The hills were calling
Lately I’m irritated by everything my instagram is feeding me. It knows me better than I want it to know me. Suddenly I’m barraged with ads for “how to dress when you’re over 50”, anti-aging serums and amazing kitchens I will never have in my house.
But…just when I’m ready to swear off this time sucking distraction, it does something wonderful. You see insta also knows I love travel and — scary thought — knows where I travel. Last week it served up a reel of a mountain top hike in Switzerland. I quickly mapped the distance from Zurich, checked the train timetables and started plotting how I could get mah-self on that mountain top.
Stoos Ridge Hike - Switzerland
This will be my second work trip to Zurich this year, and I find it depressing to go all the way there — a good 18 hour commute — to just work all week and come home. Plus this trip was breaking up my holiday weekend. Plus I need some mountains and cows. And then along comes that video which was practically like Maria Von Trapp herself personally inviting me to move my ticket to Friday, find my best hiking buddy and go where the hills are alive.
This is how our mother/daughter YOLO weekend spree began and who knows how it will end, except we know it will be on very little sleep.
So we’re off — watching our little blue location dots collide in the middle of Chicago O’hare. There’s my daughter, sitting at the bar waiting and I nearly cry because I’m so happy to have her on this journey.
Last Friday I crawled out of bed early for my first work call and saw the beautiful blue moon setting in the west. I marveled that in about 24 hours, with some luck, endurance and good travel winds we will make it through the car + plane + train + train + bus + cable car + what is billed as “the world’s steepest funicular” (fancy word for cog railway) to be watching that same moon from atop a Swiss alp. We have two short days to see what we can see and then hopefully I’m time adjusted and ready to work. I’ve had to warm back up to long-distance travel and while it gifts you with a perpetual hangover feeling, it also provides a chance to see a bit of the world and connect in person with colleagues is still the best way to recharge, reconnect and make my work easier and my mental health better.
