You say Adventure, I say

My friend's son is currently on a trip.  He and three other friends flew to San Francisco with their mountain bikes and are biking back over a months time.  My friend and her husband were away the weekend before he left so we were trying to help him get ready.  He had not thought through much of the route.  Greg asked if he knew that several of the passes he was planning to take were closed due to snow, "oh".  We found some backup routes.   Greg told him it would be a good idea to tune up his bike before he went; so they worked on it together.  His brakes were shot, he said do you think I really need to replace them?  Well you will be carrying 50 extra pounds and going down steep passes, what do you think?  He only replaced one set, he is very frugal.  He brought his bike up to show us when he had the pannier bags loaded, (I regret that I did not take a picture of this).   I couldn't even lift the bike. 

We had him over for dinner the night before he left.  While consuming three hamburgers he asked what we were doing for adventure this summer.  We kind of looked blank and I thought, well I am trying to finish my toe up socks and I'm adding a new bed to the yard, and Greg was thinking, I plan to finish remodeling the kitchen, and there is that new bed in the yard.  We kind of hemmed and hawed and said well we're kind of spontaneous people and we don't plan ahead.  We were kind of worried about this lack of adventure in our future.   I talked about this with my knitting group and one of the woman said, " I have a friend who defines adventure as being cold, wet, tired, hungry and scared", I just don't need that right now.  She finds adventure in whatever she does no matter how small.  I do try to think that way myself.

Our friends came back from their vacation and took us out to dinner to thank us for helping their son prepare for his trip.   We always go to the same restaurant with them and I selected a new one that I found in Sunset Magazine.  There was much discussion about it.  We decided to drive in the parking lot and if it looked like people were in there then we would go, if not, it was back to the old standby.  The place was packed, we went in.  It was a fun night and I asked my friend if she thought this could be qualified as an adventure.  She said, "well for us it might be, but I'm pretty sure my son would  roll his eyes at us".