Why am I doing this?

This is something I wrote on the plane ride down to Lima.  I was pretty nervous.

Many people have asked the question why we are undertaking a trip of such magnitude.  This is a fair question that sometimes I haven't been quite sure why I convinced myself and a few friends to endeavor something so grand.  But as I reflect on the question I think I have come up with a few answers as to why I am doing this.  Maybe it's because traveling is in my blood and is something that has been passed down generations of both my mother and father's families.  My dad's uncles, while Amish, decided in the late 30's to tour Europe and the Middle East after a bountiful harvest gave them the means to go.  They rode a boat to Italy, listened to Hitler speak, took a bus across the desert to Baghdad while the driver used the stars as guidance.  My dad, mom, grandparents, and several uncles lived in Central and South America doing voluntary service.  My dad did a similar trip to South America when he was my age.  I have had siblings and cousins tour Europe and live overseas.  All these events influenced the culture I was raised in gave me a desire to see as much of the world as possible.  Maybe it's because I have a desire to explore the depths of being a man.  This first 23 years of my life have been spent mostly living at home and getting an education.  While what I have learned in that time is very valuable for becoming an actual man, it doesn't have the same effect that I imagine exploring the depths of a continent will have.  Maybe we can capture that feeling that Lewis and Clark, Sir Edmund Hilary  or Marco Polo had when they saw new horizons. Maybe I am just looking for an adventure to stretch me.  Hiking, camping, and living off our wits will hopefully give me sense of what life was like when survival was more of a struggle.  I feel like a bird that has jumped out of the nest and I have to either fly or smash into the rocks at the bottom of the cliff.  Maybe I'm just looking to have a little fun with some great friends.  Maybe I want to have stories to tell my kids and grand kids some day.  Maybe I want to figure what to do with my future.  Maybe I am afraid of living my life with regrets of what I could have done.  Maybe all of these reasons are playing a part.  Whatever it is, this blog will keep you posted on the adventures, both fun and not fun, we will be having.  And maybe when I come back I'll have a definitive answer for the question.