I’m back.
After a month of traveling non-stop, I’m home.
It was both exactly as I expected it to be and nothing like I expected at all. It was everything.
I’ve got so much to tell you.
About Rwanda and Alberta and British Columbia and Washington and Oregon.
But despite the incredible trip and the learning and the honest to God, jaw-dropping beauty, I still came home feeling like this guy:
Why? Because one of the things that was my constant throughout is missing.
This hat…
Somewhere between British Columbia and Washington I took it off to be polite, laid it on a table, got caught up in a conversation and walked away.
I’ve mourned it ever since.
The hat is from Tilley but it’s not the Tilley hat you’re used to.
Ish and the boys have that Tilley hat. They took it with them around the world and continue to whip it out for trips that demand it.
My Tilley Hat wearing boys alongside a member of their Tilley tribe in India.
But my hat was different.
When Tilley heard that I’d be traveling again, they offered up a few pieces for me to try out. The hat was an instant hit.
It fit my style (and my head!) perfectly and it hid the often tangled, no-conditioner-available mess that my rat’s nest of a hairdo becomes when I’m traveling light. My “no hair products, soft water or time to perfect a ‘do” traveling lifestyle has its downside. And that downside was abundantly clear to me as I struggled to deal with my less than fashionable self each morning. But once outside? No problem at all for the hat.
Focused on the arc of my arrow, not my hair, in Uganda.
If I can find any solace in the missing hat it’s the fact that I’ve still got this:
The jacket.
The ying to its yang. The chocolate sauce to its sundae. The hat and jacket combo saw me through four weeks of travel and netted compliments to boot. (Told ya they couldn’t see my hair!)
Warm and hooded and funky zippered and perfect. From Rwanda to Alberta to BC to Washington and home again.
Love it.
Didn’t even give up the hat when we had to wear a helmet to climb in Whistler and yup, that’s my hoodie hood up on top. Perfection.
And completing the trio? My “adventure pants.”
Our adventurous crew in Blue River, B.C.
Tilley refers to them as Legends Roll Up Pants but if you saw the things that these pants helped me do you’d agree with my name for them. In them, with the hoodie on and the hat in place, I was a force to be reckoned with.
What kinds of super powers did they give me?
The ability to scale mountains on two wheels, to climb glaciers and to hike into bears’ forest home.
Roll em up. Roll em down. Tuck them into my socks to avoid hordes of red ants inching towards me in the African rainforest. No matter the adventure, they never faltered.
If there’s any solace to my missing hat it’s the fact that its partners in crime remain. Well, that and the fact that I guess I could go into any Tilley store and purchase a new one. But not yet. I’m still holding out hope that the original finds its way home to me.
One way or another though, this has to be handled . The rat’s nest isn’t the same without her.
Tilley Endurables provided a few pieces of clothing ahead of my trip to Rwanda. As always my opinions on the clothing are completely my own and my opinion, since 2011 when I first tried them out, is that they are fantastic. ;)
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