Leaving Ourselves Behind

Travel has always been our consuming passion and once we retired, we wanted to travel more and for longer periods of time, but the responsibilities of home-ownership was a real issue. We didn’t want to have to worry about leaving the house empty for months at a time or impose on our neighbours to keep an eye on things.

Inspiration came from serendipitous encounters with two couples we met in Mexico. Our new friends from British Columbia were totally home-free and opted for short-term rentals between travels. The other couple spent half the year at their idyllic Ontario cottage and half the year travelling.

Six months later, in 2016, we sold our home on Gabriola Island and most of our belongings.

We were on our way – leaving ourselves behind. The concept was simple. We wanted to take advantage of our freedom to travel, meet new people, challenge ourselves with uncomfortable experiences and put ourselves in front of “what we don’t know.” Out with the old, unworkable beliefs, fears and self-inflicted obstacles. See as much of the world as possible and happily accept the sometimes bumpy path it requires to do that.

The home-free experiment worked out so much better than we could have imagined. We learned to turn on a dime and live with a perpetual “Plan B” in our back pockets. We learned how to travel with a carry-on bag and realized that even that was too much. We needed very little to be blissfully happy and fully engaged. 

We decided that we would begin with destinations that required a little more effort, good health and stamina. A trip to India put that theory to the test but made us hungry for more. South America, Tanzania, Sri Lanka, Madagascar are all on our list.

About a year ago, we began to miss having a place to land. We still wanted to travel as extensively, but we were beginning to long for our own place.So we made a compromise. We bought a condo In Nanaimo on Vancouver Island; close to friends and family, but we can turn the key and go.

Now,  Covid-19 has challenged our travel plans.  Time to consider a plan B.  We are still leaving ourselves behind, still applying the road lessons from the road to our life at home and the trips.  

Please keep alert for our posts as we travel.

Thanks so much for being our travel buddies – we really enjoy your company.

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