Pondering about everything

The last few months have been quite a crazy runaway train about to go off its tracks, and this past weekend has been something that my mind was waiting for a long time now. Just heading of for a weekend of camping and travelling with a few friends, staying up late and sleeping under a large tarp in a bivybag. Should do that more often, and maybe go even for a longer time than just the weekend.

It may even be that the book "10 lessons from the road" by Alastair Humphreys has influenced me somewhat in my decisions and actions, just needing some encouragement and motivation back into my mind to get going again. Maybe even to chase the dream of cycling my way back from New Zealand to the Netherlands, instead of flying in March 2010. Guess that my boss wouldn't like it, and my family would also not like it, but something like that is lingering in my mind the last few weeks. How I got the idea of such an adventure? Well, that's quite easy, just by surfing a bit on the web following a link on a blog leading me to Bikeabout.co.uk. Haven't got a clue where I found the link somewhere, but it stayed in my mind and will stay there for quite a while.

Something reminded me of how short a life can be and how fast everything just goes past, just not wanting to be someone that can't be proud of what he's done. Don't want to be a workerdrone! I want to do things that motivate and drive me to do more. More or less this was also mentioned in a song by the Dutch rap-formation Lange Frans & Baas B, "Ik wacht al zo lang" (YouTube).

"Maar als de dood aanklopt en je wereld in mekaar stort,
moet dingen nu doe voor het te laat word.
En daardoor ben ik druk, alles moet vlug,
spacend op het leven op zoek naar het nut.
Je zoekt je rust en beproeft je geluk,
je bouwt iets op maar opeens is het stuk.
Misschien haal ik de 80 of het stopt bij 40,
maar alsjeblieft niet eerder want ik vind het hier nog heerlijk.
Er zijn zoveel dingen die ik nog zou willen,
ik moet het laten weten voor ik weg van in stilte."

This song passed by in my iTunes-playlist while I was writing this blogpost, and it did feel quite appropriate with what I was writing. It may strike you that this is a quite depressive blogpost, but don't worry, I'm not depressed. I guess that writing about it either in a song or in a blogpost helps to get this of my chest.

Some sort of summer holiday

Only about amonth ago I did change my travelplans for my trip to New Zealand, but today finally received the confirmation of KLM by the issue of an e-ticket for the flights vice-versa :). Together with keeping a strict schedule the past few weeks, and upcoming weeks, for writing my thesis, this has payed of by giving me some mental peace. As I will not be going on any long holidays this summer, I have decided that I really have to take a couple weekends of, just getting outdoors, away from my laptop and any work and/or school-related issues.

So to actually take some time off, this weekend I'll be paddling in the Biesbosch with a couple of friends. We'll be camping somewhere in/near the Biesbosch and be having a good time. Unfortunately the meteorologists predict quite a bit of rain this weekend, but I guess we'll manage. Lucky for us, the weather still has a couple of days to make up its mind.... fingers crossed.

Just to get in the spirit of things, the photo above was taken last year in the Biesbosch where our canoeing trip from Nijmegen to Drimmelen ended. I still have fond memories of that trip and the ones -back in 2005 and 2006- that preceded it in Sweden.