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Jeanne Sparrow, of Chicago’s WCIU (The U) joined myself, and the lovelies jean Ann and Amanda (on her birthday!) on a Sky Deck Adventure! You can see the footage here!
You can also see some more choppy footage of the actual live broadcast, here.
*Technical glitch FIXED. Videos are dressed and ready for YOUR viewing!
Wow! Check out this darling news segment on some fellow adventurers. Their enthusiasm helps me to get out and adventure every week.
Kudos to jean Ann and Jackie!
http://news.medill.northwestern.edu/chicago/news.aspx?id=164251
Love this! You guys sounded so erudite!
love it!
“A man practices the art of adventure when he breaks the chain of routine and renews his life through reading new books, traveling to new places, making new friends, taking up new hobbies and adopting new viewpoints”
Wilfred Peterson
I love it and am promptly stealing it to post on FB. I needed to read this. I will post soon, promise. I started to get ready to do it and was interrupted by a friend needing a chat. 🙂
“When it comes to other people, you can always come up with a reasonable explanation, but you can’t fool yourself. In this sense, writing novels and running full marathons are very much alike. Basically a writer has a quiet, inner motivation, and doesn’t seek validation in the outwardly visible.” (What I Talk About When I Talk About Running, pg. 10.)
So spoke Murakami.
I think that’s how I got into the running game – with a more road-ready inner motivation. Although my foray into the athletic stage isn’t nearly as eloquent as Mr. Murakami’s. Bascially, I used to work in restaurants. Scores of restaurants (delis, diners, five stars, bars) that brought employees together in the only way they knew how: the back dock smoking lounge.
People don’t peg me a smoker, and I can’t say I don’t appreciate their surprise. When I worked in restaurants I worked long hours. When one works long hours, one capitalizes on any and all breaks given them. Which is to say, I smoked some cigarettes. Daily. 
But I wasn’t a portrait of long savory puffs in a darkened alley with the strong arm of a tall man in a driving cap around my waist. No, no. These were harried puffs amongst angsty bartenders and hostesses that did little to welcome or elevate friendships. We just past the time in the only way we knew how. And for us, that was enough.
But, bad habits have a way of having a way with you. So, I developed a sore throat and, as luck would have, three back to back shifts. But, even more opportune, I had a 10 minute (10 minutes!) back dock break between shifts one and two and ran out to enjoy a smoke treat with Ellie.
I still can’t attribute my dramatics to anything in particular, but just as I was about to light one up and take a drag something happened. My mind completely rewired and I made a declaration. A very loud declaration. I told all the servers in proximity that I was going to change my life and quit smoking. We were in tuxedos. Near an oversized dumpster enjoying a brief reprieve and I was hollering about health and happiness. No one said a word. I think I was afraid no one would take me seriously so I threw my cigarette pack to the ground and jumped on them. My jumps weren’t incredibly effective and still, no one had spoken, so I picked them up and lobbed them into the dumpster. Only Ellie said, “I would have taken those.”
And then… synapses. Something fired in my mind. I convinced myself in the span of Ellie’s sentence that I would have to do something representative of someone with good, clean lungs. It was then I decided I would have to run a marathon. (More …)
Congrats! It must be so empowering to go from being a smoker to running a half marathon! Good luck with training for the Wine Glass Marathon!
If I’ve referred to Chicago as my disappointing lover, New York, as a metaphor, is an even flickler romp. Give me a flower and I’ll moon over whether I belong in the Big Apple or whether said apple is just not that into me. Because I want to love New York. I want to feel at home among the crowded chaos and late night fervor. I want fourth generation born and raised locals to look on me at any given coordinate, in any borough, in any season and at any time and think to themselves, yeah, she can stay here. She belongs.
I suppose I never knew how difficult it was to manufacture a home.
And because it had been some years since I last visited New York, I was really, really, excited to escape Boston and spend a weekend among friends who call the city home.
As expected, mistakes were made.
I rode in with Lauren and Betsy, two women that could be considered binary sign posts on a road trip bell curve. Lauren wanted to be on time (it was a cool 7 hour ride to Manhattan from Boston) and grew anxious with traffic and misinterpreted GPS signals and hour after passing hour. Betsy played the placater. Each traffic jam was justified. Lauren the driver was built up. Kimberly the passenger was built up. Everyone felt special and important and protected in those suspended seven hours. Lauren told stories of her life. I told tale. Betsy shed insight onto Betsy. With all this sharing and fluid driving I thought, yes. good. New York is magical. (More …)
The lovely Maressa Brown wrote up this post on our initiative.
Adventure on darlings!
Full URL: http://www.lemondrop.com/2010/04/16/kim-hula-the-52-weeks-of-adventure-club/
Great article — you are clearly inspiring so many people!
That’s the article that brought me here and made me decide to start making a list of the adventures I want to have this year!
I just want to take a moment to highlight some of the adventures listed below that run the gamut but inspire me and I’m certain others in ways unexpected and sincerely celebrated. Here, in our adventuring community we’ve heard tale of slowing down, pushing up, forgiveness, anger, solitude, memory, music and love.
Each contribution is unique and telling and the product of a good-great-best year. So thank you. Thank you for making each and every one of us a little more humble, a lot more anticipatory and instilling in us a sense of darling adventure.
So don’t lose sight of what Plato once said, “The good is the beautiful” and remember that YOU are the good.
Wow! So inspirational! I linked here through the AOL Maressa Brown story, and you and your fabulous cohorts have definitely lit a fire within me. A few weeks ago I lost a high school friend to a heart attack and he was only 40. Needless to say, really living life has been in the forefront of my thoughts as of late. Thank you for sharing your spirit and your adventures!
WOW! You are so amazing! I am 13yrs old and this summer you’ve inspired me to start my own”14 WEEKS OF SUMMER ADVENTURE” i am homeschooled and proud of it but it means i have more or less days of homework than public kids. but good luck in your adventures ( i will pray for you)
Sounds amazing!
Wow, I absolutely LOVE this idea of adventures! I am truly an adventurer thru-n-thru. My latest undertaking has been skydiving, and I suggest you try to add this to your list of musts, maybe squeeze it in as a bonus adventure. I made my first tandem jump, was immediately hooked, and a year later earned my license to jump solo. It is the most incredibly liberating experience I have ever had the pleasure to participate in. Not many people have the courage to make that jump, but I promise you that it is worth every single second. It opened up my mind and heart and now I really do live one minute at a time (one minute is your freefall time, with 5 minutes under canopy). Really, please try this!
This is sooo cool! We travel constantly for work (my husband is a construction consultant)…No exaggeration we filed 350 days away from home on our 2009 taxes…Any way life gets pretty boring & we inevitabley become “mall rats” in every city we come to. We do some geocaching, but this has rekindeled our love of adventure…We are 14 weeks behind ya’ll, but this weekend we’re starting our adventures by going on a jet skiing/snorkeling trip in the FL, Keys…YAHOO!…Thanks for the inspiration
AWESOME!!!
I sometimes (see: often) have these quarterly year crises. They involve me getting restless. When I am restless I crave change. When I crave change I sometimes (see: often) dramatically alter my physical appearance by changing my hair. So, should one look at the date stamp of any photograph of me of any certain year, one will find upwards to four different hairstyles. Four! 2000 boasted the best of black to red to burgundy to brown. I was a blond in Japan, and a brunette in Japan. And what my hairstylists dubbed my “sakura (cherry blossom)” phase in Japan. 4 colors all at once in Chicago; one at most in Florida. All told, I am not immune to impulsivity.
Okay, so a proposed hair adventure is weak. I understand this, except that it is always good to take routine, no matter how harried (hair-ied), and make it into something new. So I did just that. I scoured the streets of Boston for any salons willing to take me on as a test patient (aka: hair model), and in turn offered them this freedom: complete and total control. Therein lies the caveat: I had, for the first time ever, absolutely no say in my own makeover. I could not suggest. I could not request. I could not betray my opinion. I was to remain stoic, impartial and ready to receive… anything. (More …)
I love it – almost every single picture of me shows a different style and/or color. I was everything you were regarding hair color. Thanks to radiation and a thinning of my hair on one side of my head – my cut will likely not stray absurdly far from what I have now, as it has done before. I think many people are afraid to change their hair in any way, so a “small” adventure to you is huge for them…
See what our friends at Surprise Industries are saying about The Year of 52 Adventures!
http://www.surpriseindustries.com/kindred-spirits.html
I tire of all the vixen-villians in romance-suspense-thrillers that explain their unorthodox behavior with the adage, “Love makes you do crazy things”. It’s not that I think it trite or that I take issue with the storyline. Rather the sentiment is wrong. Love does not make you do crazy things. Love makes you do mechanical things. Love makes you buy flowers and exchange mixed tapes and read poetry. There is a very scripted formula. Instead, I might be more apt to empathize with these vixi-villians if they changed one word to make the adage a well adapted mantra. It’s loneliness that makes us do crazy things. When lonely there is no greater time and better opportunity for crazy, and because there is no script for loneliness, I found great adventure potential in it. So for my fifth week, it all started in Salem and ended in Brazil.
Wow! I could read your blogs all day!
You are indeed a writer yes?
What an empowering and insightful experience. Thank you for sharing!
LOVE IT!
I’m sure it could have been easier to have not said a thing and drank a bottle (or two) of wine that night, but you stood up for yourself. Good for you! He SOOOOOO doesn’t deserve a mixed tape from you;)
Thanks everyone! It’s good to stand up to goons!
Bravo! I am working on being more assertive, and this is a fantastic (and beautifully written) lesson.
Addendum to this story: Mr. Josh contacted me today to ask….. for his books back. I think I’ll leave them in a rain puddle, on the interstate.
Nearly two months out, but I’m reading older posts…I left a guy’s books propped against his garage door, along with a CD containing only “S*** Song” by Kate Nash. It felt good.
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faolan01 1:26 pm on May 11, 2010 Permalink
the link here is broken 😦 (looks like there’s an extra http// in it) but the one on the Facebook page works. The Sky Deck Adventure and the interview were great! 2 news stories in a matter of days? looks like this is really catching on 🙂
yearof52adventures 9:53 am on May 12, 2010 Permalink
Aye yi yi! Thanks for bringing this to my attention.
The news stories were darling and we have a lot of fun doing them.
I’m so excited everyone is in it to win it. Great job all!