Need for adventure?

Met with a client yesterday who has, this summer, gone to the summit of one mountain on one continent and also done a multi-day hiking trip around another mountain on another continent, on top of a business trip to Asia. When I had first run into her into the hallway in our office after the latter trip, he had said he was exhausted. Then both of us got busy for a week and change before out meeting and we hadn't caught up properly. I asked yesterday if how he was feeling now, did he feel like she'd had enough. He said that in fact he had already planned another expedition in Latin America.

On a professional level the thrust of my questioning was to suss out how much money he was going to need in retirement. Might his travel needs flatten out? The answer their was a clear no.

But, truth be told, I'm also thinking about myself. Mary and I just had a nice trip up the East Coast. It was great. We saw old friends and clients, much of whom are the same thing. We got some exercise, went up to the top of some (small) mountains. But it wasn't very adventurous.

At home, in the evening, I continue to ingest adventure content on YouTube, first and foremost Itchy Boots (where our Dutch heroine Noraly is about to pass for the last time out of Argentina as she rides her motorcycle north towards Alaska), but also other channels here and there too. It's entrancing, if sometimes slow going.

When I was younger I got out a bit. I went to some somewhat offbeat places in my 20s, mostly in Eastern Europe. But I could have done more. Sometimes I wish I had done so. By now I'm not all that adventurous and Mary definitely isn't, though she'll go a lot of places if I do the planning and, if she's been there before and she feels like she might get a good picture out of it, she'll go there again (hence her multiple trips to Juneau and Haines).

I think probably we should be breaking out a little more. I could even go on a trip or two without her, given her limited taste for ascending mountains.

But there's always the carbon to think about. YouTube for sure has a lower carbon footprint. And our back porch here in the morning is rather nice...