This week we talked with Dale Johnson, geographer, and volunteer. Dale shares with us some of his amazing adventures in traveling and volunteering. He talks with us about how he started out and where he is now. He volunteers with the Lancaster Farmland Trust and rides his bike through the beautiful Lancaster countryside and the farmland. Dale quotes Albert Einstien " "Life is like riding a bike, you either keep moving, or you lose your balance." You don't want to miss this great podcast!!
Podcast Guest: Dale Johnson
Transcription:
Kris Parsons00:01
Welcome to changing the rules, a weekly podcast about people who are living their best life and how you can figure out how to do it too. Join us with your lively host Ray Loewe, better known as the luckiest guy in the world.
Ray Loewe00:16
Good morning, everybody. This is Ray Loewe. And I'm sitting at home in my den today we're doing a zoom interview with one of the luckiest people in the world. And, and before I introduce Dale, let me remind you that the purpose of changing the rules is to showcase one of the people that we think is one of the luckiest people in the world every week. And this is a person that you can use as a role model because they did things that help them take control of their life, and are helping them live things under their own terms. And we can learn a lot by listening to them. So today we have a young man, his name is Dale Johnson. And Dale say hi to everybody.
Dale Johnson01:01
How you doing Ray. Good to see you. And thanks for having me.
Ray Loewe01:06
Well, Dale, and I met at a place called Willow Valley. And we're going to talk about that a little bit. But let's go back and talk about Dale and build his background a little bit because Dale started with one of the most unusual careers that I have run into, and that is in college he majored in what Dale?
Dale Johnson01:29
I majored in geography.
Ray Loewe01:31
Okay, now, why does anyone major in geography and then once one majors in it? What does one do with it?
Dale Johnson01:40
Well, I got interested in geography because I had a wonderful teacher in the eighth grade in a geography class. And she was wonderful. And I had no experience as a child traveling. And I just loved this, this opportunity to look at all these wonderful places all around the world. And so when I got to college, I kept thinking, what am I going to major in? And so I thought that I would think about the classes I really enjoyed, and the geography class I absolutely loved. So I ended up majoring, and got a couple degrees, and was fortunate enough to actually have a career in it.
Ray Loewe02:20
Well, that's, that's pretty cool. You know, one of the things the luckiest people in the world do as they follow what's fascinating and motivating to them. And it's rare, though, that they follow that early in their career. And, you know, we have so many kids going to college today that just go into traditional degrees, and they really have no idea where they're going and they're not excited about life. And I think, Dale, you're, you're lucky there that you found the right place, and you moved forward. So where did you work when you come out with a degree in geography, what do you do?
Dale Johnson02:52
Well, at first, I really wasn't sure what I was going to do with it. Back in those days, a lot of people just majored in a lot of different things. And they weren't that concerned about their career. But I ended up doing a lot of land use planning, I did environmental protection work. But my specialty ended up being computer mapping and GPS, that sort of thing. Way before Google Maps ever existed? And now I kind of think about it. Having computer maps and GPS on your phone. It just kind of blows me away? Yeah. So I was able to actually have a long career in the field of geography. And then also my wife and I ended up for about eight or 10 years, we ran our own small, travel tour company. And that was a that was just fun geography.
Ray Loewe03:41
Yeah. Okay, so you took geography from the, not the corporate world, from the government world, largely, right?
Dale Johnson03:49
Yeah. A lot of it was government Yes. Yes.
Ray Loewe03:51
To now to the personal world of loving life and exploring places and doing things like that. So one of your mantras in life is never stop adding adventure to your life, I think, right? Isn't one of the quotes that you come up with all the time?
Dale Johnson04:08
Oh yeah absolutely. That's, that's, that's one of my, one of my, you know, my mottos? Yeah.
Ray Loewe04:15
So, so I think running a tour company does this, right?
Dale Johnson04:19
Yes, yes.
Ray Loewe04:21
So where did you go? What did you do? What kind of travel did you do? How did you keep this going?
Dale Johnson04:29
Well, we actually hooked up with a local college in the Baltimore area, Stevenson University. And we did travel study tours. So we would take students along, but we also opened it up to outside folks, and a lot of the outside folks liked the fact that there was a geographer on board, and there was a, there was an educational component to it. So we ended up doing tours, the American Southwest. That was our main tour, but each year we would try to add a new one. So we did Atlantic Canada. We did London and the English countryside, we did Paris and the French countryside. So we did that for about 10 years. And then after a while, we thought we'd rather do a little more traveling on our own, rather than going and taking 25 people and being responsible for them. So we kind of gradually shut it down. But it was a great experience for the 10 years.
Ray Loewe05:21
Okay, now you talk to me a little bit about the kind of travel that you and Christine did. It's Kirstine. Right. Right. Okay, she's, she's the better half of the organization. Yes. Yeah, absolutely. So you were talking about the kind of travel that you did, where you really went to places and kind of stayed for a while because you felt this need to, you know, get more in-depth and things. So talk a little bit about what motivated that and how it worked out?
Dale Johnson05:51
Well, in 2006, right toward the end of my wife's career, she worked for McCormick, the Spice Company. So she got an assignment overseas in England for a little over a year. And about every two months, they could fly her home, or they could fly me over there. So other than Christmas, I would just end up going over there. But she lived in this marvelous little village, quaint little village, she lived in a house that was built in 1565, that had a thatched roof. So we loved it there. And we kept thinking, when we retire, we would like to go and travel, where we can stay in places for a longer period of time, add a little adventure, to your vacation, your travels, that sort of thing. So that's what really kind of motivated us. And for many years after that, we've looked at various mechanisms to go in and stay someplace for a longer period of time.
Ray Loewe06:47
You know, when we were talking and kind of our pre-interview here, you know, there there were a number of things that came up that I thought were absolutely fascinating, and, and they have to do with your philosophy of life. And this is why you're one of the luckiest people in the world, by the way, because the luckiest people follow what's fascinating and motivating. And they do it under their own terms. I think you've done this. So you were talking about, you know, never stopped any adventure of your life, you know, getting involved in activities off the beaten path. You know, you said something about you're fascinated also with the tiny little forks in the road.
Dale Johnson07:25
Yes, yeah. Yeah, there's all kinds of little things I, I do think back of, you know, how I met my wife, there was a little fork in the road, some things in my childhood that just send you off in totally different directions. But they're very, very minor little things that, you know, you think back and look at that fork. And you could have gone one way or the other. And those are always quite interesting. Yeah.
Ray Loewe07:52
But you made your choices, and then you live with them. And again, the adventure comes at, okay, yes. Yeah. Okay, so So there are two other things I want to hit before we go on to where you are now. And let's talk about the Zoomobile a little bit.
Dale Johnson08:12
I guess that's an example a little bit off the beaten path. I've always been involved in volunteer activities. And that was shortly after I retired. I started working for the Maryland Zoo in Baltimore. I actually worked for them for two years. But then it was kind of getting in the way of my travels. So they we've just switched over to volunteer status. And then I could have a little more flexibility with my schedule. But we had about 75 animals that we took out to schools and nursing homes, things like that. And every day you went out and you made people happy. And it was a wonderful, maybe the best job I ever had was that job. And you still it was a great opportunity. You still had to learn because you had 75 animals that you had to learn to be able to talk about. You had to learn how to handle them, things like that. But that was a little bit different, a little bit adventuresome, but it was just a great volunteer gig.
Ray Loewe09:08
So what was the most interesting animal you took out to the kids?
Dale Johnson09:13
Probably the penguins. The Maryland Zoo in Baltimore, they specialized in South African penguins. So we had several of those we took out people love them, but they were a little testy and a little unpredictable. And so we always had to be very, very careful with the penguins. So but people absolutely loved them.
Ray Loewe09:36
Okay, and how about dangerous?
Dale Johnson09:40
Oh, probably most dangerous were the parrots and the McCall's they were one of the last ones that you would get trained on. And you'd have to build up a little bit of rapport with them. But their bite, they could actually break a broomstick and they could cut a broomstick in half. So you had to be very, very careful in handling them and make sure you had a good rapport with them so that they never got mad at you.
Ray Loewe10:06
Cool. So how does one get a job like this? I mean, you know, you think and I'm excited by looking at your path here because you really do follow the adventurous. So you know, I mean, how does one all of a sudden take off and say, I'm going to travel the world? And do these kinds of things? And then how the heck do you get to running a Zoomobile?
Dale Johnson10:29
Well, some of them were just luck that when I found out through a friend, but he also did it. So. And he was retired. And so the two of us for many years, we did the Zoomobile. Together, we had a great time. And some of the other things I may discover, through the internet, I just started thinking about what I'd like to do. And then I just do some, some research on them. But there's a lot of wonderful websites out there that allow you to add some adventure to your travel. One of the early ones early on, that I got involved with was one called Help Exchange. And what you could do is you could volunteer through various organizations or farms, things like that, about 20 hours a week in exchange for room and board. So one of the things I did my wife and I, we ended up, back in about 2007, we ended up spending six weeks in Northern Ireland at a plant nursery. So we did a lot of work around the place there. And then we had plenty of time to go out and explore. And it was just outside of Londonderry in Northern Ireland. And that's a very interesting place in Northern Ireland with all the troubles that went on between the Protestants and the Catholics. But as an American, we got sort of a free pass, but being there for six weeks, you could really get an understanding, a little bit of understanding what was going on there, and an appreciation for it.
Ray Loewe11:56
Okay, so we have a pattern here, Dale. Okay, a really interesting pattern. So we start with geography, then we go into traveling the world and we travel in a different way though, we travel in places where we can really get immersed in these things. We get a vehicle that's filled with animals and we get to take them out into the world and have broomsticks bitten in half by parrots and McCalls, you know, this is not a normal way that people retire. But it's a way that people can think about retirement going forward. That adds spice to your life. And I noticed I got the spice from McCormick. Okay. We had to pull that in. Okay. And it's, it's really pretty cool. And you wound up at the same place, I kind of wound up this is a wonderful place hidden away called Willow Valley where we take another phase of our retirement life and say we're going to live here and keep the adventure going. Right. Okay, so let's talk about how, unlike many people who just sit on a beach or play golf, you're going forward here with adding value to other people's lives as well as yours. So let's talk a little bit about biking. And let's talk a little bit about here called the Lancaster Farm Trust.
Dale Johnson13:25
Yeah, once I arrived at Willow Valley, we mainly moved here because it was such an active community. There were just so many, many things to do. So we get involved in a variety of things. But also we've always been heavily involved in volunteerism. So one of the first things I did was to look at what we could do outside of Willow Valley because I wanted to get involved in the community. And I had known a little bit about an organization called the Farmland Trust. And what they do is they preserve farmland. And they were set up as a nonprofit to deal mostly with Amish farms that they would preserve. And Lancaster County is number one in the country in preserving farmland. And I actually knew that from when I worked in Baltimore County, I was also involved in farmland preservation. So getting involved in the farmland preservation was a way that I can bring my geography back in because it's very geographically oriented. I think about half the people at the Farmland Trust are actually geographers, so you're dealing with landscapes and land and things like that. So basically, what I do there is I go out and visit the farms that are required to have a visit once a year once they're put into preservation. So I do a visit just to document any changes that sort of thing. chitchat with the farmers, and again, most of them are Amish.
Ray Loewe14:47
Okay, and you get there by bike.
Dale Johnson14:51
Yes. I do. I do it by bike. I've always been into biking. And, in fact, when I was in Baltimore I ran a little program called meals on two wheels, where we delivered meals on wheels by bike. And I had about six riders, I worked on that program and kind of built that up. So when I moved to Lancaster, the gentlemen of Farmland Trust knew about that. He said, Have you ever thought about visiting the farms by bike? And I saw Yeah, I have. So he gave me the okay. And we figured out how to do it. And it's kind of nice. Now when I show up on the bike, I get a little, maybe a little credibility with the Amish showing up by bike as opposed to my car. Yeah. So it keeps me in shape. And I get to ride through the beautiful Lancaster countryside and the farmland. And you get a close-up look of what you're, you're helping to preserve.
Ray Loewe15:45
So so. So when you get to old to ride a bike, I guess you're going to go to a horse and buggy deal, right? And getaway. You know, one of the things that you're showing us it's really interesting, we've got a lot of people on here that talk about changing careers. And they keep working throughout their retirement. And you don't need to do that you can. Not that you're not working because you are okay. But you found a way of reaching into the volunteerism stage to keep your life interesting to add value to other people and to make things fascinating and amusing.
Dale Johnson16:23
Exactly. Um, I've always kind of thought volunteerism, you have two options, you can go out, like the Zoomobile, and do something totally different. And it's challenging because you're learning something new. Or you can go out and get involved in something where you pull in your skills from your profession. So I've done it kind of each way.
Ray Loewe16:46
Yeah, and you have this bevy of quotes that you gave me that drive your life, let me throw out a couple of them. Because I'm not going to expect you to remember them all. But life is either a daring adventure or nothing.
Dale Johnson17:00
Yes, that's a quote by Helen Keller. And I love that one. And I have a capability to add quotes to the end of my email. So I have about 50 of them. Whatever the conversation is, I just put an appropriate one in there. But I always like to have some adventure. I'm not the kind that goes out and does adventure that's dangerous. It's a controlled adventure that I'm more involved in. And so that's a big part of my life and also my wife.
Ray Loewe17:29
Yeah, okay. Life is like riding a bike. You either keep moving, or you lose your balance.
Dale Johnson17:37
Yeah, you have to keep moving in order to keep your balance. And that's a very nice quote. Yeah, it just says it all. Yeah.
Ray Loewe17:49
That was Mr. Einstein, by the way. Yeah. And then you have one more. He had a lot of good quotes. Yeah. Yeah. For scientists, he did Okay. Yes. Yeah. All right. Let me hit one more in here that I just think is kind of a fitting way to kind of close to the end. And, and because I think it's what you're trying to do, in your own way. And this is a quote by somebody by the name of EB White. And it's I arise in the morning torn between the desire to improve the world and to enjoy the world. Yes, yes. Makes it a hard way to plan my day, doesn't it?
Dale Johnson18:28
Yes, yeah. And I think that's, that's been a big part of my life, and also my wife, we want to enjoy things in life. But we also want to be out there making the world a better place. So we've always been involved in volunteerism. And as we kind of move forward, we think about that more and more either through charity, or volunteerism now.
Ray Loewe18:51
okay. Well, you know, Thanks for being a leader here and showing us another way of doing things and approaching this whole world of retirement. I think the idea is that you've shown us, Dale, that there's a whole lot of ways out there that you can stay active. You can volunteer with organizations, you don't have to have your job, you can do this through volunteerism, it's exciting is intriguing. You know, you've got different ways of looking at traveling. And I think that that's helpful for those people that want to be one of the luckiest people in the world. And, and we define the luckiest people in the world as those who design their own lives and live them under their own terms. And thank you, Dale, for being one of the luckiest people in the world. And joining us today for this podcast. You've given us great insights.
Dale Johnson19:47
Great. Thank you very much, Ray Loewe. Appreciate it.
Ray Loewe19:51
Yeah. And we'll be back with another Dale, we'll never find another Dale but we'll be back with maybe a Christine or something like that Okay, but whatever it is Taylor sign us off and we'll be back next week with a great podcast.
Kris Parsons20:08
Thank you for listening to changing the rules, a weekly podcast about people who are living their best life and how you can figure out how to do that too. Join us with your lively host of Ray Loewe, better known as the luckiest guy in the world.