A pair of best friends from Texas are proving that adventure doesn’t have an age limit — even when you’re 81.

Ellie Hamby, a photographer, and Sandy Hazelip, a physician, toured the world in 80 days, adventuring from the beaches of Bali to the deserts of Egypt.

Their first stop was Antarctica. “The beauty of the Antarctic is just unbelievable,” Hamby recalled. Since then, the pair have visited 18 countries across all seven continents.

And despite the challenges international travel presents, the best friends say they finished their trip without any arguments.

“We’re both independent, very stubborn. But we seem to allow each other to give space,” said Hamby. “We just understand each other and we know this is a good thing we’re doing and we kind of respect each other’s feelings.”

For Hamby, the most interesting aspect of the trip was the people they met along the way.

“We love all the sights that we saw, but the things that we remember the most are the people that we met,” she said. “We met some of the most wonderful, kindest, friendliest people in the world. We just have friends now all over the world that we love dearly.”

And they shared an important piece of advice for any travelers worried about the language barrier on their own adventures.

“You know, people ask us often about the language, how we manage it,” said Hamby. “We say with Sandy and Ellie, there’s one language and that’s a smile. And we found that worked wonders because we were often aware that there was not English spoken. But a smile covers all languages.”

At first, Michael Surrell didn't see the black smoke or flames shooting from the windows of his neighbor's home. He had just parked around the comer from his own house when he got a call from his daughter: "The house next door is on fire!" He went to look. That's when he saw an old woman crying outside.

"The baby's in there!" she cried. Though the fire department had been called, Surrell, then 64, ran inside without hesitation. Entering the burning house was like "running into a bucket of black paint," Surrell says. The thick smoke burned his eyes and made it impossible to breathe. The conditions would have been dangerous for anyone, but for Surrell, who had lung disease, they were life-threatening.

After a few minutes in the smoke - filled house, he retreated outside to catch his breath. "Where is Tiara?" he asked desperately.

“The second floor," the old woman shouted back.

Taking a deep breath, Surrell went in a second time. Because the house had a similar layout to his, he found the stairs and made it to the second floor.

“Baby girl, where are you?”

His throat and lungs burned as if he'd breathed fire instead of the smoke in the air. He couldn't open his eyes. All he could hear was the crackling （破裂声）of burning wood. Then a soft sound came out. Still unable to see, Surrell fell to his knees on the hot wood floor and climbed toward the sound, feeling around for any sign of the girl.

Finally, he touched something. A shoe, then an ankle. He pulled the baby toward him. Her body was weak and she wasn't breathing. He carried her into his arms and ran blindly into the blackness. The next thing he knew, he was at the front door, then outside.

When she was just 17 years old, Liz crashed into the back of a truck that was waiting to turn in a left-turn lane(车道). The crash is a life-changing one for her. Because of the crash, she’s blind in one eye, loses her sense of smell, loses some of her hearing, loses the ability to create tears, and she cannot fall asleep naturally.

“Initially, I thought I would not be defeated but clearly I was completely wrong. Apart from the medical problems, the hardest part about my life after the car accident was the fact that I was alone,” Liz said. “Everyone was away at college, but I wasn’t. I couldn’t drive or go to college. My friends who used to hang around with me were there for me at first, but after a while they stopped coming by.”

“I viewed her Facebook page, and she said on there: Can anybody please hang out with me today？I don’t have any friends, recalled Liz's mother, Betty.

In time, Liz and her mother teamed up with the US Department of Transportation’s National Highway Traffic Safety Administration to make a video. They wanted to get the point across that texting and driving can have life-transforming consequences.

In the video Liz appealed to drivers not to text when driving. She admitted she was checking and sending messages via her phone when she crashed her car into the back of the truck.

“Don’t text your loved ones when you know they’re driving,” said Liz’s mother. “It can change their lives forever.”

“If you get a text, don’t look at it,” Liz said. “It’s not worth it.”