But it’s never too late to write your next story, and to go on your next adventure. In partnership with Cayman Jack, Thought Catalog presents a collection of 25 travel stories to inspire you to leave behind the predictable and take to the open road in search of the unforgettable. Your next great memory is waiting for you, whether you realize it or not. And these exceptional stories will help you find it.

    It was a scorching Manila morning, and in thirty minutes Ali would go to war with Joe Frazier for the third and final time. Ali yawned and stared at the ceiling of his dressing room. "Just another day's work," he said. "Just gotta go beat on another man." The reporter did what a reporter is supposed to do. He listened and wrote down Ali's words.And so began just another day's work for Dick Schaap, who in the past half-century has carved out his own legend, not with his fists but with his reportorial verve, his indefatigable curiosity, and his irrepressible wit. Now, in Flashing Before My Eyes, the longtime ABC correspondent and host of ESPN"s The Sports Reporters recounts a charmed career in which he has met almost everyone and seen almost everything. He has played golf with Bill Clinton, tennis with Bobby Fischer, cards with Wilt Chamberlain. He has written books with Joe Namath and Joe Montana. He has taken Brigitte Bardot to dinner and Lenny Bruce to a World Series. He saw the Baltimore Colts beat the New York Giants in sudden-death overtime, and the Green Bay Packers beat the Dallas Cowboys in the Ice Bowl. He saw Bill Mazeroski end a World Series with a home run, and Willis Reed lift the New York Knicks to an NBA title. He has covered murders and riots, presidential campaigns and Broadway openings. He introduced Muhammad Ali to Billy Crystal, and Billy Crystal to Joe DiMaggio. He walks with sluggers and senators, cops and comedians, authors and actresses, and he shares the sights he sees and the words he hears in stories that make you laugh and cry.With an introduction by Tuesdays with Morrie author Mitch Albom, Schaap's memoir gives the reader the ultimate highlight reel of the last fifty years and makes a compelling case that if Dick Schaap wasn't there to see it, it didn't happen.

    

    In Slap Shot Original, Dave Hanson gives readers not only a behind the scenes look at what life was like on the set during the filming of the classic movie, but also treats them to stories from the actors and players themselves.

    The Devil and Dr. Barnes traces the near-mythical journey of a man who was born into poverty, amassed a fortune through the promotion of a popular medicine, and acquired the premier private collection of works by such masters as Renoir, Matisse, Cézanne, and Picasso. Ostentatiously turning his back on the art establishment, Barnes challenged the aesthetic sensibilities of an uninitiated, often resistant and scoffing, American audience. In particular, he championed Matisse, Soutine, and Modigliani when they were obscure or in difficult straits. Analyzing what he saw as the formal relationships underlying all art, linking the old and the new, Barnes applied these principles in a rigorous course of study offered at his Merion foundation. Barnes's own mordant words, culled from the copious printed record, animate the narrative throughout, as do accounts of his associations with notables of the era--Gertrude and Leo Stein, Bertrand Russell, and John Dewey among them--many of whom he alienated with his appetite for passionate, public feuds. In this rounded portrait, Albert Barnes emerges as a complex, flawed man, who--blessed with an astute eye for greatness--has left us an incomparable treasure, gathered in one place and unforgettable to all who have seen it.

    Robert Lesslie, whose routine faced him with times of grief or pain, relief or delight, life or death. Such everyday happenings and encounters gave rise to these vignettes—in which readers will meet up with the characters, coincidences, and complications common to the emergency room:characters like Freddy, who literally shoots himself in the footcoincidences like finally having the chance to hear what patients say to each other when doctors and nurses aren’t in the roomcomplications such as dealing with parents who buy lottery tickets and alcohol instead of medicine for their little boyThese heart-tugging, heart-lifting slices of life will prompt readers to search for opportunities to give the comfort of a touch, the grace of a kind word, or a prayer that brings hope and healing.

    It is a genuine, firsthand account of a one-year tour that shows how a soldier grew and matured from an awkward, bewildered, inexperienced, eighteen year-old country “bumpkin” from Kentucky, to a tough, battle hardened, fighting soldier. You will laugh, cry and stand in awe at the true life experiences shared in this memoir. The awfulness of battle, fear beyond description, the sorrow and anguish of losing friends, extreme weariness, the dealing with the scalding sun, torrential rain, cold, heat, humidity, insects and the daily effort just to maintain sanity were struggles faced virtually every day. And yet, there were the good times. There was the coming together to laugh, joke, and share stories from home. There was the warmth and compassion shown by men to each other in such an unreal environment. You will see where color, race or where you were from had no bearing on the tight-knit group of young men that was formed from the necessity to survive. What a “bunch” they were! ... then the return to home and all the adjustments and struggles to once again fit into a world that was now strange and uncomfortable. "Call Sign Dracula" is an excellent and genuine memoir of an infantry soldier in the Vietnam War.

    It is his first job in general practice; his first brave excursion into the dangerous world where patients walk round in their clothes. Dr Vernon soon finds himself bemused, fascinated and exhausted as he copes with the procession of ailing humanity that streams into his surgery and awaits his visits. A confused old lady, timid vet, puzzled diabetic, lonely housewife, hypochondriac, tipster with an ulcer, nun with dandruff and a persistent young lady with abundant charms and nothing wrong with her. Just published as an e book, exclusive to Amazon, this book was a huge hit in England and America when first published in the 1970s. Edward Vernon is a pen name of a well known British doctor/author.Here's what the critics said about the series:Thoroughly delightful - Fresno BeeHilarious - TitbitsA delightfully funny book that keeps the reader laughing and appeals to one's sense of the ridiculous - Sunday Advocate, Baton RougeFor entertainment, a chapter or two before bedtime is just what the doctor ordered - Sacramento BeeDoes for British GPs what Herriot has done for vets - BooklistHilarious, written with skill and zest - Grimsby Evening TelegraphVery funny - Citizen, GloucesterThoroughly enjoyable, genuinely funny - South Wales EchoWise, funny, sad and heartwarming - Chattanooga TimesGood fun - Homes and GardensMost of his adventures are funny, some hilarious; but he has the good sense to leven the comedy lump with some that are sad, some touching. All are written lightly, easily, entertainingly - Oxford TimesThe funniest of the funny doctor books - Richard GordonJolly good reading - Publishers WeeklyViews the human species he treats with much the same affection, compassion and humour as Herriot brings to the animal world - Cleveland Plain DealerSometimes serious, sometimes hilarious - Lancashire Evening PostTruthful, well observed and consistently readable - Daily TelegraphPerceptive and witty - Surrey AdvertiserWill amuse, amaze and entertain - Yorkshire Postetc etc

    Having uprooted herself from a promising career in publishing in her adopted Brooklyn, Palmer embarks on a quest to determine the fate of her lost homes—and of a community that has been erased by unchecked Southern progress. Palmer's journey takes her from the ruins of kudzu-covered, airport-owned ghost towns to carefully preserved cemeteries wedged between the runways; into awkward confrontations with airport planners, developers, and even her own parents. Along the way, Palmer becomes an amateur detective, an urban historian, and a mother. Lyrically chronicling the overlooked devastation and beauty along the airport’s fringe communities in the tradition of John Jeremiah Sullivan and Leslie Jamison, Palmer unearths the startling narratives about race, power, and place that continue to shape American cities. Part memoir, part urban history, Flight Path: A Search for My Roots beneath the World's Busiest Airport is a riveting account of one young mother's attempt at making a home where there’s little home left.

    So began their adventure into IVF, via blood tests, sperm tests, injections and probes, becoming involuntary experts on embryology through failure, despair, persistence and success.After 4 years, 3 different clinics, 2 positive pregnancy tests and 1 miscarriage, they finally had a successful pregnancy.GET A LIFE is the perfect down-to-earth guide for anyone thinking of embarking on fertility treatment. It's two books in one, a book of advice for women and a survival guide for men, each chapter mirrored but with very different experience and advice. IVF is terrifying, awful and extraordinary in equal measures for both partners. GET A LIFE shares Richard and Rosie's ride on the fertility roller coaster, bringing you the funny, emotional and physical sides of IVF. It is an invaluable guide from both perspectives on how to get through the process in one piece.

    Combining muscular guitars and driving rhythms with an irresistible pop sensibility, their blistering live show and endlessly dynamic front woman Hayley Williams has taken them from club shows in their hometown to sell-out arena dates across the world - and earned them a fiercely dedicated fan-base along the way. But with their success has come the pressure of growing up under the media's scrutiny. Small-town kids from Tennessee thrust into international stardom, they have had to negotiate their adolescence alongside the demands of a gruelling tour schedule and numerous line-up changes. This test of character brought them to the brink of collapse. And yet, from this adversity Paramore returned with their most confident, accomplished and deeply personal album to date - Brand New Eyes. This unauthorised book is the first to tell their story and details the early years forming the band, their explosive debut record, the strident, platinum-selling follow-up Riot! and their status in late 2009 as the 'next major rock act' in the world.

    The remarkable story of the brand that was able to pull off the near-impossible challenge of integrating itself into the food habits of a nation strongly habituated to eating indigenous sweets is recounted here. It is a behind-the-scenes look at the Cadbury Dairy Milk journey in India over the last six decades.

    Ringed by a jail, a sewerage works, a rifle range and a housing commission estate, it was where the streets of Sydney met the beach. It was a place where the local boys surfed hard and partied harder. It was also a place where trouble easily found you. Adopted by Maroubra Beach at a young age, the four Abberton brothers, all born to different fathers and a mother in the clutches of heroin addiction, grew up at a time when the area was shadowed by drugs and gang violence. Raised largely by their grandmother, Sunny, Jai, Koby and Dakota found solace in the surf, and solidarity with their mates, the Bra Boys.The official biography of the Abberton brothers follows their story from a turbulent upbringing on the sands of Maroubra to international surf stardom, and the fateful events of 5 August 2003, when Jai shot dead Maroubra underworld figure and childhood friend Tony Hines, only to be acquitted on the grounds of self-defence. The Official Bra Boys Story: My Brothers Keeper is raw, gritty, from the heart ... and everything you won′t read about in the newspapers.

    Now, for the first time, the miners tell their own story--in a dramatic, riveting first-person account of their actions and emotions and of how they managed to make it through the traumatic accident and rescue. The men were below ground when water trapped in an adjacent mine burst through the wall of the new mine they were working. Scrambling to avoid the sluicing tide that rapidly rose in the narrow passageway, the crew knew they were in serious trouble. Moe, who was trapped on the other side of the raging stream, alone and away from the others, thought he would die then and there. However, in a heroic effort, Randly Fogle, crew chief, drove the scoop machinery straight into the flood and Moe managed to leap into it, and thus was carried to relative safety. Now all together, the miners moved to the best location they could find in the freezing-cold, still-rising water. They recount their fears, their prayers, their confessions to one another, and how they kept up their hope that they'd get out alive, while trying to decide how to drown with dignity. Meanwhile, we see the agony their wives, girlfriends, and families were going through, not knowing if they were living or dead. Once a resuce was imminent, the men reveal how they decided who would be the last man up. And they tell of their emotions upon finally touching solid ground and meeting their loved ones, whom they'd thought they would never see again. The successful rescue of the miners lifted the spirits of an entire nation. Now everyone can read the complete story of this harrowing incident--how these men and their families had the strength, courage, and faith to endure their incredible ordeal.

    He was dead before he hit the ground. One moment he was sitting on his horse. The next moment he was somewhere else--somewhere beyond description. He had moved on. Without travel, transport, angelic assistance, or the passage of time he was with Jesus, where he discovered firsthand that heaven is a real place and God is a real person and that death is not the end but the beginning of true life. In The Day I Died, Vest touches on the transformation from death to heaven and some of the benefits of finding oneself in that place, including:The unforgettable awareness of God’s presence The sense of His immeasurable love The freedom from the constraints of time The ease of communication with the Lord The peace and security that attend His presence The understanding that prayers are instantly heard by God.