#100. It's the last badass adventure.
I had started out thinking I would do 50 adventures, but it was so fun I ended up doing double the adventures that I originally signed myself up for.
Now it is time to say goodby to an amazing project that has – literally – changed my life.
Get ready for a long post, but I’ve got so much to say.
This project started a bit over two years ago, after having just moved to Florida. I was looking to reclaim myself – figuring out who I was and more importantly, what I wanted to be for the second half of my life.
I randomly signed up for a fishing lesson on a whim and became friends with my instructor Bo. One night, we were talking on the phone about random stuff, including things that we do that get in our own way. I said that confidence has always been a struggle for me and keeps me from doing what I want.
He said something so meaningful that it has stayed with me and actually was the thing that started me on this project. He said, “Well, you might not have confidence, but you sure as hell have a lot of courage”.
That one word – courage – made me realize that while I might not be confident in everything I do, I can certainly have the courage to not let life pass me by without me having a chance to experience it differently.
Emily was staying with me at the time, and we talked about this concept – if you had all the courage in the world, what would you do?
My answer? “I don’t want to keep wondering what things are all about. I want to actually experience them. Even if it makes me scared. I want to live deeply and I am courageous Em. Look what I did. I got my dream job and moved to freaking Florida all on my own. I do have courage.”.
And she said, “Yeah mana…You hecka do!! I’ve always known that about you. You can do it!”
And that’s how 50 Badass Adventures was started.
But I had to find a way to keep me on target and not let me wimp out along the way -- which was a risk that was not only possible but extremely likely. So to hold myself accountable, I realized that by posting my progress on social media, it would help me stay true to my word. If I started this thing, and opened it up to others to follow along, my competitive nature would keep me going.
I thought 50 adventures sounded right. I had about 2 months before my 50th birthday so I was giving myself 14 months to do 50 adventures. Sounded ambitious…but possible. My rules – if it scared me, I needed to do it. If someone offered to do an adventure with me, whatever it was, I needed to do it. If it was something I always wondered what it was about, I needed to do it.
I started by asking all of you for ideas of badass adventures. And friends, you did NOT disappoint! Your responses fired me up even more and solidly committed me to this project. And the best part were the responses of all of you who wanted to join me for an adventure.
My heart warmed by the support, I decided to start by initiating my #1 Badass Adventure – “Building a Website”. Having this website / blog was my way of keeping track of everything (thank goodness for that because man…I needed this to help me remember all the details.) But what it also did was start me with one of the most courageous things I did in this project – publicly announce that I would be doing this.
I don’t like being in the spotlight and I don’t like putting myself in the position where people might be judging me. I do not like having photos taken of myself and certainly was not comfortable with putting so many pictures of myself out there for public viewing. And I don’t like making mistakes, and was very concerned about being in a position where people could see all my Imperfections in such a public way.
Launching the website and posting my adventures on Facebook were truly a terrifying but necessary part of the project for me.
From there, the adventures just started coming. Emily launched me by doing the first few adventures with me and cautiously wrote about them. Your positive response encouraged me to keep going and to stretch myself further.
So I did what was really unlike me – I joined MeetUp Social groups to make new friends wanting to adventure. And boy – what a great experience that was! That’s how I met my freaking amazing badass gang. We’ve been adventuring together for two years and have done probably 50 adventures together. I am so grateful for all of you – Ang, Ellen, Cindy, Katie, Susan, and Jenn. We have had ups and downs—laughter and tears. Some adventures were great and some sucked. We have petted llamas, crashed weddings, roller skated in 80s clothing with walkers, played Cards Against Humanity with Nuns, and belly laughed more times than I can count. I will ALWAYS be grateful that we came together. You are no longer friends. You are sisters.
I got braver and did social experiments that got me waaaaay out of my comfort zone. I invited strangers for dinner, went to dinner all alone with no book or phone to hide behind, made friends with random people that I would never see again but will remember forever.
I reconnected with long lost friends and my badass circle opened up really wide. I have absolutely loved getting these amazing people back in my life. Kristin, Erin, Julie, Shay, Annette, Becky, Alice, Allison, Kimmy, Margot, Annie, Kirsten, Lizzie – I loved you in the past and I love you in the present.
I discovered the true joy of not only having a job that I adore, but working with amazing people who are willing to adventure with me. This group of badass work friends have made my life so full – Tracy, Heather, Dana, Nancy, Joanne M, Cathy, Joanne K, the whole gang that did the Mud Run, Annie, and Kari.
I had crazy animal adventures and found the true love of nature and God’s playground with all the experiences with lemurs, sloths, anteaters, llamas, clams, pigs, yoga goats, Marshmallow, horses, octopi, frogs, fainting goats, a battered rooster, my foster chickens, and bees.
And I got to adventure with my family.
Julie and Wiki were favorite adventure buddies -and I am so glad that you both are part of our family. I love you both.
Steve, we had some hecka adventures! Thank you so much for playing along and being so supportive, even if you weren’t willing to eat a chicken foot. Our shared adventures are definitely on my “favorites leaderboard”! I have the best brother in the world, and mom and dad are so lucky to have you as their second favorite child.
Mom and Dad – you gave me my spirit of adventure (both hereditarily and environmentally) and I have loved every single adventure we did together. Even better were the times we planned our adventures and sat around the dining room table talking about what we might do next. You both are the Original Badassess™ and I am so very lucky to have you as my parents.
And Emily and Oliver – you guys were my biggest cheerleaders, always up for adventure, and the absolute best kids a mama could ever hope for. I am busting with pride of how much you both embrace life and live deeply – your lives are true badass adventures and I couldn’t be more proud of you. I love you both more than anything.
Speaking of Emily, don’t you think it’s fitting that I did my #100 Badass Adventure with her, considering she launched this project with me way back in the beginning?
So that’s what we did. Emily flew in for the weekend of my 52nd birthday so we could do one last Badass Adventure together.
And Badass Adventure we did!
We did a ton of mini adventures in 48 hours.
We did two escape rooms (and escaped both rooms before the time ran out despite the guide having such a thick but fake West Virginian accent that we couldn’t understand her and despite the fact I am completely inept with basic tech like how to turn on a solar powered calculator).
We got our tarot cards read. Guess what? My reader says that I “have looked for new beginning and look at like in a different way now. The future will be slower-paced but no less meaningful and it will be filled with love.” Pretty great, right? She also told me that I need to buy a plant. She’s not wrong, I guess..
We went to our beloved The Floribbean restaurant – first place we ever got takeout from, right on Central Ave and started the love of St. Pete gastro-experiences. And we went to a new place: The Cereal Bar.
We brought hundreds of clothes into one dressing room so we could have a try-on party. And actually bought some.
We played our favorite Unstable Unicorns (and I whipped her ass in 4 straight games. Bite it, Em!).
We chilled on opposite ends of the couch binge watching TV, doing jigsaw puzzles, and eating gummies (the candy kind, y’all.)
We snuck into Mom and Dad’s house when they were out and filled their house with googly eyes. They will be finding them for years to come.
We bought $20 worth of lottery scratch off tickets and spent two days scratching and winning small amounts only to use our winnings to buys more scratch off tickets – selecting who can be the scratcher by fierce games of Rock-Paper-Scissors.
And, we did an epic adventure that was the highlight of the weekend.
We did Lemur Yoga with a Sloth and Anteater Experience.
Oh.
Em.
Gee.
This experience is one example of why Badass changed my life. Before Badass, I would have seen an event like this and would have wistfully wished to go but wouldn’t have gotten up my courage to sign up, let alone actually go.
But now – anytime I see cool stuff like this, the questions isn’t “if” I’ll go, but “when” and “with who”. The Badass Gang might be pissed I did this adventure without them – and I am truly sorry for doing so – but I will absolutely do this again with you guys. Or maybe we do the “Painting with Primates” or “Sleepover with the Animals” instead.
And I am so glad that we did this adventure! Lemur yoga was similar to the goat yoga adventure I did a year ago but with a few differences.
1. The lemurs did not need to be bribed to jump on your back. They went flying around the room, flinging themselves from person to person and around their ropes course. You never knew when they were going to jump on your back during your downward dog.
2. Goats’ poop is solid. Lemurs’ is not. And lemurs hang out over your head. I’ll leave the rest up to your imagination.
3. This yoga teach openly acknowledged that she knew we truly weren’t there for yoga. She said that it was perfectly fine if we stopped everything to play with the lemurs or if we didn’t even want to do any yoga at all. The difference is that the goat yoga instructor really wanted us to be bendy and zen and aways seemed to be disappointed in us for cracking up and paying more attention to the goats than we were to our corpse pose.
The lemur teacher was more like, “If you want, go ahead and stretch your calves. Or not. We’ll only do this for another few minutes and then we’ll just play with the lemurs.” When it was pointed out to her that one lemur was eating her phone and another was drinking out of her water bottle, she said very calmly, “Yes. Well, lemurs aren’t really germy and I’ve had a lot of lemur spit in my mouth before so…whatever.” She seemed to be a bit too excited about lemur spit in her mouth. Makes me wonder what happens when nobody else is around. But hey…to each their own.
But still.
Ick.
Lemur Yoga was fun and made even better when I found out that one of my coworkers Megan was in the class too with her mom. Swear to you, I never expected seeing someone I know an hour away from home in a random animal sanctuary in the bowels of inland Florida rural life, but how lucky was I that she was there!
After the lemur “yoga”, we went in for our sloth and anteater experience. We started by getting to know a fancy-schmancy bird that I can’t remember what kind of bird he is so let’s just refer to him as Bjorn. He was a glorious bird who loves blueberries and stares intently into your eyes as if has SEEN things in his wide old age. After all, he wasn’t Bjorn yesterday.
Anyways, I have a new favorite animal. Anteaters are BETTER than any other animal. (Except maybe sting rays. And snails. And blue whales. And Wombats. And skinny pigs. And hedgehogs.).
This little dude was glorious!!! I got the honor of feeding him a test tube of liquid beef baby food. He held onto my finger as he flipped his 16-inch tongue in and out, grabbing liquified beef with each swipe.
16 inches. Measure it out. It’s wild!
It was so fun watching him eat and I found out something grand. Anteaters like to have the back of their ears scratched. And I was so very happy to comply. He felt bristly, like I was scratching a Brillo pad or like what my calves feel like after I have forgotten to shave for a few days.
I don’t know why but I always thought Anteaters stayed on the ground and sucked termites and ants out of stumps. Turns out I was wrong – they primarily climb, and he demonstrated his abilities by climbing out of his basket and clawing himself quite easily across the ropes course covering the ceiling.
Did you know that sloths and anteaters are related? (and also armadillos, which are another set of favorite animals, btw).
Because it was very evident when watching the sloths also hang upside down from the ropes with the same big, long claws that the anteaters had.
What’s the difference between the two? Well, sloths move much more slowly. Like really, really slow. Like “I’m going to beep at this guy if he doesn’t speed up” kind of slow. They move an average one foot per minute.
Plus it takes the one month to digest their food. We were each given one hibiscus for them to chow down on, and they for sure seemed to love them. I couldn’t help but wonder if one month from now, the hibiscus scent would still be there when, ahem, evacuating the premises.
Sloths’ noses are very, very moist – and I was dying to boop them on the nose. But we were under strict regulations not to touch the sloths for any reason, so I refrained. But what a glorious thing to come nose to nose with this beautiful animal as they are hanging upside down from the ceiling. It was like the Spiderman kiss scene come to life.
At one point, one of the sloths left her cozy hammock and started crawling across the ropes. I went over to hang out with her during her journey, thinking I was a calming presence for her. Suddenly, or as suddenly as a sloth can move, the sloth started to dig around where…um…where the sun don’t shine.
She was really going at it and I felt a little like I was watching SlothPorn. So as casually I could, I asked the keeper why she was doing that. The keeper looked me dead in the eye and said, “They do that when they are nervous as a way to self-soothe”.
I responded, “Well that’s strange. I wonder why she’s nervous."
[insert pointed glare by the keeper]
"OOOOOhhhhhh, I’m making her nervous, aren’t I?"
[insert nod by keeper].
"But I was singing to her. I thought that would make her feel good."
[insert rolling eyes by keeper].
"Ok then. I’ll walk away but I won’t be happy about it.”
Dagnammit, the sloth stopped her personal groping the minute I walked away.
Maybe I should take singing lessons.
So that was the end of the 100th adventure.
Emily and I talked a bunch about the ending of Badass. I have to say, I have enjoyed the writing process much more than I thought I would and I have absolutely loved hearing your feedback. I would miss that too much.
So we decided that a good balance will be officially stopping “50 Badass Adventures” but keeping going with me writing my adventure blog for myself. And for anyone who wants to keep following along. So I will post my blog updates on Facebook sporadically, but anyone who is interested in being sure to see posts when they are published should subscribe to www.50badassadventures.com and you will receive posts in your inbox.
There are some epic adventures coming my way in the next few months – Penn Nurses’ reunion at Paradise Island in the Bahamas, a trip to Nashville, two trips to Des Moines, one to Chicago, Ollie and I are going to Hawaii and of course the adventure of all adventures…the trip to Antarctica with Emily.
And I will continue looking for adventures big and small every day.
Because why not keep looking to live a life that is deep and rich and filled with laughter, fun and love? Why wouldn’t I want that?
To finish the 50 Badass Adventure project, I would like to reshare a poem that was written for me about the project and my purpose for doing it. I think it sums it up well, don’t you?
“Badass”
I no longer will be stumped.
I refuse to be stopped in my tracks.
Throw this at me.
Throw that.
My will Is going to stay enacted.
As a matter of fact my will is beginning to grow like from the depts of my soul
Rooted in the unknown towards the sun it goes.
No more swinging the highs and the lows for now.
Life will be all about taking the high road.
A place where I feel empowered to follow the directions of my heart.
Separating negativity from the charge.
Positive energy on the rise.
If you ask of me, I shall try.
Give it a go before time becomes my foe.
Time is my forever friend
And in this life I am going to fill it up the most….
(Don’t you just love that last verse?)
😊
Love, Beth
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