Everyone has a story –

– even this bag of Air Canada pretzels.

With time being such a peculiar entity, somehow it’s been one month since I left Alaska. My flight path took me from Fairbanks to Seattle, and a few days later I flew from Seattle to Toronto before my long haul flight from Toronto to Santiago.

When I fly, I usually hope to either have the seat next to me remain empty, or I hope that the person with the service dog or the most attractive man in the boarding area will occupy the seat. While the first happens with decent frequency because of my seat selection tactics, the second never does. Drat.

My third hope is that someone pleasant and relatively quiet will have the middle seat, which is what happened on my flight to Toronto. I was rather tired from an early morning alarm and drive to the Seattle airport, so while I would have loved to try to nap from the get-go, I chatted with the man next to me when he started conversation.

Sorry if it sounds like I’m tooting my own horn here, because that’s not my aim. Anyone reading this knows I don’t have a typical life, and my friendly neighbor Damien quickly came to that realization when he heard I was flying to Chile and jetting out to Easter Island before ultimately heading to Antarctica. Especially for someone like Damien, who acknowledged early on in conversation that he and his family don’t travel much, my life is fascinating and full of adventure.

I sleep on a friend’s couch and jokingly refer to my storage unit as “home.” I willingly lived without running water for 2 years of college in Fairbanks, Alaska. I have a scar on my left hand from an endangered kiwi bird, and I’ve driven a skiff around Attu, the end of the Aleutian Island chain. I’m heading to Antarctica for a third summer of studying chinstrap and gentoo penguins. Once I wandered around Tiananmen Square during an 8-hour layover in Beijing because I trusted myself enough to navigate that very specific time window – without knowing a word of Chinese.

You know, typical things for the life of a 31-year-old from the suburbs of Detroit.

Our conversation varied among topics through take-off and the first hour or so of the flight until I decided I needed a nap. When I finally roused myself and decided no more sleep would come, I wondered to myself if Damien might be interested in my blog. I’m not one to market my writing, so I hesitated, but then a funny thing happened.

“Do you have a blog or something where you write about your adventures?” asked Damien.

Why yes, yes I do. 🙂

As the end of our flight approached, Damien offered me his bag of pretzels. Still being of the “free food is wonderful concept,” I gladly accepted.

“If those make it to Easter Island, I expect a blog post,” Damien said with a smile.

It took me some time to get to it, but deal!

It was nice to meet you, Damien, and thank you for being my neighbor and feeding a vagabond! I hope you had a little relaxation time on your trip to Toronto.

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Just because it is rare for me to randomly meet someone who has a more off-the-charts story than me, I have to share about the woman who walked the last 10 miles of the Equinox Marathon with me in September. She mentioned she is married to a retired Navy man, so they moved around with his job for a while. Once his period of service was over, it was her turn to choose where their adventures would lead them.

Over the years she taught in Mongolia, China, and Shishmaref, Alaska. (At least I’m pretty sure it was Shishmaref. If not, it was a different rural Alaskan village.) The couple has 2 kids with about a 10 year age difference. When I asked if her oldest was excited to hear he’d be an older brother, she said yes – especially since the family hadn’t thought she could have another child. Why? Because she had abdominal scarring from a number of medical problems that came about all at once. In fact, she had died earlier in life.

I’ve done a lot of things, but I’ve never died and lived to tell the tale. Congrats, friend! With your varied teaching locations and medical story, you’re officially far more fascinating than I could ever aspire to be!

As an introvert, it can be hard for me to ask questions and learn people’s stories. Boy, are there some good ones out there, though!