Below is a picture of Frank Voellm. I like to think of myself as an adventure motorcyclist, admittedly I am not as much of an adventurer as others. I am a member of the forum ADVRider.com. They have a sticky post where you can sign up if you are willing to have people stay at your house if they are adventure motorcycling through your area. For some reason I can't get the notifications to work properly and for whatever reason, serendipity had me check the site in March of 2013. There was a message from Frank that he was in year 3 of an around the world motorcycle trip. He is from Germany and his life choices allow him to do a lot of traveling. He spent four days at my house and was a wonderful guest. The only issue was that he has so many stories it was hard to stay up listening to them since I had to go to work the next day.

Frank traveled to the Americas by freighter to Argentina if I remember right. In any case his stay at my house caused me to do some re-evaluating of my life. He was traveling with just what he needed and was happy. I began to see all of my 'stuff' as anchors preventing me from doing what wanted. Probably like many people I was not quite sure what I wanted.

In any case around this time I started looking for a new job. I am one of those people that get itchy around the 5 year point. I really believe in Malcolm Gladwell's 10,000 hour hypothesis. 5 years in a job is 10,000 hours and by that point you should be pretty good at it. In 2013 I was getting close to the 5 year point and was ready for a change. I had been at that company since 2005 and had been the longest period of time with the same name on my paychecks.

Back to Frank, his stories perhaps brought out my wanderlust. I had the thought that I would like to move to a job that required traveling. Probably when I got out of the Navy my intention was to settle down and start a family. I probably was looking for love in the wrong places or perhaps I am too flawed. Having a family never came to be. I only spent 4 days with Frank. When he left it was a little bittersweet. I think I remember thinking I want to go with you.





Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Tribute

Image
This past bike week I found out an old friend passed away back in 2015. In the late 1990's and early 2000's there was a motorcycle group called Riders Club of Central Florida, RCCF. Bob Tucker was the elder statesmen of the group and extremely well respected. He really won the game of life having a military pension as well as one from the post office. Bob and his wife Helen travelled the country going from bike week to bike week. At the time there was a bike night on 17-92 every Thursday and often Bob would pull in from the other side of the country. 'When did you get back?' 'Just now.' 'Oh earlier today?' 'No, literally just now, back from California.' Bob was a legend in the Orlando area. he had a Yamaha Royal Star that he put over 150,000 miles on. Yamaha made him a goodwill ambassador and gave him the use of a Yamaha Venture for a year. That bike would eventually travel 253,000 miles. After the year was up Yamaha gave him a very good dea...
Read more

Airports, Cape Town, and Table Mountain

I suppose I am going to jump around in these stories. I originally meant this post to be about when I first set foot in South Africa. My Facebook memories feed made me change my mind. I have always been an airplane buff. I've never had much of a desire to fly them myself, but enjoy being in the back of big ones. Not really a fan of little planes as I tend to get sick in them. Most of the times I had the compunction to fly in a small one I have regretted it almost as soon as the wheels have left the ground. I am at the Indianapolis Airport preparing to fly home today after two weeks of work away from home. Interestingly in 2014 on this day I was in airports too. I was returning from a four day trip to Cape Town. That was an amazing trip. We went to Table Mountain, The Cape of Good Hope, and saw Robben Island, the prison where Mandela was held. When I was planning the trip, I was unable to get affordable flights from JoBurg. We ended up flying out of Lansaria airport which is o...
Read more

I don't Know Anything About Rugby

Image
After we went to the Lion Park outside Johannesburg, we went to a rugby game. One of the local teams is the Blue Bulls. I don't remember who they were playing. Rugby is a very popular game in South Africa. Rugby played a role in the end of apartheid. Here is an excerpt from a news article that quotes the South African national team captain François Pienaar about the events in 1995: "During those six weeks what happened in this country was incredible," Pienaar said. "I'm still gobsmacked when I think back to the profound change that happened. We started obviously with a great leader with a fantastic vision who realised that sport is important for the Afrikaner white community and to earn their respect and trust. "But on the other side I have such a respect for what he had to go through in the African National Congress because the springbok was a symbol of apartheid. The majority of South Africans never supported the Springboks, so to ask them to suppo...
Read more