An American Hillbilly In London

**Scotland Yard has undoubtedly experienced a recent uptick in werewolf sitings all about the streets and underground of London. Don’t be alarmed! Twas merely a hillbilly on holiday.**

Well, we finally did it. After all of these years of thinking about it, we finally went out and got us some culture. Who knows how long it would have taken to make this trip if the opportunity wasn’t thrust upon us unexpectedly? Thank God for the opportunity and for my traveling buddy.

It seems that we have always had one obstacle or another to keep us from traveling internationally or as broadly as we would have liked. Early in our marriage, we were broker than broke. When I joined the army, I was making less than $800 / mo and didn’t really feel like I had the time or scheduling flexibility for part time jobs. Fast forward a few years, and we were navigating both of our college educations, full time work (more than full time, really) and kids. Life was like drinking from a fire hydrant. College was replaced with medical school which was replaced with general surgery residency which was replaced with fellowship. After one kid on the first round, we added two on the second round, another on the third round and three more on the fourth round. At one point we had seven kids seven years old or younger with four in diapers at the same time.

Over the years, we had both developed a healthy aversion to flying. What do Glenn Miller, Ritchie Valens, Buddy Holly, Patsy Cline, Otis Redding, Jim Croce, Lynyrd Skynyrd, Randy Rhoads, Ricky Nelson, Stevie Ray Vaughn, and John Denver have in common? It was a pragmatic aversion. It was significantly more cost effective to travel by ground as a family of nine, so we did the best that we could with road trips. Of course, it took longer, but the journey is often even more magnificent and meaningful than the destination.

In more recent years, we have certainly had opportunity to cut our umbilical cords and rove outside the boundaries of North America, but we didn’t make it a priority. The timing never seemed right. There have always been significant money and time demands and it was easier to stay in the default mode of keeping the status quo. The truth is, those money and time demands will likely never change. One set is replaced with another which is replaced with another, on and on into perpetuity. It’s part of life.

What we needed was for someone to kick the barstool out from under us and to spur us into action. Now, thanks to an unanticipated obstacle and a willingness to be flexible, the seal has been broken. Hopefully this will open the gateway to many more adventures.

It can be difficult to discern whether something is a reason or an excuse. It turns out that it is somewhat subjective and with the right frame of mind, even a host of legitimate reasons that something cannot be done can’t stand in your way. Often, what seem to be sound, rock solid, justified reasons are actually well disguised excuses out to deprive us of something special. Something spectacular. Sometimes we perceive roadblocks that are actually just mirages. Sometimes we create them ourselves. It is not difficult to come up with a thousand reasons not to try something new. What if we were to put the same amount of energy into finding ways to do things that seem out of our reach, impossible even? We have but one life to live. Isn’t it our duty to make the most of it?