Adventure travel: from the Extreme to the Road Trip.

The range of travel being written about runs the gamut from the near-death experiences (the extreme or adventure stories), to the pampered cruise ship or five star hotel stories. Sometimes it seems that certain writers may be at least slightly judgmental as to what constitutes real travel.

Spend enough time reading travel magazines or watching adventure shows on TV and you might get the idea that unless you truly risk possible bodily injuries involving multiple limbs and various internal organs you really can’t consider yourself a serious adventure traveler.

Think of scenes of someone  hurling themselves down a 50 foot waterfall in a tiny plastic kayak or flying off an icy cliff down a rock-strewn snow covered mountain on a pair of skis or a snowboard.

And throw in plenty of tallies of how many “fourteeners” were conqueredand which secret beach was discovered or what un-run river was run (how many more can there be?!?) and you might start questioning if you might be an outdoor wannabe.

So whether those stories provide me with motivation or guilt for not trying certain adventurous activities,I occasionally may find my rapidly aging 50-something  body might ‘write a check’ that my slightly overweight, slightly out of shape, and slightly lack of agility-body cannot cash  or at least without making a deposit at the closet urgent care facility.

But I have taken more than my share of road trips, that truth be known, even included rooms with indoor plumbing and on-demand movies.  Early forays were, like many of my generation, either on family trips in the old family truckster or on some Boy Scout trek.

The point is that one person’s boring outdoor travel might be someone else’s harrowing adventure.  A woman in my office said the other day, ” My hands get cold in the office.” But I happen to know she likes to travel to Mexico, so who is to say she is only a tourist; to her the trips may be the only adrenaline fix she needs. Or maybe it’s a respite from the adrenaline she is seeking.

If I ever get to the point where my travel is more for some kind of outdoor score keeping drill, I may have to find a different hobby.