The "Gap Year" Idea is Born

One of the questions that arose in my mind on the very first day I was back in my house...journey over, no job or "regular life" to go back to...was this -

 

"What if I consider my bike journey the start of a fabulous year vs. just a singular event that happened and is now done?"

 



That immediately spawned this thought -

 

"Why don't I call 2017 my 'Gap Year' and do the kinds of things that people do in their 'Gap Year'?"

 

For those of you unfamiliar with the term "Gap Year" here is what Wikipedia says about it:

 

In the professional or career world, a gap year is a year before going to college or university and after finishing high school or taking a year off before going into graduate school after completing a bachelor as an undergraduate. It is also known as a sabbatical year. During this time students may engage in advanced academic courses, extra-academic courses and non-academic courses, such as yearlong pre-college math courses, language studies, learning a trade, art studies, volunteer work, travel, internships, sports and more. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gap_year

 

That sounded like a revelation! I could take my one adventure, add to it and...perhaps...have enough for a book. My initial thought was to call my book "Living Life Backwards: My Gap Year at 54"

 

And the very first adventure I knew I wanted to try and add to 2017 was a thru-hike of the Appalachian Trail. It had crossed my mind during my journey and the desire to accomplish the feat was fresh in my mind. I'd always wanted to hike the Northbound route (NOBO on the AT) and I knew that the general starting time was early March to early April...right around the corner. I also knew it usually took most folks about 6-7 months to complete, so I would be done around early October.

 

Might one of these be mine this year?

 

But then another thought came to me -

 

"What if I completed some other Gap Year activity AFTER my AT thru-hike? And, to forge a wonderfully symbolic end to my Gap Year, what if I came back home on the exact day...the day after Christmas...that I had left for San Diego?"

 

Perfect idea! But what to do? In looking back over what a Gap Year usually entails, the words "volunteer work" sprung out at me. Then, like a thunderbolt hitting me, I suddenly knew my Gap Year could be a trifecta of adventures:

 

Bike, Hike & Help

 

With that terrific thought in mind, I began to consider what kind of volunteer opportunity I might be able to pursue for a few months at the end of this year. After some initial research I quickly learned that while there were lots of volunteer opportunities out there, most of them charged you a pretty hefty "management" fee in order to participate on top of the travel expenses that you have to cover yourself. That didn't really sound all that appealing so I became more interested in an organization called Worldwide Opportunities for Organic Farming, or WWOOF.

 

The idea of WWOOF is simple, and is much like Warmshowers.org: it simply matches up volunteers with potential host farmers. From there the volunteer works directly with the farmer to determine how long they'll be volunteering. The farmer provides room, board and whatever training would be required and the volunteer provides labor and covers their own travel costs. I was particularly interested in this opportunity: Herding Sheep in Mongolia

 

Ever since I read the novel "Golden Hawks of Ghengis Khan" as a boy, I've wanted to visit Mongolia

But to do this I had to be able to not earn any real income for a solid year. How was I going to make THAT happen??