blog entry

Something BIG

Giulietta

Have you read “A Walk In The Woods” by Bill Bryson? He attempts to hike the entire 2100-mile Appalachian Trail with his out of shape buddy Katz. It’s hilarious, insightful and motivating. One of my top ten “how-to” guides for living dangerously.

That’s the good news. The bad news, which is also good news if you’ve read and enjoyed The Bad Girl’s Guide To The Open Road, is that Bryson’s adventure ruined me for taking an ordinary vacation ever again. I decided to walk, run, bike, hike, swim, kayak, laugh, paint, kazoo, or sing across something. Not any ol’ something, something geographically BIG and soul bending and unforgettable and transformative. Something that would make it impossible for me to return and live, even for a moment, what Thoreau calls, “A life of quiet desperation.”

First, I thought, “O.K., I’ll kayak down the Amazon.” I read somewhere that the piranhas have disappeared from most stretches.  But because I got my husband Jimmy all hyped up about coming with me and he couldn’t leave work for that long I needed to find something BIG, yet condensable into the pitifully short two-week American vacation.

I settled on biking crossing Italy, my ancestral homeland and birthplace of the original Giulietta. At first I tried to organize a trip for seven people who were definitely “in,” buying books about biking across Italy, going to travel web sites, studying maps. The “in” quickly morphed into a “maybe” and then an “if I’m free then I’ll come along,” except for Jimmy and my trusty adventuress friend Mary. Feeling like my “something BIG” might turn into a BIG pain in the derriere, I decided to let someone else take the financial heat if people chose not to show up.

Am hightailing it across the motherland this summer with Massachusetts-based Ciclismo Classico. Yeah, the price falls into the financially dangerous category, but I could easily spend that same amount on a 58-inch high-end, hi-def flat screen TV and spend two weeks watching someone else bike across Italy.

Now I have to bike like a mad woman for the next several months. I’ll be facing hills a lot bigger than the two I peddle up and down decked out in tevas and a tank when I cycle four miles round-trip to buy a croissant.

But enough about me and my Bill Bryson-induced doing “something BIG.”

Do any of you readers out there -- where I can’t see you -- want to do “something BIG”?

I’d love to hear what it is!

Muse thx

Giulietta