If ever there was a place to make me reconsider my travelling ways, this very well might be it. Sitting shotgun beside a good friend that I haven't seen in too many years, we pull his truck off the gravel road and into what very well could be heaven.......if there is such a thing.
I imagine John Lennon would've wrote different lyrics had he been here so let me paint you a picture of what heaven looks like to me:
The trees part as we drive the old truck into the clearing. The sideways evening light shines its warm golden rays through the Birch trees, lighting an old charming country home that looks like it should be on the side of a maple syrup container. At the sound of our arrival, my friends beautiful wife rises from the garden, wagon full of freshly picked vegetables in tow and beams a smile our way. Two year old baby Benjamin runs with a hug locked and loaded for Dad, flanked by a posse of tail wagging dogs and inquisitive cats. It's a homecoming parade of happiness and it happens every day at work day end. While I've found my adventure overseas, they've found their adventure here, together, every day in tending the farm animals and doing the chores.
And in each other.
Seeing them in their country side paradise, my envy doesn't fit in my already overflown, tired suitcase. To me, they've figured it out. They live a purposefully simple, content life and today I am their welcomed guest. It's an honour not lost on me.
As is often the case when I return home to Canada, I bathe in the warm hospitality of good friends and spare beds. This particular friend I haven't seen in at least 5 years but you wouldn't know it from how easily we slide back into good old times as we catch up over the farm chores.
Time reveals all and friendship is no different. The ever-running clock on the wall has taught me something interesting about friendships: sometimes friendships happen when people bond over where they are. Sometimes it happens when people bond over who they're with.
Our fifteen year friendship is definitely the latter and I'm lucky to have a friend as good as
Mike Lewis.
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It's always a mixed bag coming "home" to a place that feels oddly foreign but still somewhat familiar. It's something I've written about before and anyone who's ever travelled for an extending time knows the feeling well. But it also serves as a window for showing you where your friendships fall. The Whos and the Wheres..... and I've been lucky to have met a lot of Whos.
The Wheres may be there with you but it's the Whos who will be there for you and the last couple months of adventure have surely taught me this.
To fill you in, the last time we talked I was in Mexico City trying to do that whole making money thing (my friends keep telling me this might be a good idea) but instead I was getting my butt kicked like Pinocchio in politics.
Muchos frustrating.
So let me share with you the baking ingredients for Mexico City disaster cookies:
-A dash of your agency not coming through with the work visa (which means no making dineros)
-2 cups of Xanax fuelled agents that clearly took a couple too many siestas
-4 cups of Thrifty's car rental charging $600 in extras for speeding tickets from your Cape Town trip
-147 cups of credit card fraud and a clueless bank that couldn't care less that you're stranded in Mexico City
-One pinch of still waiting on payment for your 3 months of previous work in Cape Town
Combine ingredients in a Mexican mixing bowl and bake in 80% humidity at 30 degrees for about two and a half months and you will end up with a crumbly one way ticket cookie back to Canada.
That and diarrhoea.
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So arriving with my financial tail between my legs and a suitcase full of dirty laundry, I was open and ready for a life lesson and somewhere in all of this; it was there waiting for me to find it. It was there in the open arms of the Whos as they shared their homes with me, reminding me of what it is that makes this whole thing worth it. Reminding me that there is adventure in life wherever you choose to find it. Whether here or there. That you don't need to travel to find your adventure, for it can be right there in front of you....if that's where you choose to make it. But also reminding me that if you do head off into the unknown, your true friends will be with you wherever you go....
and there when you return.
Good friends who are glad to see you home and proud to see you go.
Good friends like these two epic beauties for example.
Back when I was leaving Canadiana to go to Cape Town South Africa, Linds and Joh showed me just how lucky I am to have the friends I do in the form of this pretty epic video. Linds somehow managed to corral a bunch of my friends from around the world to make asses of themselves while they lip sung a song they CLEARLY couldn't remember the words too.
This will never stop being funny to me and I will love them forever for it.
So after watching this sweet vid too many times, forever searing this song into my head, I made a plan to pay them back in kind. A way to say thank you for making me feel at home no matter where I am. Whether on a perfect family farm or in a far away land on a new adventure, it's friends like these that remind me that we all have our own adventure to find..... and that no matter where we go, we will never go there alone with the love of good friends.
A big thanks to Klaudia, Lora and all my CT friends who put up with me constantly singing this song.
An even bigger thanks to all you rockstars who took the time to sing it to me.
Linds, Joh, Tara, Toby, Leah, Anna, Millie, Kyle, Yulia, Lauren, Jeff, Justin, Tom, Mel, Louis, Ian, Curtis, Graeme and JP I will never forget it.
Miss ya.
