the stuff National Geographics are made of

It all started with a tiny spoon.

I returned to the common room of my floor at my hostel, and an overly nice person was eating salad with a tiny spoon. She smiled and said hi, so I felt obligated to make some sort of small talk. Hence, a tiny spoon comment. Something brilliant like "That's a tiny fork you've got there."

This first led to a discussion about how it was, in fact, a yogurt spoon, and ended up as a retelling of Marie's adventures around the globe. They include

• A horse race in the Egyptian desert that ended in getting mobbed by Arabian men trying to cover her up to survive a sandstorm
• Getting stuck in a boat on a rock in Thailand and having to be rescued by helicopter
• Hiring a Cambodian tour guide to take her hiking so that she wouldn't find land mines instead
• Spending six weeks in the Borneo jungle with only one tour guide, some soap, and a sleeping bag. Food came from villages that fed them in return for taking packages to the next village or just straight up hospitality. Showers occured when it rained, and consisted of stripping naked and soaping as quickly as possible. Clothes washing took place shortly thereafter.

Most recently, she's spent 6 months in southeast Asia and is climbing Mt. Fuji tomorrow, despite minor injuries. She goes home to exotic Canada on Thursday.

What I want to know is how you stop. Eventually, these amazing travelers of the world must slow down and get too old to do things like swim up the Amazon River, fighting off the crocodiles bare-handed. But how do you go from exploring abandonded Mayan temples to clipping coupons to save 20 cents on cheddar cheese? Maybe you start making adventures for yourself, like "How many wild cannibal grandchildren can I lock into one closet?" Or maybe you start drinking yourself stupid, so that even boiling your broccoli tasteless is exciting.

My plan is to keep working until I get too senile to be productive and I get forcibly retired. At that point, it'll be time to meddle in my family's lives and become a burden whose only redeeming quality is the massive amounts of wealth I will have earned from my wildly successful academic career.