Modern Good Reads discussion

Yes, I do! My husband's runway stopped in August 2009. He would have loved to travel if finances allowed. Four and a half years later, I'm traveling for both of us. A 12-day trip to Europe is planned for this September. California for a weekend seminar on Dream Building at the end of this month. We MUST live our lives with courage NOW!! Love this post.

p.s. I'm a small town girl in the Midwest - at age 58, it takes a certain amount of courage to do this. :)

I am 47 this year and hopefully my runway has a few more years left in it, but as a Brit can I ask something that has always puzzled me? It seems to me that the majority of ordinary Americans do not seem to travel abroad much. Is this because your country is so vast that you can experience lots of different things without having to step outside of your nations borders, or is it that Americans do not like to travel much? I myself did not travel abroad until I was 16 but since then have been to several countries (including USA four times) and my husband has been abroad at least once a year (many more times usually) since the age of 16. In fact most years we go abroad somewhere on our family holiday, although to be fair coming from England we like to try and go to sunnier climes for our holidays. I would not consider ourselves to be well off by any standards it is just something we like to do and we save hard for our annual family holiday abroad every year. I do hope my question offends anyone I am just curious that is all?

I think a couple of factors weigh in here. Because our country is so big, it can be cost prohibitive to go abroad. Unlike Europe, we are not close to many countries - Canada and Mexico are obviously close and many Americans vacation in Mexico regularly. Time can be a factor, too. Most middle class Americans are limited by a 40-hour work week with only 2 weeks of time off per year. For me, the trip I have planned is going to cost around $5000 U.S. dollars plus spendig money. It would be difficult for families to do that very often. I'll be over there in London, Paris and Rome for 12 days. I'm making the most of it just in case it's my only opportunity. I'd love to explore Europe once a year - my bucket list!

That's why I finally wrote my book. I didn't want to get to the end of the runway and regret not doing it. :)

What a great idea.. a personal bucketlist of travel. This is truly two things, a small world and it is reachable in a day. I have seen most of it and now I go visiting places of long time ago. I see the changes and I see the permanence of history. I saw Vietnam in 69 and see how it has evolved by 2012. North Africa was the playground of sheiks now it is the graveyard of Berbers. Where Jews were 200,000 strong in Algeria now only a handful is left. We enjoyed the Parisian beauty of Beirut in the 70's, now we wear flak-jackets in the internet café. And still I would not want to miss it. It is the experience, the knowledge of changes, that has me seek out the different places. Not many have the opportunity to travel to the exotic spots of the world for holidays. Think about one possibility, if you are retired go and volunteer, you can see the world and do good, you can learn a way of life that is unknown to most. I have volunteered in the arctic and in Syria and when it was hard to do it also was exhilarating in the knowledge I am one of the few that saw it.

My late wife and I decided that, when the kids were grown and I retired, that we would visit all 50 of the United States by car. We established an absolute minimum of 3 days to count as a visit to any one state; though we often stayed longer.

We managed to visit 39 states before my wife died and I have visited 4 more since; only 7 more to go!

I have decided that it would probably be best to fly rather than drive to Hawaii.