Draft of Chapter One
Inspirations Behind Journeys
Since my early 20s I have been reading books looking for inspiration. Many of them have provided it. Sometimes the inspiration lasted for a long time: weeks to months. Sometimes it only lasted until I got up from the table, got into my car and drove to my job or career du jour.
The writing of Journeys (Life is a Creative Journey, Not a Guided Tour) has been inspired by many people: authors, friends and plus personal and professional experiences. The most recent set of experiences came from my 73 Day Wandering Journey around the world that I took in 2001.
Here are some opening quotes from books that have greatly inspired many aspects of my life journeys and traveling.
“For the hundredth time I am going to answer someone’s questions about why I’m walking across America. It wasn’t that I minded talking about it or answering questions, it was just that I really didn’t know why myself.”
Peter Jenkins
A Walk Across America
“I would be making a journey, an essentially lonely journey, into myself, in search of something that was meaningful to me alone.”
David Smith
Healing Journey: The Odyssey of an Uncommon Athlete
“I began my pilgrimage on the first of January in 1953. It is my spiritual birthday of sorts. It was a period in which I was merged with the whole. No longer was I a seed buried under the ground, but I felt as a flower reaching out effortlessly toward the sun. On that day I became a wanderer relying upon the goodness of others. It would be a pilgrim’s journey undertaken in the traditional manner: on foot and on faith. I left behind all claims to a name, personal history, possessions and affiliations.
It would be a glorious journey.”
Peace Pilgrim
Peace Pilgrim Her Life and Work in Her Own Words
“We had the world and the roads all to ourselves.”
Peter Jenkins
A Walk Across America
p. 14
“I’m happy to be riding back into this country.”
“Chris and I are traveling to Montana with some friends riding up ahead, and maybe headed father than that. Plans are deliberately indefinite, more to travel than to arrive anywhere. We are just vacationing.
We want to make good time, but for us now this is measured with emphasis on “good” rather than “time” and when you make that shift in emphasis the whole approach changes.”
“We saw it and yet we didn’t see it. Or we were trained not to see it.”
Robert Pirsig
Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance.
“The inspiration for brevity came to me at a gasoline station. I managed to fill an old car’s tank with super deluxe high-octane go-juice. My old hoopy couldn’t handle it and got the willies--kept sputtering out at intersections and belching going downhill. I understood. My mine and my spirit get like that from time to time. Too much high-content information, and I get the existential willies--keep sputterin out at intersections where life choices must be made and I either know too much or not enough. The examined life is no picnic.”
Robert Fulghum
All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten
“Would you tell me, please, which way I ought to go from here?”
“That depends a good deal on where you want to get to.”
“I don’t much care where…”
“Then it doesn’t matter which way you go.”
Cheshire-Puss and Alice
Alice in Wonderland
“Call me Ishmael. Some years ago--never mind how long precisely--having little or no money in my purse, and nothing particular to interest me on shore, I thought I would sail about a little and see the watery part of the world. It is a way I have of driving off the spleen, and regulating the circulation. Whenever I find myself growing grim about the mouth; whenever it is (a) damp, drizzly November in my soul; whenever I find myself involuntarily pausing before coffin warehouses, …. This is my substitute for pistol and ball.”
Ishmael
Moby Dick
Herman Melville
“I’d been poring over maps of the United States in Paterson for months, even reading books about the pioneers and savoring names like Platte and Cimarron and son on, and on the road-map was one long red line called Route 6 that led from the tip of Cape Cod clear to Ely, Nevada, and there dipped down to Los Angeles.”
Jack Kerouac
On the Road
“When I wrote the following pages, or rather the bulk of them, I lived alone, in the woods, a mile from any neighbor, in a house which I built myself, on the shore of Walden Pond, in Concord, Massachusetts, and earned my living by the labor of my hands only. I lived there two years and two months. At present I am a sojourner in civilized life again.”
Henry David Thoureau
Walden
I finally made my decision to travel to leave my daily life behind for a couple months in September, 2000. Over the next 8 to 9 months I spent a great deal of time planning. In 1976 I had made a similar decision about leaving my daily life for 3 months to travel around Europe. This time I was determined to do a better job of planning based on the many things I had learned over the 25 or so years since my first personal pilgrimage.
My first decision was to take off for two months and spend them in two countries I had never been to before: Australia and New Zealand. I began by spending many hours writing to people over the internet asking for tips, suggestions and advice. When I thought of a local friend who had traveled to Australia or New Zealand I would call them and set up time to talk to them about their experiences and ask for their recommendations. I did the same thing every time I discovered someone else who had been to or lived in Australia or New Zealand.
Everybody had suggestions and I was greatly thankful for all that so many gave me.
Not long after I had decided to travel down under, with a possible stop over in Fiji, two friends suggested I travel “all the way around” the world.
I laughed when I read their first email message.
I knew they had taken such a trip just a couple years before and it had taken them six months.
I only had two months. I didn’t want to jump from country to country. I had learned during my trip around Europe in 1977 that 3 days is a good amount of time added to travel and time change or jet lag adjustment time to comfortably experience a country or city. Otherwise you should stay 30 years. So the idea of traveling completely around the world in 2 months was out of the question.
Before their email helped to change my mind I had already gone to the local library and checked out several books about both New Zealand and Australia. I had methodically started going through the piles of books one by one each day for an hour or two. I had nine months to become prepared. I was going to really be ready this time when I left home.
Once the thought of traveling completely around the world had bounced around in my mind for a few days I called my friends and we talked for at least an hour about how they had done it and what they had learned that might help me. There were the names of airplane ticket brokers, names and phone numbers of airlines in different countries to check out, train passes, tips on how to get visas, what insurance policies to get, suggestions on how to pack and what I might carry.
I was becoming excited. I was going to travel completely around the world in one trip. I was going to fulfill a life-long dream of following in Phileas Fogg, Esq’s footsteps. I was going to go around the world in two months, 60 or so days, not the 80 days from Jules Verne’s famous novel. After being on my trip for a couple days in New Zealand, to be specific, I unsuccessfully searched for a few hours through several bookstores in the beautiful university town, Dunedin, in the southern part of the south island, and ended up ordering a copy of Around the World in Eight Days that I picked up when I returned to the Auckland airport a week later. It was waiting there right at the bookstore/newsstand I had remembered wandering around in when I had 5 hours to kill in Auckland’s airport the day I arrived from Los Angeles. Then each night I read about Mr. Fogg’s great journey comparing it to mine. It took him 80 days winning him a bet. It ended up eventually taking me 73 days.
My first step was to call my friend’s recommended airplane broker and describe my basic plan and ask her to put together a realistic working price so I could decide whether it would really be feasible. I gave her my total list of possible countries: Fiji, New Zealand, Australia, Tasmania, Japan, Bali, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Malaysia, Singapore, India, Turkey and England.
A few days later she called with her “ballpark” estimate. It was a doable. She gave me 3 alternative plans. I chose the one that fit my preferred price range. It meant I could not go to all of the countries. One of the problems with prices is that to arrange the lowest fares you need to continue you trip in one single direction and not double back. That meant that certain countries would not fit. I told her to start checking on availability of tickets.
While she was doing her work I met Arne from Copenhagen at a creativity conference in St. Paul, Minnesota. During the conference one afternoon I overheard him mention that he was part of a creativity association in Denmark. I quickly asked him if he thought his association would be interested in having me speak at one of their monthly meetings while I was traveling around the world. I hadn’t planned initially on going to Denmark. But what the heck, why not.
So I called “my” air broker with my plan change.
Later one morning I got an email newsletter that included a request from a woman in Paris asking for American speakers to come speak for her speakers organization when they were in Paris. I wrote to her and said I would be in France that summer. I hadn’t planned on it initially. But what the heck.
So I called “my” air broker once again to change my plans.
Actually Kristin and I would talk often and 3 times that many times over the internet over the next couple months, actually about 6 months. We talked right up to a week before I left when the tickets she had arranged and rearranged over those long months finally arrived by Federal Express at my hotel in Buffalo, New York. That package stayed with me for the next 78 or 79 days, never out of my reach. It held all my country to country airplane tickets.
Back to my researching of the trip. Initially I went to our local public library and checked out several travel books for most of the countries I was then thinking about going to: Fuji, New Zealand, Australia, Malaysia, Singapore, Sri Lanka, India, China, Taiwan, Bali and Japan. After scanning through all of them I read a selected few cover to cover. When I found an especially good book I bought my own copies, especially the latest editions that I could not find in the library.
There were books about the history, culture and customs of the countries. There were tour books. There were hiking, bicycling and typical touring books. I found the Maverick Guide books. Then I found the Lonely Planet books: Tramping in New Zealand, . After those there were the Traveler Companion books, the Bed and Breakfast books for New Zealand and Australia and the Japan made easy type books. Then I found Bill Bryson’s newest travel book, In a Sunburned Country, about Australia.
My dining room table looked like a smorgasbord bookstore or library with its piles and more piles of books sorted out by country. I had my newly purchased world map and my Australia and New Zealand maps posted on my dining room wall so I could check out where what I was reading about was located. Eventually I purchased maps for each of the other countries so I could become more familiar with the countries to decide truly where and when I really wanted to go during my trip.
Then the more specific reading started, an hour to two hours each day, sections of one, two, sometimes three or four different books being read each day, a page to a chapter a day. There were the picture books. The exploring books. The basic touring books. The promotional tourist books.
Slowly I dwindled down the piles as I surveyed them deciding which were the most interesting and would help me the greatest amount. From those came my favorites. One titled Sydney that I read from cover to cover, that told the history of Sydney from penal colony to thriving contemporary Olympic City. Bryson’s book held my interest completely through it. He had taken the type of tour of Australia that I wanted to take ideally, visiting all 8 Australian states and territories. The only difference was he took almost a year. I was going to take 3 to 6 weeks.
I added backpack travel tips books: packing, hiking, train and bus travel. I had learned a lot about how to travel by train and bus when I traveled all around Europe in 1977 alone. But as I read about the countries I would travel to this time it was obvious that there were distinct differences in how you travel on trains and busses in Australia, New Zealand, the far east or in eastern and western Asia.
After I would finish my travel reading for the day I would go upstairs to read my morning supply of emails and to begin my work day, either preparing for my next speech or workshop or writing some correspondence to a new potential client. Often the long list of emails had messages related to my upcoming trip. One such day I got an email that would greatly change my approach to my traveling. My creativity friends: Andre de Zanger and Judith Morgan had written to remind and re-encourge me to consider joining SERVAS, an international travel organization committed to the development of friendship and freedom through the opening of members’ homes to other members (fellow citizens of their country or internationals) to stay at while they were traveling.
It took a few emails and phone calls to locate the right office and to request material about joining the organization. Once I got it I read everything and decided to try to join it. In the material was a list of local members. One of the names was a speaker I knew, who lives in Atlanta. I called him. He didn’t respond for a few days. It turned out he was out of the country traveling at the time. When he returned we talked at length about the organization and how it best works and how to become both a traveler and a host member.
After submitting my application I was required to be interviewed by a local member. I chose another member rather than my speaker friend and called her. We talked for awhile over the phone. She explained that I would need to complete the application and request two friends to write letters of recommendation for me. My time was running out.
After all the paperwork was completed we set up a meeting date, as soon as possible. When we met we had great fun getting to know each other while she asked me many questions about my life, my reasons for traveling and about my past traveling experiences.
What seems like an easy, straight forward process took weeks to complete. After completing all the application process, then I had to order the membership directories from the countries I was going to travel it and request that they be shipped immediately. It was some of the best spent time and money. I ended up joining both as a traveling and a host member. While I traveled in New Zealand and in Australia I stayed with many different SERVAS members in their homes. While staying in their homes I had the opportunity to blend into their daily lives while still having plenty of time to explore their city, town or village.
I was able to set up all my host arrangements via the internet. When I wrote to hosts in specific cities I was still unsure what my final plan would be. Because I was new to the organization and wasn’t sure might happen so I wrote to 4 or 5 hoping that one would agree to be my host. Usually 3 to 4 or all 5 of them would offer to host me. It became a tyranny of numbers. I needed 5 or 6 hosts during my time in New Zealand and 8 or 9 in Australia. I had to juggle them for weeks while my trip was coming together. The SERVAS members were fantastic.
When one or two had to cancel out because of a personal matter or because I had modified my schedule they usually recommended other members as potential hosts. One even had some sudden damage to her home and she made arrangements for a substitute host and ended up becoming my day host. She surprised me by showing up with a friend as our driver when I arrived in Hobart by plane from Melbourne. She and her friend were waiting for me in the airport as I came down the entry ramp with sign in hand and giant friendly smiles.
Back to the beginning of my actual trip.
My first hosts were in Christchurch, New Zealand my first destination. My understanding from my interviews with different members in the states and from reading all the literature the central office sent me was that my hosts would open their homes to me and provide perhaps one meal. Beyond that the organization highly recommends two night stays to give the travelers and hosts time to spend time together to get to know each other. If hosts offer the stay may be for 3 or 4 days but that is not to be expected or typical. For me it happened a couple times.
Phillipa, my first host was waiting for me when I arrived by plane from Auckland. I had left my home about 2:00 pm in Athens, Georgia on June 25th and arrived at 5:00 am on June 27th in Auckland, where I waited until my 10:00 am flight to Christchurch. I was pysched up. I seemed awake even though I had only slept for only a couple hours the whole length of the flight across the Pacific. My plans for the day had been set up long before over the internet. I would arrive and either go directly to my host’s house to meet them and drop off my things and then go off to town to meet with my New Zealand National Speakers Association contact for lunch to make final arrangements for my speech that evening at their monthly meeting. Then in the afternoon I would travel around the central part of Christchurch returning to my host’s home only to clean up before leaving for my planned presentation.
Instead of having to find a cab or bus, there was Phillipa patiently waiting for me with her wonderful friendly smile. I have arrived in many countries and towns in my life but nothing beats being greeted by a warm, smiling, happy face who is looking forward to you arriving. We drove directly to her and her husband Jonathon’s home talking all the way about ourselves, our countries, our mutual love for travel. When we arrived she showed me around their home and my room during my stay and offered to drive me back into town to meet Charles, my contact for the evening program.
Throughout my traveling in the United States, Canada and Europe I have discovered that people are friendly all around the world. What I discovered that morning is that New Zealanders are the masters and could teach even the best of the best how to be even more friendly.
Inspirations Behind Journeys
Since my early 20s I have been reading books looking for inspiration. Many of them have provided it. Sometimes the inspiration lasted for a long time: weeks to months. Sometimes it only lasted until I got up from the table, got into my car and drove to my job or career du jour.
The writing of Journeys (Life is a Creative Journey, Not a Guided Tour) has been inspired by many people: authors, friends and plus personal and professional experiences. The most recent set of experiences came from my 73 Day Wandering Journey around the world that I took in 2001.
Here are some opening quotes from books that have greatly inspired many aspects of my life journeys and traveling.
“For the hundredth time I am going to answer someone’s questions about why I’m walking across America. It wasn’t that I minded talking about it or answering questions, it was just that I really didn’t know why myself.”
Peter Jenkins
A Walk Across America
“I would be making a journey, an essentially lonely journey, into myself, in search of something that was meaningful to me alone.”
David Smith
Healing Journey: The Odyssey of an Uncommon Athlete
“I began my pilgrimage on the first of January in 1953. It is my spiritual birthday of sorts. It was a period in which I was merged with the whole. No longer was I a seed buried under the ground, but I felt as a flower reaching out effortlessly toward the sun. On that day I became a wanderer relying upon the goodness of others. It would be a pilgrim’s journey undertaken in the traditional manner: on foot and on faith. I left behind all claims to a name, personal history, possessions and affiliations.
It would be a glorious journey.”
Peace Pilgrim
Peace Pilgrim Her Life and Work in Her Own Words
“We had the world and the roads all to ourselves.”
Peter Jenkins
A Walk Across America
p. 14
“I’m happy to be riding back into this country.”
“Chris and I are traveling to Montana with some friends riding up ahead, and maybe headed father than that. Plans are deliberately indefinite, more to travel than to arrive anywhere. We are just vacationing.
We want to make good time, but for us now this is measured with emphasis on “good” rather than “time” and when you make that shift in emphasis the whole approach changes.”
“We saw it and yet we didn’t see it. Or we were trained not to see it.”
Robert Pirsig
Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance.
“The inspiration for brevity came to me at a gasoline station. I managed to fill an old car’s tank with super deluxe high-octane go-juice. My old hoopy couldn’t handle it and got the willies--kept sputtering out at intersections and belching going downhill. I understood. My mine and my spirit get like that from time to time. Too much high-content information, and I get the existential willies--keep sputterin out at intersections where life choices must be made and I either know too much or not enough. The examined life is no picnic.”
Robert Fulghum
All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten
“Would you tell me, please, which way I ought to go from here?”
“That depends a good deal on where you want to get to.”
“I don’t much care where…”
“Then it doesn’t matter which way you go.”
Cheshire-Puss and Alice
Alice in Wonderland
“Call me Ishmael. Some years ago--never mind how long precisely--having little or no money in my purse, and nothing particular to interest me on shore, I thought I would sail about a little and see the watery part of the world. It is a way I have of driving off the spleen, and regulating the circulation. Whenever I find myself growing grim about the mouth; whenever it is (a) damp, drizzly November in my soul; whenever I find myself involuntarily pausing before coffin warehouses, …. This is my substitute for pistol and ball.”
Ishmael
Moby Dick
Herman Melville
“I’d been poring over maps of the United States in Paterson for months, even reading books about the pioneers and savoring names like Platte and Cimarron and son on, and on the road-map was one long red line called Route 6 that led from the tip of Cape Cod clear to Ely, Nevada, and there dipped down to Los Angeles.”
Jack Kerouac
On the Road
“When I wrote the following pages, or rather the bulk of them, I lived alone, in the woods, a mile from any neighbor, in a house which I built myself, on the shore of Walden Pond, in Concord, Massachusetts, and earned my living by the labor of my hands only. I lived there two years and two months. At present I am a sojourner in civilized life again.”
Henry David Thoureau
Walden
I finally made my decision to travel to leave my daily life behind for a couple months in September, 2000. Over the next 8 to 9 months I spent a great deal of time planning. In 1976 I had made a similar decision about leaving my daily life for 3 months to travel around Europe. This time I was determined to do a better job of planning based on the many things I had learned over the 25 or so years since my first personal pilgrimage.
My first decision was to take off for two months and spend them in two countries I had never been to before: Australia and New Zealand. I began by spending many hours writing to people over the internet asking for tips, suggestions and advice. When I thought of a local friend who had traveled to Australia or New Zealand I would call them and set up time to talk to them about their experiences and ask for their recommendations. I did the same thing every time I discovered someone else who had been to or lived in Australia or New Zealand.
Everybody had suggestions and I was greatly thankful for all that so many gave me.
Not long after I had decided to travel down under, with a possible stop over in Fiji, two friends suggested I travel “all the way around” the world.
I laughed when I read their first email message.
I knew they had taken such a trip just a couple years before and it had taken them six months.
I only had two months. I didn’t want to jump from country to country. I had learned during my trip around Europe in 1977 that 3 days is a good amount of time added to travel and time change or jet lag adjustment time to comfortably experience a country or city. Otherwise you should stay 30 years. So the idea of traveling completely around the world in 2 months was out of the question.
Before their email helped to change my mind I had already gone to the local library and checked out several books about both New Zealand and Australia. I had methodically started going through the piles of books one by one each day for an hour or two. I had nine months to become prepared. I was going to really be ready this time when I left home.
Once the thought of traveling completely around the world had bounced around in my mind for a few days I called my friends and we talked for at least an hour about how they had done it and what they had learned that might help me. There were the names of airplane ticket brokers, names and phone numbers of airlines in different countries to check out, train passes, tips on how to get visas, what insurance policies to get, suggestions on how to pack and what I might carry.
I was becoming excited. I was going to travel completely around the world in one trip. I was going to fulfill a life-long dream of following in Phileas Fogg, Esq’s footsteps. I was going to go around the world in two months, 60 or so days, not the 80 days from Jules Verne’s famous novel. After being on my trip for a couple days in New Zealand, to be specific, I unsuccessfully searched for a few hours through several bookstores in the beautiful university town, Dunedin, in the southern part of the south island, and ended up ordering a copy of Around the World in Eight Days that I picked up when I returned to the Auckland airport a week later. It was waiting there right at the bookstore/newsstand I had remembered wandering around in when I had 5 hours to kill in Auckland’s airport the day I arrived from Los Angeles. Then each night I read about Mr. Fogg’s great journey comparing it to mine. It took him 80 days winning him a bet. It ended up eventually taking me 73 days.
My first step was to call my friend’s recommended airplane broker and describe my basic plan and ask her to put together a realistic working price so I could decide whether it would really be feasible. I gave her my total list of possible countries: Fiji, New Zealand, Australia, Tasmania, Japan, Bali, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Malaysia, Singapore, India, Turkey and England.
A few days later she called with her “ballpark” estimate. It was a doable. She gave me 3 alternative plans. I chose the one that fit my preferred price range. It meant I could not go to all of the countries. One of the problems with prices is that to arrange the lowest fares you need to continue you trip in one single direction and not double back. That meant that certain countries would not fit. I told her to start checking on availability of tickets.
While she was doing her work I met Arne from Copenhagen at a creativity conference in St. Paul, Minnesota. During the conference one afternoon I overheard him mention that he was part of a creativity association in Denmark. I quickly asked him if he thought his association would be interested in having me speak at one of their monthly meetings while I was traveling around the world. I hadn’t planned initially on going to Denmark. But what the heck, why not.
So I called “my” air broker with my plan change.
Later one morning I got an email newsletter that included a request from a woman in Paris asking for American speakers to come speak for her speakers organization when they were in Paris. I wrote to her and said I would be in France that summer. I hadn’t planned on it initially. But what the heck.
So I called “my” air broker once again to change my plans.
Actually Kristin and I would talk often and 3 times that many times over the internet over the next couple months, actually about 6 months. We talked right up to a week before I left when the tickets she had arranged and rearranged over those long months finally arrived by Federal Express at my hotel in Buffalo, New York. That package stayed with me for the next 78 or 79 days, never out of my reach. It held all my country to country airplane tickets.
Back to my researching of the trip. Initially I went to our local public library and checked out several travel books for most of the countries I was then thinking about going to: Fuji, New Zealand, Australia, Malaysia, Singapore, Sri Lanka, India, China, Taiwan, Bali and Japan. After scanning through all of them I read a selected few cover to cover. When I found an especially good book I bought my own copies, especially the latest editions that I could not find in the library.
There were books about the history, culture and customs of the countries. There were tour books. There were hiking, bicycling and typical touring books. I found the Maverick Guide books. Then I found the Lonely Planet books: Tramping in New Zealand, . After those there were the Traveler Companion books, the Bed and Breakfast books for New Zealand and Australia and the Japan made easy type books. Then I found Bill Bryson’s newest travel book, In a Sunburned Country, about Australia.
My dining room table looked like a smorgasbord bookstore or library with its piles and more piles of books sorted out by country. I had my newly purchased world map and my Australia and New Zealand maps posted on my dining room wall so I could check out where what I was reading about was located. Eventually I purchased maps for each of the other countries so I could become more familiar with the countries to decide truly where and when I really wanted to go during my trip.
Then the more specific reading started, an hour to two hours each day, sections of one, two, sometimes three or four different books being read each day, a page to a chapter a day. There were the picture books. The exploring books. The basic touring books. The promotional tourist books.
Slowly I dwindled down the piles as I surveyed them deciding which were the most interesting and would help me the greatest amount. From those came my favorites. One titled Sydney that I read from cover to cover, that told the history of Sydney from penal colony to thriving contemporary Olympic City. Bryson’s book held my interest completely through it. He had taken the type of tour of Australia that I wanted to take ideally, visiting all 8 Australian states and territories. The only difference was he took almost a year. I was going to take 3 to 6 weeks.
I added backpack travel tips books: packing, hiking, train and bus travel. I had learned a lot about how to travel by train and bus when I traveled all around Europe in 1977 alone. But as I read about the countries I would travel to this time it was obvious that there were distinct differences in how you travel on trains and busses in Australia, New Zealand, the far east or in eastern and western Asia.
After I would finish my travel reading for the day I would go upstairs to read my morning supply of emails and to begin my work day, either preparing for my next speech or workshop or writing some correspondence to a new potential client. Often the long list of emails had messages related to my upcoming trip. One such day I got an email that would greatly change my approach to my traveling. My creativity friends: Andre de Zanger and Judith Morgan had written to remind and re-encourge me to consider joining SERVAS, an international travel organization committed to the development of friendship and freedom through the opening of members’ homes to other members (fellow citizens of their country or internationals) to stay at while they were traveling.
It took a few emails and phone calls to locate the right office and to request material about joining the organization. Once I got it I read everything and decided to try to join it. In the material was a list of local members. One of the names was a speaker I knew, who lives in Atlanta. I called him. He didn’t respond for a few days. It turned out he was out of the country traveling at the time. When he returned we talked at length about the organization and how it best works and how to become both a traveler and a host member.
After submitting my application I was required to be interviewed by a local member. I chose another member rather than my speaker friend and called her. We talked for awhile over the phone. She explained that I would need to complete the application and request two friends to write letters of recommendation for me. My time was running out.
After all the paperwork was completed we set up a meeting date, as soon as possible. When we met we had great fun getting to know each other while she asked me many questions about my life, my reasons for traveling and about my past traveling experiences.
What seems like an easy, straight forward process took weeks to complete. After completing all the application process, then I had to order the membership directories from the countries I was going to travel it and request that they be shipped immediately. It was some of the best spent time and money. I ended up joining both as a traveling and a host member. While I traveled in New Zealand and in Australia I stayed with many different SERVAS members in their homes. While staying in their homes I had the opportunity to blend into their daily lives while still having plenty of time to explore their city, town or village.
I was able to set up all my host arrangements via the internet. When I wrote to hosts in specific cities I was still unsure what my final plan would be. Because I was new to the organization and wasn’t sure might happen so I wrote to 4 or 5 hoping that one would agree to be my host. Usually 3 to 4 or all 5 of them would offer to host me. It became a tyranny of numbers. I needed 5 or 6 hosts during my time in New Zealand and 8 or 9 in Australia. I had to juggle them for weeks while my trip was coming together. The SERVAS members were fantastic.
When one or two had to cancel out because of a personal matter or because I had modified my schedule they usually recommended other members as potential hosts. One even had some sudden damage to her home and she made arrangements for a substitute host and ended up becoming my day host. She surprised me by showing up with a friend as our driver when I arrived in Hobart by plane from Melbourne. She and her friend were waiting for me in the airport as I came down the entry ramp with sign in hand and giant friendly smiles.
Back to the beginning of my actual trip.
My first hosts were in Christchurch, New Zealand my first destination. My understanding from my interviews with different members in the states and from reading all the literature the central office sent me was that my hosts would open their homes to me and provide perhaps one meal. Beyond that the organization highly recommends two night stays to give the travelers and hosts time to spend time together to get to know each other. If hosts offer the stay may be for 3 or 4 days but that is not to be expected or typical. For me it happened a couple times.
Phillipa, my first host was waiting for me when I arrived by plane from Auckland. I had left my home about 2:00 pm in Athens, Georgia on June 25th and arrived at 5:00 am on June 27th in Auckland, where I waited until my 10:00 am flight to Christchurch. I was pysched up. I seemed awake even though I had only slept for only a couple hours the whole length of the flight across the Pacific. My plans for the day had been set up long before over the internet. I would arrive and either go directly to my host’s house to meet them and drop off my things and then go off to town to meet with my New Zealand National Speakers Association contact for lunch to make final arrangements for my speech that evening at their monthly meeting. Then in the afternoon I would travel around the central part of Christchurch returning to my host’s home only to clean up before leaving for my planned presentation.
Instead of having to find a cab or bus, there was Phillipa patiently waiting for me with her wonderful friendly smile. I have arrived in many countries and towns in my life but nothing beats being greeted by a warm, smiling, happy face who is looking forward to you arriving. We drove directly to her and her husband Jonathon’s home talking all the way about ourselves, our countries, our mutual love for travel. When we arrived she showed me around their home and my room during my stay and offered to drive me back into town to meet Charles, my contact for the evening program.
Throughout my traveling in the United States, Canada and Europe I have discovered that people are friendly all around the world. What I discovered that morning is that New Zealanders are the masters and could teach even the best of the best how to be even more friendly.
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