Adventure Calls Again …

by Lane Wallace on August 18, 2010

If all goes according to plan, I will set off today on another little mini-adventure: flying my Grumman Cheetah airplane across the continent, from San Francisco to Boston. Given that I’m only rated to fly in good weather, my plane doesn’t have an autopilot, doesn’t trim out well for very long, doesn’t climb much above 8,000 feet in the summertime, and only goes somewhere around 115 miles an hour (without a headwind), this is not just a simple Point A to Point B journey. It means weaving through mountain passes and under cloud decks, waiting out weather, flying in the morning and exploring wherever we’ve landed in the afternoon.

It will also be an adventure in that I’m taking a co-pilot on this trip—my boyfriend’s 17-year-old son, who thinks he may want to become a pilot. This trip should certainly answer that question for him.

But as Anne Morrow Lindbergh used to say, when people asked her if she wrote her books while she was having all those flying adventures with her famous husband … it’s hard to have the reflective mind space to write in the middle of an adventure. Too many other critical items are vying for attention. So while I will take copious mental and written notes, I will be offline until I am safely parked on the East Coast—hopefully by the 28th of August or so.

Good wishes for tailwinds, blue skies, gentle surface breezes, and a healthy, trouble-free engine are, of course, quite welcome. For whatever else it may be, the trip will most certainly be … an adventure. With all I’ve ever said comes with that package.

Back with you all shortly!

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How Best to Change the World?

by Lane Wallace on August 15, 2010

Of all the endeavors that come with no map and no guide, changing the world—in any way, shape or form—has got to be one of the most challenging. People don’t easily change. And so to impact or effect positive change in any larger group or society can often seem like a Quixotic or fool’s errand.

My mother worked for most of her adult life on desegregation, fair housing, and making a positive environmental impact on the Bronx. And I used to tell her, when she got frustrated, that when she got done cleaning up the Bronx, I thought the Rocky Mountains would look nicer 200 miles to the East, since she seemed so intent on taking on impossible causes.

And yet, when I asked my mom why she kept plugging, despite the frustrations and lost battles, she used to tell me, “if you want to change the world, start where you are and do something, no matter how small.”

For most people who care about changing the world, that means doing what my mother did: eschew high paying jobs to work in community organizing, local politics, and non-profit organizations looking for impact more than profit. But an article in a recent issue of the Brown Alumni Monthly, about two brothers who both went to Brown University and graduated in the 1980s, raised an interesting question: if you want to effect change in the world, is it better to do work directly—hands-on, in a low-paying non-profit job, in the field. [click to continue…]

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Back from Oshkosh …

by Lane Wallace

Most of the year, Silicon Valley and Boston vie for the title of “entrepreneurial capital of America.” (Silicon Valley wins hands down, I think, but Boston, more and more, at least gives the valley a run for its money.) But for one week a year, I’d submit that the Midwest city of Oshkosh, Wisconsin rivals [...]

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When Adventurers Gather

by Lane Wallace

More often than not, adventure is a solo endeavor—or, at least something pursued in very small groups. In part, this is because adventure tends to take place in the unexplored or little-explored places in life, whether that’s in the sky, on a mountain, or in a new, entrepreneurial venture. Which means, pretty much by definition, [...]

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A Tale of Courage: a Woman, a Documentary, and an Air Race

by Lane Wallace

Risk and adventure come in all kinds of shades and flavors. We tend to think of activities involving physical risk as requiring the most courage. But financial and professional risk can be equally scary. As one entrepreneur friend of mine once put it … “failure in a business is a death you have to live [...]

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A Potpourri of Worthy Advice

by Lane Wallace

Like many other people in America, I am a big fan of the Sunday New York Times. Granted, it’s hefty enough to be used as a weapon, and I would offer a hefty reward for anyone who could come up with newsprint that didn’t smudge onto fingers or other surfaces. But the Sunday Times is [...]

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Unexpected Adventure

by Lane Wallace

More than once, I’ve said that the difference between a vacation and an adventure is that with a vacation, you know how it’s going to turn out. Of course, that also means planned trips can sometimes turn into adventures, if so much goes wrong that you’re no longer sure of how things are going to [...]

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Morgan Freeman and the Fallback Position

by Lane Wallace

A few days ago, I heard the actor Morgan Freeman being interviewed on the PBS show “Charlie Rose.” Freeman was on the talk show promoting a new show he’s producing and hosting for the Science Channel called “Through the Wormhole with Morgan Freeman.” As the name indicates, the show, which premieres June 9th at 10:00 pm [...]

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The Meandering and Mysterious Roads to Creativity

by Lane Wallace

There’s a reason that the Greeks came up with the concept of  “muses” to explain bursts of inspiration or creativity. It’s because even those of us who make a living at creative endeavors aren’t always sure where those great bits of creation come from. And because of that, if truth be told, most of us [...]

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But I Don’t Have TIME for an Adventure!

by Lane Wallace

A couple of days ago—while I was on the road trying to balance work demands with helping my parents do some spring cleaning and looking at potential housing options for an upcoming move—a reader named Tim made the following comment on a previous post I’d written about the advantages of adventure for relationship happiness:
Great advice! [...]

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