I’ve been thinking lately about how so many people play it safe with their lives. They follow the conventions, avoid making mistakes or taking risks…and end up with precious little to write home about. Meanwhile, free spirits (with or without much money) embrace life, play by their own rules, and chase their dreams — even when more sober loved ones say, “Get real.”
I love being inspired by people who take life by the horns and make it an adventure. There’s a perfect storm of that going on in my family right now. During this next week, I’m setting off on my 20 cities in 20 days Road Trip USA (giving lectures in smaller cities from Seattle to Tallahassee — stay tuned for my reports from the road starting March 3rd), my sister Jan is revving up her pups for the Iditarod dog race (she’ll be blogging from the icy tundra), and my niece Nicolina is in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, inspiring poor kids with her own art-based project.
My work is all about Europe. But more fundamentally, it’s about living life with abandon through travel — whether vacationing in France, road-tripping across the USA, combing your love of snow and dogs into a 1,000-mile-long sled race in Alaska, or painting public spaces in South America. So throughout this next month, we’ll be featuring a trio of adventures: my road trip updates here on my blog, and my sister’s and niece’s blogs on my website.
Today, I’d like to introduce you to my niece, Nicolina. She’s the far-out, idealistic, nonconformist flower child of our family. A street artist who goes by just one name, she’s part of an artistic community in New York City. These days, she’s on an open-ended adventure in South America — creating travel experiences not with guidebooks or tour buses, but with a free spirit, almost no money, and paintbrushes.
Nicolina works with street kids (currently in Rio), providing them with the outlines of anatomically correct hearts and cheering them on as they fill these hearts with their hopes, aspirations, and dreams. It turns out her brainchild is inspiring and empowering for kids who need hope in otherwise very hard and often dreary lives.
Nicolina has agreed to report three times a week on her blog about her “Brazil Through the Back Door” adventure. Click over to ricksteves.com (look for the “Nicolina ART” link on the right side of the homepage) and join me in following the adventures of Nicolina.
They may wind up with little to write home about but they are the ones who: are go-to for crises; provide help and are the ones we most trust for advice. There are grasshoppers and ants. Of course we all like to be hopping here and there – but when severe winters come we look for our aunts. The American way has been live for today. But that’s Greek to me.
Having just returned from 6 weeks in Northern Tanzania, where we traveled to farms, schools and hospitals, meeting with people, picking fruit and distributing maize to hungry people with a side trip to Uganda, we can only say Amen to travel with abandon. Just remember the people you meet are all part of one human family, respect and love that.
What’s wrong with a little nepotism? Everybody else does it. If this kid wants to travel and write and earn a few bucks, great. By the way, I have a nephew who is into phlebotomy.
I’m all for street artists; indeed, they’re powered by their own creativity and limited only by the bounds of expansive imagination. A lot of cities would suffer eternal drabness and liflessness without them. It takes all types, people….
Posted on oh thank you, thank you so much for sharing this idea. I haven’t uaglhed so hard in a long time. I think in our minds sometimes, our ideas are so good, and then they come out so wrong .again, thank you for allowing me to giggle!!