Just a quick update for you all with some exciting news! Finally, after six months of rehab for my broken tib and fib, I am getting on a plane that requires the use of a passport on Sunday!

Prior to the broken ankle (you can read about that saga here if you’re new to Gourmet Roaming!), I was due to finish my grown-up gap year in Colorado in February, spending time with friends I have made there over two ski seasons and many return visits. Crested Butte, CO is somewhere I consider another home. It has held a very special place in my heart since I first lived there in the winter of 2002/03. It seemed like a great place to spend a month at the end of my travels, to reflect and rest and gather my thoughts before returning to life in Australia. And now, I can’t think of anywhere I’d rather be as I get my mojo back!

My ankle is much improved, but it’s not back to normal range of motion quite yet. I’m walking pretty well, but haven’t managed much more than 90 minutes without needing a good rest so I’ve needed to factor that in when considering if, when and where to resume my travels. As I’ve talked about before, I’m a wanderer these days. There’s nothing I love more than exploring a new place on foot, walking for hours and planning my days around where I might eat lunch and dinner. I’m simply not up to that style of travel quite yet. So Mexico, Cuba, Costa Rica, Nicaragua and the other spots I missed along the way will need to wait a while yet before I can see them the way I want to.

But, with a sensible balance between the familiar and the new, I’m ready and very eager to hit the road again. I fly into San Francisco and will be spending a few days with a CB friend who is now a winemaker in Sonoma, California. I’ve never been to Sonoma or the Napa Valley so I’m really looking forward to seeing it under her expert guidance! I will spend two nights in San Fran, primarily to eat at Saison and Atelier Crenn, numbers 37 and 83 respectively on The World’s 50 Best Restaurants list. I’ve been to San Fran before, so won’t feel like I need to be pounding up and down the hills in order to do it justice – I can happily just focus on the food experience and pull back on the walking! Then onto Colorado where I will spend about a month just being in a place I adore, with people I love…who knows, maybe even some little walks in the mountains as the wildflowers come out?!

Of course, this trip is more than just a holiday or a resumption of my previous itinerary. After six months of pretty intense rehab, uncertainty, frustrations, limitations and everything else that comes along with recovery from a serious injury (including lots of love and joy and happiness about being home in Port Fairy with my family and friends), I need a trip to regain some of that sense of possibility again. Travel gives me so much; it fuels my sense of self, it sparks my creativity, it opens my mind and my heart – it just makes me happy on so many levels.

My intention for my year out was to explore, dream and discover… I haven’t been doing much of that lately, so it’s time to throw off the bowlines again 🙂