ROTR is about the late-life journey of a senior solo traveler, following a long career in journalism.
It’s about my thoughts and dreams, my adventures, my stories, what I have learned about the world, and how I’ve changed since my post-retirement pursuit of a new life.
I thought I had it made in Hawaii after a successful, award-winning, 37-year career in journalism. But when the retirement recliner quickly started chafing my butt, I packed up and hit the road.
I easily could have retired in Hawaii where I’d spent most of my professional career. But it wasn’t long after I stopped working that I felt caught in a fast-spiraling downward pull on my life, and I wasn’t ready for that.
In 2016, newly divorced and living in a house amidst a beautiful tropical rain forest on the Big Island of Hawaii, the future began to look too much like a lot of household chores, truck maintenance, and television.
Too much humbug, as they might say in the Aloha state.
I wanted more and decided travel was the way to go. I’d always liked a good trip, and I moved about quite a bit as a journalist.
So I went all in.
In the divorce agreement, I gave the house to my ex and kept only my retirement income. I sold my truck, bought a backpack, said goodbye to the dogs, and headed out to the open road.
I hardly knew what I was doing, but it felt awfully good.
This blog is about everything that happened to me next, how I learned to travel, how it changed me, what it taught me about life, the obstacles I’ve overcome, and the challenges that lay ahead.
I’m a senior solo traveler, a wanderer — no home base, no permanent address — just moving from place to place looking for fun, adventure, interesting things, and friends around the world.
I’ve hiked and biked in the Peruvian Andes, trekked among the villages of the Himalayan foothills, and danced joyously with African friends in Zimbabwe. I jumped over waterfalls in Guatemalan jungles, rode motos in the wild streets of Hanoi and Saigon, and explored the swampy depths of the Mekong Delta.
I’ve traveled through the Amazon jungle, sleeping in hammocks on cargo boat decks. I’ve trekked through jungles in Borneo looking for orangutans in the wild, harvested olives on the island of Crete, and planted corn on a Mayan farm in southern Belize.
I drank with Berliners at German beer fests, hung with hooligans at “futbol” matches in Colombia, and sat in the Mexico team’s dugout at the Caribbean World Series of Baseball.
I’ve seen the Northern Lights and swam in the winter waters of the Kemijoki, Finland’s longest River.
I played the black market cigar game in Havana, bought legal pot in The Netherlands, negotiated for some not-so-legal stuff elsewhere, and invariably enjoyed going wherever I was advised not to go.
And most of all, in the end, perhaps too late in some ways, I won the battle for my true being over alcohol and weed, learning the best lesson of them all in the process. Be yourself, real life is bigger and better than what substance abuse offers
Next up?
After more than seven years on six continents, including a couple of extended COVID-related stays in Hawaii and Mexico, I’ve settled in New Jersey, where I’m writing a memoir about growing up a Baby Boomer.
I was born in 1951 in Camden, New Jersey, raised in Paulsboro, and now carving out a tale of my career in journalism, leaving the East Coast to live nine years in California, raising a family in Hawaii, and ending on the road in retirement—my life and travels—the why and how.
After completing my 72nd trip around the sun in December 2023, I suppose it was about time — the time remaining, that is.
Readers know this has never really been a typical travel blog featuring top-ten lists of various travel destinations, local hot spots on tried-and-true travel paths, and routine reviews of over-reviewed tourist attractions.
I prefer to write stories that highlight the emotional push and pull of the road and the oft-untold underbelly of the travel experience, telling about my late-life journey from a more personal sense of introspection, basically talking about my love affair with a lifestyle that continues fanning my desire to stay alive by not staying still.
I’ve been fortunate in that my two fixed retirement pensions provided enough income to live comfortably on the road, able to help out a few others who needed it, all without having to support myself online.
Finally, promoting my lifestyle might just help some of my readers decide how to live out their own late-life dreams. Nothing would be better.
Click on the Contact page if you have any questions or comments, or send me an email at davidhunterbishop@gmail.com. — dhb