Fortune favors the bold. So I'm ditching my dental benefits to embark on a worldwide adventure. Come join me as I journey across the earth. I might start in Hawaii, or Central America, or Spain. Who knows where I'll end up?
Saturday, September 20, 2008
The interim
From Germany I fly home to Boulder and entertain my parents for their one-week visit to the Colorado Rockies.
The day they leave I travel with some friends to northern Idaho, where we watch a quintessential small-town Americana Fourth of July street parade and pick up a few hitchhikers in Canada as we drive to mountainous hot springs.
After a week I return to Colorado, spend six weeks starting and finishing a few freelance projects, move out of my house, then fly to San Francisco to hang out in the Bay Area for a week while preparing for the Burning Man Festival.
We ride a veggie-oil schoolbus into the desert, and experience the festival (which is a novel of its own). When its done I ride with a British woman to Reno, where we stay in a hotel that has its own movie theater, shopping district, six-lane entryway and restaurant row.
The next day I catch a flight to Atlanta, where I attend a four-day journalism conference and visit with my parents.
I then fly back to Colorado, pack my bags, and five days later find myself on a flight to Egypt. Thus begins a 16-month round-the-world journey.
I read a lot about the world. Study it. Consume news about it.
Now its time to live it firsthand.
Mission: Two years of criss-crossing the globe, an average of one month per country.
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Ever heard of the British concept of a "gap year?" It's a year immersed in travel for the sake of personal growth. England's Prince Harry, for example, spent his gap year volunteering at a zoo in Australia and building health clinics in Lesotho, Africa. The concept hasn't caught on in the U.S., where most people think a "gap year" means goofing around. Many Americans inaccurately refer to it as "taking time off." It's the opposite. It's self-directed experiential education, with a global edge. I call it, "time on!"
