HUMANITY HIKER

I once dreamed of being successful enough to support my backpacking addiction.  One does not have to generate a lot of income to pursue long-distance backpacking.  After all, you don’t spend much as a backpacker.  Yet I needed to better than what I was doing as a struggling writer and musician.

This journey began when a flash of inspiration turned the equation around for me.  Why not backpack as a means of becoming “successful.”  Once again, success in monetary terms can be quite modest when a couple mainly wants to backpack.  I wrote and sang about humanitarian themes.  Why not hike for humanitarian causes as well and build my audience in the process?

My strategy involved partnering with humanitarian organizations to provide them a service as Cindy and I walked across the country.  The original plan was to facilitate walk-a-thons for 40 communities.  This morphed into the Believe in Humanity “conversation” I’ll be engaging audiences in, through collaboration with Lions Clubs.  I’m in contact with 30, but there is still time to nurture some more.  All in all, the humanitarian partnership has worked out.

I sought business sponsorships, with the biggest expense being the acquisition and maintenance of a support vehicle.  I fell short with this one.  I have equipment sponsors but no financial ones.  Yet we made out OK in this area as well.  We ended up with a resourceful support person we know and like well who was willing to use her vehicle.  In turn this is an opportunity for her to explore the country with traveling expenses covered by us.  Not the original vision of Ford becoming a major financial sponsor, but all-in-all we will be fine.

But where did the money to cover expenses come from, if not a financial sponsor?  I’m struggling and Cindy has not worked since December.  The stress of work was becoming too much and doctors recommended she should get away from health care (she’s a visiting nurse).  In truth, a down economy (at least one’s own down economy) is the perfect time to do something like this.  You’re not making much so why not embark on something where you won’t spend much.

I cashed in a couple of retirement accounts to cover most expenses.  Our daughter Charissa is living in our house and charging a couple of her friends some very modest rent to cover home mortgage and insurance costs.  Hopefully we will sell some music CDs and T-shirts along the way that will help out as well.

So now I’m at a point where I’ve crossed almost all the Ts and dotted almost all the Is before leaving tomorrow for the great unknown.  Karl Mattson, the person who does our music videos, has graciously agreed to make a round trip to New Jersey tomorrow to pick up our CDs.  Outside of that I’m down to just ten items on my ever evolving list that need to be addressed on our last day home.  That’s practically a vacation day!

Taking a look back, that Rolling Stones tune comes to mind, as it so often does, “You can’t always get what you want, but if you try sometime you just might find you get what you need.”