TrishOnSkates Blog

What do you do when you end the year with a UTI, a throat so sore you are popping throat lozenges like M&Ms and a broken elbow, in a sling that is on its third break?  I’ve been at the skate rink, a lot, in shoes, in the middle, helping other people move forward on their goals, so I’ve been mulling over an idea I saw at Nordstroms…. A chalkboard that started a sentence but left the answer for the viewer to fill in.

I also saw a great story about a woman who created a huge blackboard and wrote: before I die I want to:_______ and let neighbors fill in the blanks. She put them on the walls of boarded up houses. It was provocative, it encouraged dreams, it made people believe there was a way out. So, from sick with infection, sore throat & broken down, I’m seeking my way out, launching myself right into my future. Call it a bucket list, call it dreaming, call it an adventure.

What adventures do you encourage me to take?

These are my new chalkboards I just made with Martha Stewart chalkboard paint, blue painters tape, foam brushes and white foam boards.  I am going to fill them with lists…. An adventure that comes to me in the middle of the night, from reading the Outside Magazine December issue on Risk, from a Facebook post, from GoMighty.com (I want to sleep in a lighthouse), an idea from a discussion in the car on highway 1 when stopped for an accident. It’s going to my year of adventure and you get to help me plan it.

This isn’t a new idea, I read a book about a woman who decided to take the line: Do something everyday that scares you by Eleanor Roosevelt and wrote a book, “My year with Eleanor” where every day she did one thing that scared her.  Send me your ideas, small, tall, little, big. Ask me to join you, ask to join me. Turn me on to adventure web pages you love, tell me how you love and I’ll find an adventure there. Just because I have to give up doing full revolution jumps on skates, does not mean I have to quit jumping for joy.

Help me with this adventure, push me, pull me, thrill me, trill me. Tell me about your adventures, I’ll be back in a day with a list of adventures, but here are a few I’ve already got on my mind:

• Travel to the southwest, I’ve never been there (Arizona, New Mexico, specifically)
• Sleep in a lighthouse
• Go flyfishing on my motorcycle with my four-piece four-weight and camp overnight, alone
• Skate seven rinks in seven days (skating safari—needs to wait until after doc clearance on my elbow!)
• Run four Skate Instructor Certifications in Canada & two in California (boring but not if it’s a great road trip!)
• Cook a new ethnic dish every week for a month
• Take a full set of waltz dance classes (I already bought them on Living Social)
• Skate the Monuments in Washington DC

Not very creative? I’m not dreaming creatively enough!

Today’s adventure will be _____________
This week’s adventure will be _____________
This month’s adventure will be ______________