13 years

Today my memories on Facebook included a picture I posted a few years back in honor of a throwback Thursday. It was a picture of Leah, me, our house, aka Beckley, our car, and Jim, a Canadian hitchhiker. It dawned on me that it was 13 years ago, right around Labor Day that a small town girl from Nolensville boarded a plane to fly to New Zealand, then onto Australia, and Fiji for 9 months. All I had was one hiking backpack with my belongings.

College is great, but for me, graduating was somewhat scary. There were so many unknowns. I honestly had no idea what I really wanted to do. I had an idea of what would be ideal for me, but that becoming a reality was crazy! I had worked hard for 5 year, yes, as dad says, I squeezed 4 years of college into 5, and the end was approaching and it was not easy! I knew I wasn't ready to move back to Nolensville, but wasn't sure if Chattanooga was where I wanted to stay either. I was looking at jobs across the country, with the mind set that if I find a job I liked, I'd be willing to move for it and experience something new.

Graduation was approaching and I took a long road trip to Pittsburgh with my friend Leah to visit her family. Leah knew what she was doing after school. She was backpacking Australia. After this very long car ride to Pittsburgh and then back to Chattanooga, Leah had me convinced that I wanted to backpack Australia with her! I think I actually called my parents from Pittsburgh to share this news with them. I'm sure they thought it was another grand Becca idea and I would lose interest as soon as I got home. Nope, that wasn't the case. I graduated college, packed up my apartment, worked half the summer in Chattanooga while sleeping in another friends extra bedroom while her roomie was home for the summer and then moved back to Nolensville mid summer to do some traveling before packing up for Australia.

13 years ago, I knew nothing about Myspace or Facebook. There was no Snapchat or Instragram to make staying connected to your family and friends easy. I did not have a smartphone with FaceTime on it. This was pre texting days. I did not have a digital camara and I had to use a calling card to call home. Sometimes I could talk to my family and friends via AOL Aim! HAHA! Old School!

I sent frequent emails to a bunch of people of my trip. I still have those and would love for one day to print them all off and bind them into some type of book so I can look back and remember that I once was a hippie. What's so funny to me is who all my emails made it to. I found out that my emails were being forwarded to friends of friends of friends! Co-workers of friends and so forth. There were tons of people reading about my adventures and asking about it. There were people who have never met me that kept up with my adventures, which was pretty amazing to think about. I still cherish the file folder we found after Grandma died that I had all of my letters and post cards I had sent her over the years, including the ones from Australia.

For those who did not know me during this time frame of my life, here ya go. I flew to New Zealand for a month and traveled around. I've always said that New Zealand is the best kept secret in The Pacific. It's breathtaking! It was around the time that The Lord of the Rings came out, so that was all the fanfare back then. To this day, I've still never seen those movies.

We left New Zealand and flew to Australia, where I had my 4 month working visa and 3 month travel visa. Leah and I started up north in the Darwin area picking mangos, which is where I ended up in the ER due to my mango allergies! LOL! I'm pretty sure my parents loved receiving that phone call from me telling them that I was in the ER on the other side of the world! I should have their input on these thoughts!  Since the mangos didn't work out, we ended up in Perth, where I went to work in a road house (gas station) in the middle of now where. Literally. You could only buy green bananas from the grocery store! It had about 100 people in the town, if that many. The closest town with anything big in it was a good  2 hours away. It was a farming community, where you farmed during the day, came to my road house for lunch, and went next door to the bar at night. It was great. I also thought I wanted to buy this roadhouse, as it was for sale at the time! This is where I mastered driving a manual Ute (truck) on the wrong side of the road! I loved cruising those backroads.

After the stint ended at the roadhouse, I met back up with Leah in Perth. We knew we wanted to see as much as we could within the last 3 months. After researching, we decided our best bet would be to purchase a car, so we could see Australia at our own pace. So, we found an awesome Station wagon, that we named Beckley and this was our home for the next 3 months. We figured we could pay for the car, drive around, and not worry about staying in hostels to save money.

For 3 months, we drove the outter of Australia, from Perth, across the nollabar, to Adelaide, Melbourne, took a ferry to Tasmania, back up through Sydney and all the way to the top of the eastern side of Australia to Cairns, where we sold Beckley before flying out.

For 3 months, I was in the ocean daily. We would find random off the trail beaches in go swimming. This was part relaxation part shower! We lived in a car, the ocean was our bath! LOL! For 3 months, we parked our car on the side of the road or in a parking lot and sleep in it. We initially bought a tent, but decided the front seats leaned back were better. Since I'm shorter, I had the drivers seat, so I would lean my seat back, throw my feet up on the steering wheel and be fast asleep! This is something I would never do in America!

We had some amazing adventures on this trip and some crazy stories! We met so many amazing people, which is another reason I wish Facebook was around back then so I could have friended them and kept up with them. I do have a few still that I'm in contact with.

We left Australia and flew to Fiji. Fiji is the most laid back country ever, so it was a natural fit from our free spirited lifestyle we had been in for the past few months. We got a boat tour, and island hopped for 3 weeks in very remote islands. It was the life for me. Laying around in a secluded area on the beach, was amazing! I was blessed to be able to go back to Fiji for my 30th birthday and it's still one of my favorite places.

Coming home was not easy, to say the least. After this 9 months, my savings was non existent and my only option was to move back home with my parents. I had a hard time adjusting. I went from being carefree, sleeping in a car, to moving to Nolensville! I would forget that I could take a shower. I remember trying to go somewhere and contemplating taking a shower and was like, I took one a few days ago! WHAT! That was my wake up call that I was back to normal land and could take showers daily! I also went up to my dads shop one day when I was home and visiting with his employees and Kenny saying, "Becky (he is the only one who can call me Becky!), you see all that grey hair on your dads head, that's from you!" He was right, dad got a lot more grey hair in those 9 months.

Man! 13 years, 13 years, it seems like a life time ago. I think about and I don't regret anything. Yes, I did move back to Nolensville sooner then I had anticipated, but I always said I wanted to be in Nolensville if anything ever happened to my grandparents and when my sister started having kids, so it worked out.

It took awhile to adjust back and sometimes I miss those hippie lifestyles. Never thought I'd be in a job on the 8th floor of a downtown Nashville building! Leah is in the states for a while with her husband, which is awesome. However, Leah continued traveling and is now a dual citizen of the USA and Australia. How crazy to think about!  We are forever bonded by our 9 month adventure and for that, I'm eternally grateful!

My favorite quote was, Always pursue your crazy ideas. I pursued and conquered my crazy idea!