An Adventure?

An adventure is an exciting or unusual experience; it may also be a bold, usually risky undertaking, with an uncertain outcome.^[1] Adventures may be activities with some potential for physical danger such as skydiving, mountain climbing or participating in extreme sports. The term also broadly refers to any enterprise that is potentially fraught with physical, financial or psychological risk, such as a business venture, a love affair, or other major life undertakings.

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Adventure - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adventure‎

An adventure is an exciting or unusual experience; it may also be a bold, usually risky undertaking, with an uncertain outcome. Adventures may be activities with ...

‎Adventure (disambiguation) - ‎Adventure travel - ‎Adventure fiction - ‎Adventure racing

Another apt definition of Adventure is: A difficult experience well dealt with. And an experience you might tell stories about later.

This is that kind of experience that my recent trip to Portland became. I had been having a difficult time with both my wife and my 17 year old daughter. We just live in two different worlds lately. I find some distress in that but also there is not need to break up either. It's just that when interests go in completely different directions life becomes somewhat difficult. But, family is family especially after about 20 years together so far.

I can remember when my present wife looked at me and said, "Does that mean we are breaking up?" She had never been married before and I said, "What are you talking about? We are married with a baby daughter not playing the dating or living together game anymore. The People who break up after an argument like we just had when they have kids they are raising are just fools and nothing else." She seemed very relieved when I said this because she had never been married before even though she was about 40 or 41 at the time. However, I had been married twice before and every year since I was 26 except about 2 years when I was 29 to 31 because I remarried at age 32. So, I knew what it takes to raise a child having already raised 3 before my present marriage.

So, the week before I was going to Portland trailering a Uhaul trailer full of Heirloom furniture for their new apartment I was again having difficulty with my wife because her foot has been in constant pain now for about 6 months and she had decided to go off hormone treatment because she was 58. This had changed her personality a lot and I saw that even though it made her less of a type A overachiever, it still was going to cause problems to our relationship because she was becoming emotionally at least a completely different person than I had ever met before. When big dynamics in a relationship change there is always a lot of adjustment for everyone involved. Then in top of that my daughter is preparing to go away to college next fall which neither my wife or I am looking forward to at all because we like being with our kids even when they are 17 years old and difficult to deal with as teenagers. Our daughter is a very good student at her prep school but gives me a hard time and often my wife too. But then again that is just a part of being a teenager I guess. But, like I said she is a very good student too.

I had had the best two days with my wife in a long time after having a day so bad I thought I was going to have to move out and get my own place for awhile when my older daughter's boyfriend flew down from Portland to rent the trailer we were going to haul up there to their new place.

So, I didn't want to leave for this as my wife and I were finally getting along great because I had no idea what I was going to return to after being away 10 days on this trip. But, my daughter's boyfriend was on a schedule because he could only take so man specific days off from work for this trip after flying south.

So, off we went after packing the Uhaul well with everything. We even gave him our leather covered Lazy Boy stuff chair that I bought a few years ago because they would use it more than we do. Besides, we have so much antique furniture now from her father's and grandfather's estate that I feel like I'm living in an antique store rather than in my own home. When you don't feel at home in your own home something is wrong. However, it is a way for my wife to deal with the permanent loss of her parents and grandparents. So, it is a mental concession that I made consciously that I cannot emotionally deal with now. IF you are a grownup you know exactly how I feel. Because the essence of being a grownup in a family is compromise. Without it no family long exists.

So, as we drove up to Mt. Shasta on the first leg of our journey I realized just how hard this past year had been on my daughter's boyfriend. He wasn't as happy go lucky because of having to buckle down to a new career. So, even though he was receiving accolades from wealthy people all over the country I could see the weight of the world upon him in this career and in taking care of my daughter who is a model. Though they both take care of each other I think you know what I mean.

After a night at a good hotel we went to visit an old friend and his thought was: "Why don't we take your 4 wheel drive to a really remote place?"

This sounded like fun to me even though sometimes it takes me awhile to adjust to higher altitudes because I now have been living at sea level for at least 20 years now. So, sometimes I have to be careful when I first go to 3000 feet or above. Since even my hotel is at 3500 feet in altitude I was a little concerned at my health. However, this friend and I used to climb mountains and even rock climbing with ropes and pitons when I was in my 20s so the old "Let's have an adventure started to come out in me. So, we disconnected our Uhaul trailer and packed up my 4wheel drive truck with inflatable Kayaks for everyone from my friends' house and set off up to about 6000 feet on a 4 wheel drive low range journey at 1/2 mile per hour over some of the roughest terrain my truck has ever been on before. At one point over a dry stream bed the entire road consisted of rocks 1 foot to 2 foot high. So, one or more of us helped guide me at 1/2 mile an hour or less over these big rocks in 4wd low range in 1st gear. Finally we reached the lake I hadn't been to in someone's 4 wheel drive since the early 1980s. It is an idyllic natural alpine lake and of course because of it's remoteness we were the only one's there. It was probably the last day this summer that we could swim in and kayak and most of the party there decided to get out of their kayaks and skinny dip as well because there was no one there to bother them about this. Also, one of our party winters in Maui and gives snorkel guided tours for tourists there during the Winters and Spring during High Season so he was busy going down and blowing dolphin and whale bubble rings which I had never seen before in person. They are pretty neat to watch come up and break the surface of the pristine waters of a high alpine pristine mountain lake. Then my daughter's boyfriend decided to jump about 30 feet off a cliff. My Maui friend said is this okay? and I said, "He's 28 and his own man." And my friend said, "There's a shelf he is really going to have to run fast off that cliff to miss it." and I nodded.

Luckily, my Maui friend took a movie of my daughter's boyfriend jumping off a cliff from about 30 to 40 feet up. By running fast enough he missed the underwater shelf that would have crippled or killed him had he jumped wrong. So, I have a movie of him jumping. He landed however, with his arms out to the side for stability falling feet first and got bad stinging welts on one of his arms that likely have healed up by now I hope.

The next day we started driving north through the rain up to Portland and we made it in one day. Then we unloaded all the furniture into my daughter's and her boyfriends new home.  Though the adventure goes on that's all the time I have today.