HOW IT ALL BEGAN.... Kevin's version

HOW IT ALL BEGAN....

 

In Leeds it was graduation day, that rite of passage and pivotal event in life.  A point when, in theory, one stops becoming an irresponsible drunken layabout, puts on a suit and becomes a clean-shaven, upstanding middle-class member of society.  Anyone who knows me can tell you that I am an exception to this theory, and although I haven’t codified my philosophy into a manifesto, I think ‘eternal student’ sums me up quite well.  Plus, shaving my beard would be like taking part of my soul away.  Even for graduation.

 

            Anyway, it was this day and this place that my two best friends and I had chosen as the starting point for our symbolic adventure.  At a time when our lives together as students ended and our separate lives as graduates begun.  The entire agenda for this adventure is a separate (though no less thrilling) document, but in a nutshell, as a parting shot, we were to travel by bicycle though every English county, on our way visiting as many of our university friends as possible.  So, with our bags packed, our relatives on their way back to their respective homelands and with diplomas in our hands we did as Briton would do – we went to the pub.

 

            In the Eldon the atmosphere carried an air of ambivalence – simultaneously mournful for the times now lost forever, but celebratory of the successes of those epic four years.  After last orders we headed for Strawberry Fields, where even more of us gathered on that first night of graduatedom.  There we were joined by Super Hands and course mate Rob, who had both agreed to put us up on the West Country leg of our tour.  Rob was waxing lyrical about something called the *Mongol Rally*, of which I had never heard before.  Basically explaining it as a trip across the most dangerous parts of Europe and Central Asia in an old banger, it sounded like the sort of thing that people would advise against doing, so naturally appealed to me.  Neither of us seemed bothered by the fact that I have neither a drivers licence nor the first idea about cars.  Any trip through my beloved ‘mother Russia’ sells itself.  And with a exclamation of resignation in the form of ‘fuck it!’ and a raised glass, the second adventure had begun before the first one had even started.

 

            From this point on, I decided that I cannot begin one adventure without planning the next.  So although this ambitious and exhilarating quest will take a lot to be surpassed, I see this as just one link in a lifelong chain of adventures.  The moment that one link is missing, the chain ends, and harsh, boring reality begins.  Nevertheless, until then, I’ll be trying my hardest to find something impossible and unique to do. 

Long live adventure!