Travel Icon Packs Bags for Very Last Time
It’s not always silly games and cheap pints in the world of budget travel. Today HostelBloggers learned of the premature death of inspirational backpacking enthusiast and genre-defining author, Dave Freeman.
The advertising-exec and natural born wild-child wrote the book 100 Things To Do Before You Die back in 1999 - the original adventure bible which not only produced a rash of other such lists but also motivated a whole generation of travelers to pick up a rucksack and head into the unknown.
Among the clinically sane activities he recommended are running with the bulls in Pamplona and ‘land diving’ on the Pacific island of Vanuatu which is basically an extreme version of bungee jumping (yes, such a sport apparently exists) that involves launching yourself off a cliff attached to a vine rather than a bungee.
Freeman was just 47 years old when he fell in his family home and died. That he had completed just half of the book’s adventures seems to have a particular resonance in the context of the slightly morbid introduction he penned nearly ten years ago.
“This life is a short journey,” he writes, urging readers to try and “visit all the coolest places on earth before you pack those bags for the very last time.”
We wonder if he had any inkling that his last of those great 100 journeys would be his final adventure. But if ever there was a moral from this sad tale it’s that life really is too short.
