I’ve found myself confronting an odd personal dichotomy:
I frequently, almost obsessively and exclusively, travel outside the borders of the United States whenever I can. I can tell you how to get, step by step, from Richmond to a small town in Northern Thailand using mostly public transportation.
YET……
I doubt that I could navigate a visiting guest from my house to anywhere not located within Richmond City and even then Google Maps might be involved.
I’ve become somewhat of a creature of habit and I’ve found that’s pretty easy to do here in RVA. I frequent the same places for happy hour and eat brunch at the same restaurants. I’ll drive the same streets to and from home to just about everywhere and take part in the same small handful of activities year after year.
I am a person who walked two hours on a barely marked trail through desiccated rice paddies in Laos to stay in a bamboo hut for the night, yet I feel that driving from the Fan to Crossroads Coffee on Forest Hill Ave is a distance far enough to require serious pondering. It’s ridiculous!
Richmond Has So Many Different Things To Do!
To have lived here a decade and experienced so little is preposterous. The city is positively bursting at the seams with a little something for everyone and if you’re open to trying something at least once, there is no reason to claim that “Richmond is boring”.
That is the hypothesis I’m building this whole blog project on.
I want to visit every craft brewery, walk the halls of every museum, see the James River from kayak to paddleboard, run the trails and bike the city. I need to force myself to do different things and be open to new experiences.
Part of what I loved about my life of travel when I quit my job and backpacked the world was the sheer variety that every day could bring. I don’t see why I can’t recreate some semblance of that here in Richmond.
I’ve got the will, now I just need to find all of the ways.
