I love a good adventure.
Ever since I was little I have tried to do the things that make the best stories. Climbing onto the roof of my house, just to see if it would hurt to jump off. Getting into bottle rocket wars with my brothers. Building forts and scaling trees. Trespassing and exploring. I always had a desire to experience.
Part of that comes from my country roots. Part of that is probably in my genes. With the exception of food, there are few things that I won’t try to do at least once.
In college, when determining whether or not I wanted to take part in some crazy shenanigan, one of my best friends and mentors, Josh, would always quip, “When you’re old and telling stories to your grandkids, are you going to want to tell them about that night that you stayed in your dorm and studied, or that night that you (Fill in the Blank)?” Worked every time.
That sense of adventure is one of the main reasons that I came on the race. You only get to live life once. Why not do and see everything that you can? God created such an amazing world and put incredible people in it. Luckily, I’ve been able to have a myriad of awesome adventures on the race, so I thought I would tell you about one.
One day last month, Derek, Chris and I decided that we wanted to have some “Bro Time.” We decided to wake up at 5am and go for a walk on the beach of Lake Malawi. Our plan was to go for a walk, catch the sunrise, have some good talks, and be back in time for breakfast.
The morning was perfect, the beach was beautiful, and the conversations started flowing. We were enjoying learning about each other as we took in the sights and sounds of the lake. The fishermen were readying their nets. One crew was stuck trying to push off the beach, so we offered our services and helped push them into the lake.
As we walked, we came across a restaurant that some of our squad had been to before. We talked about turning back, but Chris mentioned another place that was just a little bit ahead that was worth visiting. The place was a resort called Livingstonia. Derek and I hadn’t seen it, so we decided to press on.
It turns out that Livingstonia was not as close as Chris had thought, and we walked for quite a long time. We discussed turning back, but we just knew that we were almost there, so we trekked on.
After about thirty more minutes of Chris saying, “It’s just up ahead!” we came to what we realized was a dead end. Apparently you couldn’t get to Livingstonia from the beach as Chris had thought. We walked right up to a fence that had a big 'No Trespassing' sign on it. So as you might imagine, we did what every upstanding Man of God would do.
We trespassed.
Although, I prefer to frame it as “turning the other cheek." That’s what Jesus meant, right?
We crossed the fence and kept walking down the beach in the “No Public Access” zone, until we reached another unfortunate obstacle. The beach literally ended, cut off by about a quarter mile of quite sizable boulders. We had already walked over an hour and a half and we could see Livingstonia in the distance. So we glanced at one another, and without an ounce of hesitation started climbing. We had come so far, we might as well have some fun.
We climbed and bouldered our way until we got to the beach on the other side, made our way through a couple more “No Public Access” areas, and finally reached our destination!
That’s just the start of the story! Check out part 2!
