same.

The kids in Stand By Me or... The Goonies for instance, are my kind of adventurers.


Or consider the Sleep City crew. I've always been intrigued by finding and exploring places that relatively few have visited prior, or places long forgotten, off limits, or tucked away, frozen in time for one reason or another. The Sleep City crew explores condemned mental asylums, hospitals, old abandoned tunnels, and other man-made structures. They recently described their repel down into the plumbing underneath and behind Niagara Falls.

My sister Angela , camera in tow, jumps in her car on the days she has off and explores and photographs old and abandoned homes. Something that I used to enjoy doing with friends, mostly just to scare ourselves.



I can tell you that when you make time for adventure - you aren't simply living for the moment. You are living for the future and crafting memories that will endure.

If I were to rank my memories by their vividness and persistent Technicolor, outside of traumatic experiences, those where I took a risk for the sake of adventure stand out. Exploring a 350 year old castle as a young boy in Sicily (sneaking into the areas that were off limits by tourists). Or calling in sick to work to go caving 280 feet underground in Calaverous County, California. Even hopping on a ship at a spur of the moment with my family to see the Inside Passage and the glaciers in Alaska.

Adventure. *Not* jumping out of a plane or off a bridge with bungee cord bound to my legs. Those are just adrenalin junkies.

I'm certainly not dead, I don't mean to sound like a nostalgic curmudgeon. I'm sure they'll be many adventures to have with my son Jack and wife Wendy. (I can't wait).

But there is something to be said for having the free time and impulsive nature when young...

"Road Trip!".