City Market
The City Market Co-op, located in Burlington Vermont, loaded with an astounding assortment of local produce and products.
The City Market Co-op, located in Burlington Vermont, loaded with an astounding assortment of local produce and products.
Preparing for the Burlington Vermont First Night Celebration, Liane enjoys some relaxation and an early dinner.
It's just been one of those days. Instead of the up-at-sunrise, Subaru/Harley-ride-to-the-horizon kind of days it was just one of those stay-indoors-doing-nothing kind of days. It felt good.
The big walkabout came this evening with a trip to Dunkin Donuts for coffee. Regardless, it is always an adventure of some sort!
“When I retire I want to travel!”
These were the words spoken by my son, Jack, as we drove through the Adirondack region of upstate NY on one of our walkabouts this summer.
“Jack, you do not have to wait until you retire!”
“You don’t?”
I am thrilled Jack loves travel and adventure! I am disappointed he already has come to believe you have to wait to follow your passions while you fill out the template of life. While I am living a walkabout lifestyle now, it wasn’t always this way. Life decisions and changes provided me the opportunity to find my own authentic path and passion for exploring my world. However, my experiences with my children, while numerous, have been safe and predictable adventures. Little by little I have been opening new doors for them to show them there is more to see than amusement parks and arcades. I don’t want them to follow a prescribed path and be stuck in a box. That didn’t work out so well for me and I suspect not for many of you either.
There is a great deal of focus and online discussion these days about the idea of minimalism. The notion of minimalism originated as a way to describe movements in art and music where the artist focuses on simplicity and only the most essential features of the work. Today it is more likely to be associated with a way of being that focuses on living with only what we need.
The ability to simplify means to eliminate the unnecessary so that the necessary may speak. ~Hans Hoffman
We believe the origin of this term is still describing the same thing, a movement in art. Each day and every experience is our blank canvas, an opportunity to create our life. We can choose to do this with simplicity and clarity, focusing on only what we need. Joshua Becker, of the web site, Becoming Minimalist, describes it in this way:
Minimalism …is marked by clarity, purpose and intentionality. At its core, minimalism is the intentional promotion of the things we most value and the removal of everything that distracts us from it. It is a life that forces intentionality. And as a result, it forces improvements in almost all aspects of your life. (Read his full article “What is Minimalism”.)
As the caretakers of Walkabout Chronicles, we practice what we preach: We make a point of getting out to experience a journey as often as possible. Recently, we found the time and opportunity to spend three days in Boston Massachusetts and we wanted to share some of those experiences with you.
Heading into a walkabout like this takes just the right combination of pre-planning and a fair dose of completely winging it! Too much planning and scheduling creates stress and frustration. That is not how a walkabout should be. Rather, a combination of these elements typically brings it all together in a very cool and enjoyable way.
During the planning portion of our trip we identified a few things that we wanted to see such as the New England Aquarium and the USS Constitution. We also knew we wanted to walk as much of the Freedom Trail as we could. And of course, we wanted to find ways to appreciate as much fresh seafood as possible – starting with some New England clam chowder! For accommodations, our hotel, the Comfort Inn – Boston, was a few blocks from the nearest MBTA station but they offered a free shuttle service to and from the station 24 hours a day. The incredible convenience of the subway system proved to be a major bonus for our adventure.
By Steven J. Tryon
We get all of the bills paid every month so that makes us pretty lucky. However we don’t have lots of money to toss around at things like expensive hotel rooms. When we travel, we need a simple and clean place to sleep and take a shower. Beyond that, we really don’t have any expectations or needs. Our bet is that like most of you, we believe that maximizing the experiences we have while traveling is the way to immerse ourselves in the world of our journey. Spending too much time in a hotel room just defeats that plan. And so the more the room costs, the less value we feel we are getting for our modest dollars.
With all of that in mind, we began the preparation for an extended weekend in Boston, Massachusetts. For this trip we wanted to try a new way to find that simple, clean, and inexpensive hotel room. The criteria was pretty simple: In addition to our modest needs, we wanted to locate accommodations that were near one of Boston’s rail stations. The Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority (MBTA) is well known as being clean, safe, and the absolute best way to navigate the city. Being close to a station would mean quick and simple movement from the hotel to any other destination and then back again at the end of some very long days.
