{"id":7788,"date":"2016-11-29T22:46:56","date_gmt":"2016-11-29T11:46:56","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.ourpangaea.net\/?p=7788"},"modified":"2016-11-29T22:47:37","modified_gmt":"2016-11-29T11:47:37","slug":"celebrating-past-and-present","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.ourpangaea.net\/?p=7788","title":{"rendered":"Celebrating past and present"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"In<\/a>

In 1978 I embarked on my big overseas adventure – and never went home<\/p><\/div>\n

In 1978 I was a green-as-grass California kid straight out of Uni with an idea of travelling\u00a0in Europe for a couple of months before going home and getting some sort of graduate degree. It seemed like a fine idea until a company that ran camping tours around Europe for the 18-35 year olds asked if I would like to become a tour leader. \u00a0Without any consideration of what it might mean\u00a0I immediately said “hell yes!” and completely changed the trajectory of my life. \u00a0Now, 37 years later a group of the guys I worked with in Europe have all descended on our home to help me celebrate a milestone birthday.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

\"Old<\/a>

Old friend reunite – 36 years later we still all looked exactly the same!<\/p><\/div>\n

This camping tour company hired young drivers and tour leaders, mainly from Australia and New Zealand, to lead their tours. \u00a0I was the token Yank amongst a group of guys who, like me, were just looking for a short term job, earn a couple of quid and have some fun. We passed our training trip in early 1979 and were quickly given our first group to lead around Europe. \u00a0Trips usually ran from 9 to 60 days and spread out all over Europe, Scandinavia, Eastern Europe and North Africa. \u00a0Those were the days!<\/p>\n

\"Kim<\/a>

Kim and I impersonating a couple of Dutchmen in 1980<\/p><\/div>\n

I worked in Europe for over four years, including some winters leading hotel tours, and generally specialised in the longer itineraries of 60 days around Europe or 45 days to North Africa. \u00a0I ended up doing many trips with a guy\u00a0named Kim and it was on a 60 day tour of Europe in mid 1980 with Kim as my driver that I completely fell for a young blond Aussie girl from Sydney named Julie who was a passenger on that trip. \u00a0We married three years later and this year celebrated our 36th year together! \u00a0Fairy tale stuff, right!<\/p>\n

\"Knights<\/a>

Knights of the road – great mates and good memories from all those years ago<\/p><\/div>\n

Fast forward from those carefree days of meeting great people and getting paid to travel around Europe to a recent weekend in Sydney when no fewer than 12 of the people who worked together so long ago came together for a reunion and to join others in a celebration of my milestone birthday. \u00a0I know it wasn’t my birthday that was the drawcard for this reunion but it was a catalyst to get people to fly from New Zealand, Melbourne, Adelaide and Cairns to catch up with old mates, live in the past for one more night and tell a few lies. \u00a0I hadn’t seen some of the guys for 26 years and some of them hadn’t seen each other since those heady days in London. \u00a0Wow.<\/p>\n

\"Julie,<\/a>

Julie, Zach, Will and Anna join the birthday boy<\/p><\/div>\n

\"There<\/a>

There was plenty to laugh about on a great night with friends<\/p><\/div>\n

But wait, there’s more! \u00a0Many other close friends joined us on the night, including all the runners from our PSR Runners group, friends from baseball, work and other social groups. \u00a0It was a grand night, surrounded by friends, family, colleagues, and many blasts from the past. \u00a0The night didn’t finish until just before the sun rose and it capped off a great weekend of reminiscing, telling\u00a0stories and one or two sore heads. \u00a0As it should be!<\/p>\n

\"The<\/a>

The PSR Runners – a proud bunch of over the hill runners<\/p><\/div>\n

\"Every<\/a>

Every party needs a group of hot chicks to drink all the champagne<\/p><\/div>\n

\"wl3_0072\"<\/a>\"wl3_0062\"<\/a><\/p>\n

\"The<\/a>

The last word – Bill and Kim sometime around 4am – we’re not sure who took the photo<\/p><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In 1978 I was a green-as-grass California kid straight out of Uni with an idea of travelling\u00a0in Europe for a couple of months before going home and getting some sort of graduate degree. It seemed like a fine idea until a company that ran camping tours around Europe for the 18-35 year olds asked if I would like to become a tour leader. \u00a0Without any consideration of what it might …<\/span> Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":7773,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[14],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7788","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-australia"],"jetpack-related-posts":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.ourpangaea.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/10\/8-Europe-79.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ourpangaea.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7788","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ourpangaea.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ourpangaea.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ourpangaea.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ourpangaea.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=7788"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/www.ourpangaea.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7788\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7802,"href":"https:\/\/www.ourpangaea.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7788\/revisions\/7802"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ourpangaea.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=7788"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ourpangaea.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=7788"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ourpangaea.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=7788"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}