Photo by dizznbonn

Take Hazel Soares who just graduated from Mills College in Oakland, CA with an art history degree. She is 94 years old.

Do away with your hundred indecisions and all of your revisions. Is it worth it to wonder “Do I dare?” Instead, start now, no matter what your situation, your age or your physical condition.

Gulf War veteran Dana Cummings made it through two tours of service without major injury then came home to lose his leg in a car accident. Know what he did? He took up surfing.

Jessica Watson successfully sailed the world at sixteen years old in spite of other people’s doubts. “People don’t realize what 16 year olds and girls are capable of,” she said. “It’s amazing when you take away those expectations, what you can do.”

What Can I Do?

You can ride a dune buggy. You can parachute jump. You can become a professional photographer at any age!

All you women in your early to mid-thirties can stop worrying that your fertility is slowly seeping out of your ear and read about a woman in India who gave birth to twins in her seventies.

You can become the world’s oldest male stripper like Bernie Barker, who took up dancing to get in shape while recovering from prostate cancer.

You, too, can become a painter after a successful career as a writer.

Photo by Bruce Tuten

When you hear yourself creating reasons for why you can’t. Too old. Too weak. Too long. Too far away. Too whatever. That’s just fear talking. The I-Can’ts. I-Won’ts. They lead you to the overwhelming question.

What If?

Do you want to look back and say, it would have been worth it after all, but in short, I was afraid?

What if you never try? What if you could have done it but allowed fear to stop you instead? What if you stop asking questions and take a leap into the abyss?

What if you dare to eat that peach?

COMMUNITY CONNECTION

Is there anything you are letting fear stop you doing? Is there anything you simply must do before you die? Share your thoughts in the comments below.

Photo by skitzitilby/Feature Photo by pedrosimoes7

How often I forget that although my heart is young, my body isn’t. My weak ankle turns, reminding me how once I hopped, skipped and jumped through Calgary, Jaipur and downtown Aswan. Today, high curbs are my Katmandu. Our planet is a cook book and years of sampling its secrets has taken a toll on my midriff.

I carry the physical traits of the Wilcox women, but my wanderlust comes from the men folk. Their foreign travels were done in the name of War. Great Granfer Baker fought in the Sudan. Great Granny had never heard of London let alone Africa.

Great Granfer’s son fought in Gallipoli, convalesced in Alexandria and on the island of Malta. His journal means more to me than gold when I used it as a guidebook holidaying in Valletta in my twenties where I literally followed his steps. The poppies waving in the breeze along my path were borne from the seeds of the poppies he passed.

My father fought in Burma, was a POW in Changhai. Tears caught my throat when many years later I stood where he almost died in Singapore.

He stood with the British Army in Israel when they were handed their Mandate in 1948. When I voiced an interest in visiting Israel in the seventies, my mother was totally against it. My father told me to go.

“The Jewish are the friendliest people I know,” he said as he gave me a handful of addresses, just in case!

He served in India for many years and loved the country with a passion. I asked him once “Why?” He had no words for me other than to say it was a country that buries itself deep in the soul. He died before I managed to visit, and I never had a chance to share my own infatuation with him.

Photo by M@ruteclea

Travel to me is as gin to an addict. In my twenties, thirties and forties, I trekked solo to thirty two countries. My thirst could not be quenched, but I am slowing down now. Age and money supersede my desire to travel.

In my head, I can still climb the Himalayas and backpack down any river in the world. At 54, though, my back aches from chopping wood for our wood burning stove. My spine shouts at me after a day planting potatoes and other veggies. We have money to pay the bills and put food on the table but not to travel.

“Where shall we go next?” I ask my partner Paul, who ponders awhile before replying “Tunis.” Out comes the photo album and a bottle of Don Mendo red. I look at the photo of myself and a camel at the edge of the Sahara and am reminded of my egg timer.

“We’ll go places again,” he says thoughtfully, unable to answer when I ask when.

You twenty-somethings of today stand at the edge of the world. You can visit Patagonia, a place we didn’t even know existed. You can canoe the Amazon. A teen in south London thirty years ago had as good a chance of going to the moon. And with a fistful of dollars, you can go anywhere, and when the pocket runs bare, you can tend bar or shear sheep to pay your way.

I don’t doubt that you have your challenges, but they are more easily faced when you are twenty or thirty than when you are fifty. I envy the young people of today.

I visited my mum in London recently. She still lives in the same house where she grew up. I took her out for walks in her wheelchair, and as we went along, she spotted things like blades of grass springing through the pavement, an early crocus, an unusual air conditioning box outside a building. She noticed a lady with a hem falling down.

She encouraged me to see simple, every day things differently. Thus, I saw the things that connect. I saw my own area with new eyes.

Travel isn’t just a fortnight kayaking down the Amazon. It can be a day right outside my door. At 54, I must leave my youth behind and adjust to the maturity of being a golden oldie. The adventures are there; they are just a little different.

My egg timer fills not with sandy particles but with the all the travel experiences that have enriched my life.

COMMUNITY CONNECTION

How do you define travel? Has this definition changed over the years? Share your answer with us in the comments below.

Feature photo by Foxtongue. Photo above by kevin.j.

Back in 1859, an inventive young Frenchman called Jules Leotard began larking about with poles, ropes and rings suspended above his parents’ swimming pool. After several months of crashing and splashing, he’d perfected his new art, and on November 12th he performed the world’s first flying trapeze act at the Cirque Napoleon in Paris.

His party trick − which involved leaping between three trapeze bars and somersaulting in mid-air − drew hoards of admirers worldwide. Female fans turned giddy at the sight of him, with several allegedly proposing marriage. At London’s Alhambra Theatre he swung directly over a gasping party of banqueters, sporting a skin-tight, one-piece garment which he’d designed himself to allow free movement − and a big eyeful of muscle. The “leotard” was born.

A Young Man With His Mother’s Blessing

Photo by Stephan Silver

Fast forward nearly 100 years, and “flying” had become a global phenomenon. Safety nets were introduced in the 1870s, and the sport was no longer regarded as a purely male pastime. Where previously it was all about strength, women performers brought a new emphasis on grace and posture − and a few more sequins to the leotards, which were now worn by both sexes.

In the early 1950s, a boy from Boston ran off − “with his mother’s blessing” − to join the circus. Entranced by the unique aroma of “the popcorn, the peanuts, the elephants”, and a certain “charming young lady trapeze artist” named La Norma, 15-year-old Tony Steele asked for a job at Gil Gray’s circus in Gainesville, Texas, having taught himself on swings and mattresses at his local YMCA.

Of his debut performance, “the first thing I remember is ‘oh, ahhhh, eeeee!’” Like Leotard, he had all the girls screaming. By 1962, the shrieks were louder than ever, with Tony’s death-defying three-and-a-half somersault breaking world records (until then, only a triple had been seen), and catapulting him to the top of his profession.

Tony Steele Today: Still Doing It

Though a little greyer, he still performs and teaches today, and feels “a divine calling to pass on everything I know before it disappears”. It’s a joy to talk to this impish 73-year-old, who can still manage a double somersault, and believes no one’s too old to start learning: “Trapeze will extend your life and make you feel happier. Many of my students are middle-aged women whose husbands tell them ‘You’re crazy.’ By the end of the classes they are addicted, and telling their husbands ‘Shove off and mind your own business.’”

Photo by Stephan Silver

Tony’s top tip for anyone wanting to celebrate the 150th anniversary is the new Festif show, running till March 2010 at Paris’s Cirque d’Hiver, formerly the Cirque Napoleon, where Leotard debuted his original flying feat. Anton Von Ostendorf, of world-famous headlining act the Bull Dancers, will transform into flying trapeze’s founding father, complete with moustache and nineteenth century airs and graces.

Or you could go one better, and try trapeze yourself.

I took a course of lessons at the Pavilion Theatre in Brighton, my hometown. (And no, I didn’t wear a leotard.)

Don’t live in Brighton, there are plenty of other places you can go to learn the lovely art of trapeze: You can find schools in London, California, New York, Sydney Australia, France and Hamburg, Germany.

Club Med also hosts trapeze classes for adults and children at 21 sites across the world:

So When I Do This, What Will I Learn?

This was “static trapeze” − you need considerable experience before attempting the flying kind − but nevertheless, there was very little keeping still. After mastering basic moves the “pike” and “hock” for ascending and descending the bar, we progressed to the “bird’s nest”, the “star” and the “mermaid”. Later came my favorite, the “spider”, where from standing, you jump your feet around the ropes, lower yourself, let go your hands and drop, arachnid-like, to a dangling position below.

It may be some time before I’m summoned to the Big Top − the only gasps I got were when my classmates saw me plummet head-downwards from a poorly secured “ankle hang” − and the bruises the ropes give an inexperienced newbie are far from glamorous. But the thrill of using every sinew of my body, watching the world from upside down, and being the performer, rather than merely the spectator, of an age-old circus act, had me eagerly hanging on for more.

I can’t wait to try flying trapeze, with its daredevil moves − “death somersault” and “reverse suicide” here I come! But for now, I’m delighted to be on the trapeze at all. As Tony tells me, “It’s the most fun you can have with your clothes on”.

COMMUNITY CONNECTION

Have you tried your hand (or foot or leg) at the trapeze? Tell us where, when and how it was.