CURRENT MISSION

Travel to the ends of the earth.

ABOUT ME

Most of my career, worked in the Maine Community College System(MCCS). Retired when I was 47, so I could travel and pursue other interests. Was a single parent for 15 years. My son is now 42 and works for Jet Blue at PWM. Am happily married. My wife is also retired from MCCS.
Although out of the "rat race", I keep very busy with various small projects. Four months of the year, my wife and I live in northern Thailand. Our life style is very simple there. Rent a room in a guest house, eat in Thai food shops every day, walk or use a push bike to get around. Socialize with Thai and Western friends. Gail has written a book and studies Thai language. Friends tell me I should put together a book from all my travel notes. Perhaps I will do that, when less physically active. Love to explore and record what I see.

PHILOSOPHY

Trying to do all the things I want to do with the time I have left. Am constantly amazed by Mother Nature. Everybody has a story to tell. Hoping my visits to other countries contribute in some small way to world peace.

Why I’m on Couchsurfing

HOW I PARTICIPATE IN COUCHSURFING

Joined the CS Project because of the good things I heard about it. Over the years, have done a lot of hitch-hiking. That has lead to staying in people's homes and making new friends. Most of these folks I would not have met, otherwise. Some have made it to Maine to stay in our home.

COUCHSURFING EXPERIENCE

Have surfed four times away from USA and it has been a real learning experience for all involved! One host was in Guam, two in Australia - Cooktown and Cairns, third in Seoul, South Korea. Gail and I surfed with three different hosts in Jacksonville, Florida this past spring. Have hosted several people at our home in Maine. In late spring we hosted a friendly young Russian couple.

Interests

Travel, photography, foreign cultures, writing, reading, cycling, walking, listening, observing, cooking, splitting wood, swimming, Boston Red Sox and Celtics, meeting people, drinking beer, eating, dancing, boating, fishing, exploring, adventure.. In addition to much of the above, Gail enjoys writing (See The Roots of a Family - Life in Rural Maine on amazon.com), reading history , biography/memoir and natural history,and tweaking computers. She also loves gardening and has both perennial and vegetable gardens.

• dogs
• chickens
• writing
• books
• photography
• tattoos
• piercings
• make up
• dancing
• dining
• cooking
• beer
• walking
• drinking
• flying
• gardening
• boating
• clothing
• reading
• traveling
• socializing
• blogging
• music
• cycling
• fishing
• hiking
• backpacking
• camping
• track and field
• swimming
• ecology
• teaching
• history
• hitchhiking
• volunteering
• beaches

Music, Movies, and Books

Night of the Iguana, Outlaw Josey Wales, Fargo, Lawrence of Arabia, Midnight Express, Sheltering Sky, Jeremiah Johnson, A River Runs Through It, Casablanca, Brazil, Box of Moonlight, Deerhunter, Alexander(my wife and I were extras in it). Into Thin Air, Smilla's Sense of Snow, Perfect Storm (I graduated from high school in Gloucester, Mass.), Shipping News, Ice Bound: A Doctor's Incredible Story of Survival at the South Pole. Some of Maine author, Stephen King's books.
Folk music from around the world. And rock and roll from all eras.

One Amazing Thing I’ve Done

Jim: My two month trip to New Zealand; my NZ experience started in Auckland. Flew there from Melbourne, OZ. Stayed in the city with people I met when hitchhiking the east coast of OZ. After a few days in Aukland, I traveled in a loop around the northern part of North Island. Went along 90 Mile Beach to northern tip. Then south on east side to Bay of Islands and other places of interest. Returned to Auckland after about 10 days and stayed with friends again. Then headed south, made many stops. Know I went to Lake Taupa area, New Plymouth, etc. Eventually, arrived in Wellington and took night ferry to South Island. Went directly to Christchurch. Stayed there a few days. Then hitch-hiked down the east coast to Dunedin and Invercargill on southern tip. Next, went north to Queenstown, Fiordland, and Franz Josef Glacier. Then returned to North Island and spent some time on a large sheep farm in central area. Was lucky to be at the farm for sheep shearing session. Really enjoyed watching the sheep dogs at work.
During my time in NZ, spent about a third of my nights with people I met hitching, another third, in hostels, and the other nights camping out under the stars with tarp and sleeping bag.
It was an amazing trip. If I had gone there as a young man, would never have left.

Gail: After growing up in a small town in Maine, my experience in college was a huge eye-opener. And a one-month project of mine was life changing, opening me up to new cultures, new possibilities and world travel. It was my first time flying and only the second time out of Maine. I studied island ecology through collection of flora and fauna throughout the terrain of desert, rain forest and coral reef environs in Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands. It was a wonderful opportunity and I was never the same.

Teach, Learn, Share

Have 100's of travel experiences I am happy to share verbally, or in writing. If you want to travel closer to the ground, I can help.
Here's a Wall Street Journal article that features my wife and I:
Backpacking in Golden Years

By Cris Prystay, The Wall Street Journal

February 27, 2004

Mae Sai, Thailand -- Gail Rowe, a retired college teacher from Cape Elizabeth, Maine, sets down her backpack and peers inside a thatched hut billed by her guidebook as one of the better "guesthouses" in this dusty town on the Thailand-Myanmar border.

Mrs. Rowe's husband, Jim, 59 years old, sweeps aside a mosquito net and pats a threadbare mattress on the hut's green linoleum floor. The only other guest at this backpacker pit-stop is a 24-year-old Swedish traveler, staying in a more modern cabin nearby. The Rowes opt for the hut: It's $2.50 a night, half the price of the cabin. "I thought I was on a budget," marvels Angelica Erikkson, the Swede. "These two are ... what's the word? Hard-core."

Globe-trotting on a shoe-string has been a pastime of the young and restless as far back as the 1960s. Nowadays, a growing number of retired baby boomers are hitting the trail with them, bypassing luxury for travel on the cheap.

Travelers over the age of 55 now make up about 15% of Thailand's backpacker population, estimates Peter de Jong, president of the Bangkok-based Pacific Asia Travel Association, and former head of the Copenhagen-based Federation of International Youth Travel Organizations. "There weren't any 10 years ago," he says.

That leaves many of the young backpackers who throng Asia's budget haunts alternately impressed and bemused. "I didn't expect to see so many old people backpacking," moans Allen Daniels, a 23-year-old student from Los Angeles. "They ride in the same trucks, stay at the same cheap places -- kind of makes it seem a bit less adventurous."

Not all young travelers are put off by the old-timers. Canadian Julia MacIsaac, 25, says she found a soul-mate in retired teacher Sallie Latch, who is 71. They met at a guest house in Mae Sot, another northern Thai town, and hitched around together for a few weeks, at one point squeezing into the back of a pickup truck with 25 Thais and a few dozen chickens for a two-hour ride. I kept thinking 'wow, I can't believe she's doing this,' " Ms. MacIsaac says. "We would take crowded trucks, crowded buses, and she'd just swing with it."

Ms. Latch, from Petaluma, Calif., first traveled this way in Asia in the '70s, as a volunteer in the U.S. Peace Corps. When she retired she didn't even consider alternatives. "I couldn't afford to go for so long, and I wouldn't see half the places or meet the people I do this way," she says. "I just love this kind of travel."

Since the 1980s, a network of guesthouses, hostels and budget-travel agencies has sprung up around the world, luring adventure-loving retirees. Lonely Planet Publications, a budget-travel publisher of guides for place off the beaten track, even created an 'Older Travelers' chat room on its Web site, subtitled "spend the kids' inheritance and hit the road." Here, a group of retirees swap tips on where to get heart pills in Vietnam and which U.S medical plans cover you if you're abroad for six months or more. One note from another retiree: Don't bore younger travelers with "excessive tales of where you've been and how things used to be in the good old traveling days."

Another tip from Mr. Rowe -- don't take on the role of surrogate Dad. A career teacher, he found it hard to shed his schoolroom persona. During his first retirement trip, a solo journey to New Zealand eight years ago, he turned himself into a pariah.

"When I first started traveling, I felt I should be providing advice -- how to get somewhere, how to save money, where to stay that's cheaper," he says. "Then I realized nobody was paying any attention. They were just glazing over."

The Rowes, both teachers, used to vacation in New Mexico, but they dreamed of traveling further afield. Mr. Rowe got the travel bug in his late teens when his father, a World War II veteran and career military man, moved the family to Japan for three years. But except a trip to Britain and another to Spain, Mr. Rowe didn't leave the U.S. again until he retired eight years ago. Last year, his wife, 53, took early retirement and the two began to plan annual trips abroad.

The Rowes had never backpacked, but both had done plenty of camping and fishing in Maine's countryside. "Using an Asian-style [squat] toilet is not a big deal if you've done a lot of camping," Mr. Rowe says.

"Friends ask 'how can you hitchhike around, and stay in places with cold water?' But we couldn't do it any other way," says Mrs. Rowe, a slim woman with curly reddish-gray hair. "We want to travel, and you can't get far on a teacher's pension plan."

They have since made two four-month trips to Thailand in the past two years, spending an average of $10 each per day on transport, lodging and food. They travel with midsize daypacks and take just a few changes of clothes. Mrs. Rowe carries a stock of her migraine medication. Mr. Rowe packs cholesterol pills.

As dusk settles over Mae Sai, the Rowes set out for dinner, bypassing the budget cafes listed in the Lonely Planet in favor of an even cheaper roadside food-stall. A young woman serves up plates of rice and savory stir-fried vegetables that cost the Rowes just 60 cents each. They buy a few bottles of beer and stroll back to the guesthouse.

The Swedish traveler, Ms. Erikkson, welcomes her brother, Andreas, 28, who has just arrived from another town. The group settles on the patio with a few more beers and the talk turns to tattoos. Mr. Erikkson has a Viking symbol on his forearm. Ms. Erikkson hikes up the back of her shirt to show a dog's paw on her lower back.

"Tattoos are OK, but I can't stand facial piercings," Mrs. Rowe says. "When I was teaching, these kids would come in with all this metal in their face. I just couldn't concentrate."

The Swedes exchange glances, and the conversation falters. Ms. Erikkson says she plans to get her tongue pierced next month in New Zealand. "I just have one question," blurts Mr. Rowe. "Why?!"

Ms. Erikkson shrugs and looks away. "I don't know. I just want to," she says. Mr. Rowe moves quickly to salvage rapport by advising her to ask for Valium, then begins to describe his recent colonoscopy. "Time out," Mrs. Rowe laughs. "That's too much information."

Despite such awkward moments, the Rowes see their age as a big advantage in connecting with local people. Mr. Rowe struck up a friendship with a 50-ish owner of the Mae Sai guesthouse, who took him on a camping trip with a group of Thai friends. The couple chatted up a restaurant owner in Kachanburi, near the famed river Kwai, who then invited them to a wedding in a nearby village. And recently, they struck up a conversation with a Thai movie casting director who ended up hiring them as extras in scenes of Oliver Stone's "Alexander," currently being filmed in Thailand. The Rowes get meals and accommodation, plus a small stipend of 1,500 baht a day ($38.30) that actually outstrips their daily travel budget. "We've had so many great experiences," Mr. Rowe says.

For the Rowes, bonding with other travelers is part of that. On a recent night in Mae Sai, a group of backpackers make their way to a noisy nightclub nearby, where Mr. Rowe starts rabbit-hopping to the techno music, then jumps up onto an empty stage. Waiters jump after him and lead him down. "Way to go!" shouts Ms. Erikkson, flashing him the thumbs-up signal. "I'm impressed!"

"It's good to see old people doing this," she says. "That way you know its not over when you get to that age."

http://www.globalaging.org/elderrights/us/2004/backpacking.htm

What I Can Share with Hosts

Jim is a good grill-man and likes to prepare food in other people's kitchens for them. Gail is a good gardener and can weed/prune your garden or help you with computer issues.

Here is a blog you might find interesting, describing the way we travel and the wonderful Thai people we meet along our way.
http://growe237.blogspot.com/

Countries I’ve Visited

Argentina, Australia, Belgium, Belize, Cambodia, Canada, Costa Rica, Ecuador, Fiji, France, Germany, Gibraltar, Honduras, Indonesia, Ireland, Japan, Laos, Malaysia, Mexico, Myanmar, Netherlands, New Zealand, Peru, Philippines, Portugal, Puerto Rico, Singapore, Spain, Switzerland, Thailand, United Kingdom

Countries I’ve Lived In

Japan, Thailand, United States

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