Boomer backpackers prefer to stay off the beaten path

By Melissa Serraglio The Tri-City News

Sep 14 2007

For some people, a trip takes a lot of planning. Hotel reservations must be booked, suitcases packed and sightseeing must be scheduled.

For Port Coquitlam resident Bill Greenland, a retired Tri-City teacher and Terry Fox Theatre’s first manager, planning a trip is just the opposite.

“I definitely have a laissez faire attitude when it comes to travelling,” Bill said. “We like to leave ourselves and our schedules open and never make any reservations.”

Greenland and his wife, Karen, leave Sunday for an eight-week backpacking trip that will begin in Italy and lead them wherever else they feel like heading at the time.

“We’re definitely hitting Italy, the Greek Islands and Turkey, but we’re not sure where else yet,” he said. “If we find a place we like, we’ll spend more time there.”

There will be no schedules to follow and no rooms to book at any hotels, and the Greenlands wouldn’t want it any other way.

Bill, who’s 60 years old, and Karen, who’s 59, have travelled throughout their lives but took up backpacking once they retired.

They have been backpacking together for the past three years now, trading in four star hotels for hostels, and have never planned what they’re going to do or see next.

“The trick is to leave yourself really open for the experience, rather than checking your watch and saying ‘I have to be at this place right now,’” Bill said. “When we’re backpacking I find that my daily things here at home drift away, and we both live much more in the moment.”

While Bill has plenty of backpacking experience under his belt, his wife hasn’t always been quite as receptive to the idea of backpacking as she is now.

When they first started backpacking together, Bill said Karen had some reservations about the whole concept.

“She was concerned about safety issues and where we’d be staying when we first started backpacking,” he said. “But she’s definitely much more comfortable with it now than she was before.”

Bill, on the other hand, has always been a fan of backpacking. He prefers it to staying in a hotel or at a guest resort and said he wouldn’t be comfortable going on a trip any other way.

For him, it’s the freedom that gives him the most satisfaction.

“I don’t mean to dismiss all-inclusive trips or guided bus tours, but I feel trapped if I get on one of those,” he said. “I feel like I’m not a person anymore, I’m just a number where people see me as commission. Also, If I’m backpacking and I wind up in a place I don’t like, I don’t have to stay there, I can just leave.”

He said he sees himself more as a traveller rather than a tourist and has noticed a difference in the way people interact with him when he is backpacking.

“You’re treated differently if you’re on your own,” he said. “I think people sometimes see you as being more equal and more connected with them when you’re a backpacker.”

But backpacking can have its risks as well, such as showing up at a new town at night and having to find a place to stay in the dark.

There are also risks to travelling without a set schedule.

“You can’t expect things to always work out,” he said. “Sometimes you have no control over the situation, but you always have control over how you can react.”