Have you ever had a dream?

Have you ever had a dream? To just pick up and go, to see the world...

- Alby Mangels

When I was in college by friend Patrick Fritz and I would watch "Adventure Bound with Alby Mangels" almost every day. Alby, an Australian mason turned film maker, was on permanent walkabout, traveling to the corners of the world experiencing things that we could only dream about. As I sit here, on the night before dad and I leave for our journey to the tip of South America on motorcycles I think of Alby and all the times I have dreamt about taking such a journey. Since I was a small child I dreamed of traveling the world to see what was out there. When I was very young, living in Alliance, Nebraska, a place far from anything, I would watch MTV (When there were still videos) and see videos from all over the world. It is quite incredible for me now to look back over the last 20 years since leaving Alliance and see where I have been able to go and the experiences I have been able to have. I look at the journey dad and I are about to take and can’t help but see what has shaped our vision. It is a dream of reconnecting with lives past and hopefully connecting with future experiences. For my dad I see a connection to when he was 19 and living in Venezuela driving a truck and hanging out at dusky rodeos in the middle of nowhere. For me it is the connection to my time living in Chile and the Dominican Republic. But for both of us it this trip is not really about reliving past lives, but reconnecting with cultures and countries that seems to some how be part of our nature. The truth is that neither of us are very practical about life. I think we are both deep down very much dreamers who just don’t want to see life pass without living out at least a few of those dreams. It’s been 18 months since we sat around one Saturday morning in May 2007 drinking coffee and schemed this thing up. But in reality it’s been a lot longer in dreaming about taking a trip like this. It’s been a long time since I have sat up at night, unable to sleep because of the excitement for the next day. If this trip is anything like the rest of my experiences it will be ten times better then anything I have imagined over the past 18 months. Now its time to sleep because tomorrow we have to pick up and go, to see the world..