I love adventures. I even love the word. Whenever I do something out of the ordinary for me, I usually call it an adventure. Recently, I took two of my aunts–ages 76 and 80–to a Segway park where they enjoyed riding for the full 30 minutes provided by their tickets. Great fun!
Describe one of your recent adventures, be it big or small.
Women & Aging 
My adventure took place in January. I flew to Brazil, for the 2nd time, to visit my son and his family who are long term missionaries there. Being with them was wonderful, wonderful.
However, living close to the Amazon includes either beastly hot, dry weather or beastly hot, wet weather. I never saw a theremometer. My belief is that the heat would explode the mercury. Electricity is very expensive so air conditioning is used only at night. No one uses clothes dryers, for the same reason. So with each wash, garments grow longer and longer. My t-shirts ended up looking like night gowns. Also for some odd reason, we occassionally swam in our clothes as we visited Brazilians at their beach houses. My t-shirt hung to my knees. I spent a lot of time playing with babies as they seemed to understand English better than the adults who spoke only Portuguese.
We took a 5 hour ( each way ) boat trip to visit a jungle village. We slept in hammocks, while not too uncomfortable, do lead to a very bad hair day.
To reach the village we had to cross very white, very hot sand, take a small boat across flooded path ways and then trudge a good distance into the jungle. The villagers were very happy to see us and were very hospitable.
They fed us tons of freshly caught fried fish plus other local foods. We ate under a roofed veranda with chickens scratching about and mangy dogs roaming about. I used my age as an excuse to make only one trip in and out. The missionaries made many trips.
My most unique experience occured after a dinner with Brazilian friends at their beach house. Our host brought out a special treat — toasted ants. Not chocolate covered, not salted, simply toasted. As their guest, I was offered the first taste. Thinking I would never have this chance again, I popped one into my mouth. Every one applauded. I asked my son to translate into Portuguese, “one life, one ant, one time.”
These are a few of the fun and funny things that happened. We shared many more experiences. The Brazilian people, that I met, were kind, gracious, loving, and industrious. The missionaries are doing a good work in bringing moral guidlines to people who had none.
This blog is THE adventure. What a grand idea. Great to be in touch again. — Barbara
Recently my husband & I (we call ourselves “seniors”) drove to N.C. to visit our son & family (I suggested flying -“one hr. flight, but my husband decided we should take a leisurely drive enjoying the scenery, etc.- 6 hrs.). At any rate, driving on 95 S. & 64 W. turned out to be the “adventure to beat all adventures”! – crazy, scarey, stressful with 16 wheelers and all sorts of trucks “whizzing by (gotta’ make their deadline). A half hr. outside our destination I happened to look to my left and in the opposite direction, in a split second, I saw a tractor trailer doing “cartwheels” high in the sky with debris flying everywhere (I thought I was watching an “action movie” being filmed). Since we were traveling 70mph in the opposite direction I was only able to see it come crashing down “cab” first. Needless to say, my heart pounded the rest of the way.
I vote for “leisurely” flying next time – my youthful set of nerves have “matured” with age!!
Please change the work “skill” for “skillet”,
My recent adventure was in the realm of cooking. I was trying a new to me recipe for “Bubble and Squeak” It involves boiling small chunks of potatoes until tender and then adding them to an iron skill full of sliced cabbage sauteed in butter. The adventure came because I was trying to prep things in advance so I cooked the potatoes before Choir Practice planning on throwing the dish together more quickly afterwards. Well, I forgot to turn the range off before I left and came home to a burned pan and burned potatoes. Delbert had been sitting in the next room for an hour and had not noticed that anything was wrong.
I cleaned the pan, started over on the potatoes and just loved the dish. It was quite delicious. His comment to me was”Don’t get upset!” Well, that was a little hard but I quickly assumed my responsibility for the problem and got over it.
My sister and I drove to Eureka Springs for a few days of vacation. We are not known for our independence and spirit of adventure, but we had a good time and made it safely through the unknown roads and countryside. We were lost a few times but have found that we can ask questions of strangers. There are probably people who would take advantage of naive older women but everyone we met was kind and helpful.