Hope, Dream, Plan, Change Your Hair, Live: Repeat.

      Once upon a time and four years ago I was nineteen, and when I was nineteen I was going to be a whitewater rafting guide.  I was going to be one if it killed me.  I had a company picked out, I had investigated salary, interviewed six or seven months early, been practically promised the job, and I was getting ready.  I had lists of equipment saved at rei-oulet, I had spent time thinking and pondering about what made a good guide and how I could be her.  I was going to the gym to train the muscles in my diminuitive form to be able to manhandle 22-foot gear boats.  I was even dreaming of rafts flipping over and what I would do.  Over analyzing everything, I even got a perm because it would be a hairstyle that would work well wet and unwashed except by repeated encounters with riverwater and bug spray.

   

     About a month and a half before winter semester ended and my adventure began, I got a call from my "river boss."  No job.  Bookings were down; the number of guides he had were up; his need of a new guide was zero.  I was floored.  My dream, my goal, the hope that had kept me excited and motivated for seven months had just been snatched away with one phone call.  All that preparation, the lists, the training, the perm--all useless.  

   

    I got lucky, though.  And I spent the summer living in the woods anyway, but as an actress instead.  As I returned to school and turned twenty, I planned again.  The next summer I would be guiding.  I applied again.  Then I decided to go on a mission.  So I started preparing, and, since such decisions always get relfected in my hair, I cut off the perm.  I wouldn't want to try and get it repermed in some third world country, right?  I needed my natural straight hair back.  So I cut my hair.  Then I decided I wasn't going on a mission after all.  But I got lucky.  I spent the summer in Japan teaching English and having all sorts of adventures in city, forest, and ocean by foot, bus, sailboat, and ferry.  

   

   Time,  as the song goes, is marching on, and three years after I got my original perm, I got another.  This time it was because, as a teacher, I didn't want to spend extra time doing my hair.  And, as always, I'm daydreaming of what to do with my summer.  Ideally it should combine money and adventure, since I need both a change of pace and a new car.  I've looked at international plane tickets, railway passes around the US, road trips to Canada, and greyhound buses across the continent.  A teacher's summer is so short compared to a college student's.  I have no long four months.  I have only about two months and a week.  What should I do?

    

      Then, with a sudden whim, I looked up that rafting company.  Adventure: check.  Money: a lot more than I'd make by not working at all.  Time frame: doesn't start until the second week of June.  Liklihood of getting time off for the annual family reunion: decent.  My qualifications: Except for physical preparedness, good.  The boss's need for new guides: unlikely.  But then, why not apply?  I've done it twice before.  This dream feel became optional and fell asleep long ago, but maybe it's time to wake it up and give it a third chance to come true.  

    

Besides, I already have the perm.