4/29/06 - Prolog

Stamford, CT, USA

So I leave tomorrow night for a year+ of nomadic existence spent meandering around the world -- that's more than a little scary, especially considering the fact that my backback is still completely empty, and the rest of my bedroom floor is covered in piles of clothes, toiletries, camera equipment, and other random travel items, and that a handful of items on my list of things to bring are still missing from those piles. The little devil hovering above my one shoulder is telling me not to worry because I still have a whole day left to get everything together, and the angel over the other is shaking his head disgustedly...

Trip Background

It's tough to say when or how the idea of doing a trip like this first lodged itself in my head, but it's been there for a while and doesn't seem to be going anywhere. This trip was originally supposed to happen around this time last year, but the good folks at Ellington (my former employer and own personal version of 'the man' ) persuaded me another year of hedge fund finance would do me good, although to be completely fair, for the most part I'm happy I stuck around. But now I find myself in what I recognize to be a relatively rare situation: not having a ring on my finger, nor a diaper bag slung over my shoulder, wanting to change careers but not completely sure to what, and having a bank account *theoretically* well-fortified enough to withstand the extensive hemorrhaging of cash associated with prolonged travel. In short, there's not a lot really holding me back from setting out to wander the earth, so why the hell not...

I do have a rough itinerary, cobbled together mostly as a result of hearing tales of other people's travels, inadvertently ending up glued to the Travel Channel after a bit of channel-surfing, planning to meet up with a variety of friends scattered across the globe, and trying to avoid cold weather to the greatest extent possible. The current version is roughly a month in each of the following locales:

• Ireland and Northern Ireland
  
• England/Scotland/Wales
• Scandanavia (Norway, Sweden, Finland) and the Baltics (Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania)
• Germany
• Italy
• Greece
• Turkey
• the Middle East (Lebanon, Israel, Egypt)
• Southern Africa (S. Africa, Namibia, Botswana)
• India
• Southeast Asia (Thailand, Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos)
• Australia & New Zealand
• Japan

However, one of the main ideas of the trip is to remain flexible enough to stay longer in a place I like, leave sooner from a place I don't, and go somewhere wholly unplanned pretty much on a whim.

For a long time, it was my intent to basically drop off the face of the face of the earth for a while, and return only if and when I decided I wanted to. Over the past few months, however, I've come to appreciate the uniqueness of the opportunity I have, and so to disappear into the sunset without letting you all share in my adventures and/or live vicariously through me, should you care to, has come to seem more than a bit selfish. Hence:

The Blog

Thank God for technological progress. 15 years ago, regular mail or the telephone would have been my only way of contacting you all, meaning that (especially given my dereliction in keeping in touch with people) most of you would likely never have heard from me at all. 5 years ago, your inboxes would have been cluttered with occasional (and potentially unwanted) emails from me, and I would have had to maintain an up-to-date list of email addresses. But now, the most sensible alternative seems to be keeping a blog, which will alow you to monitor my progress around the globe at your own pace (or not at all).

Apparently, I've been beaten to the blog-around-the-world punch by some guy who's been doing this for a while and is pretty damn good at it. He posts a video of himself dancing everywhere he goes. I'm not going to steal his thunder (for which you should probably be grateful, since one short clip of me dancing would likely be enough to make sure most of you never visited this site again), and as of now, I haven't been able to come up with any other sort of gimmick. If I do (suggestions welcome), I'll try to throw it in, but for now, I'll just try to organize my posts with various headings so you can jump to or skip over my travel hightlights, philosophical ruminations, political rants and drinking stories as you see fit.

In theory, this thing will be read by everyone from my parents to former colleagues to college buddies, so pursuant to the goal of sharing my trip with anyone who wants to read about it, I'm going to try to keep all but the most sordid details uncensored (sorry mom). For those of you of a more puritanical persuasion, I'll try my best to give you advanced warning so you can avert your eyes from certain passages and not think any less of me...

I'll also apologize in advance for making the English majors amoung you cringe. Almost 4 years of crunching numbers and writing code have definitely dulled the part of my brain that was once capable of writing with at least a small amount of eloquence and humor. With any luck, after a few posts (or at the very least a few beers), this will get a little easier. I certainly hope so - this mediocre-at-best entry is the result of 2+ weeks of attempting to crank something out, although rather frighteningly, "SELECT * FROM Table1 WHERE..." still flows from my fingertips as naturally as... as... hmmm... ummm... well... perfect case in point - I can't think of a damned thing, funny or fitting or otherwise (I do, however, solemnly promise that will be the last SQL reference of this ENTIRE experiment). You'll also notice I have a penchant for (over)using both parentheses and ellipses. I'll try to wean myself off these, but you're probably going to just have to get used to it (or stop reading)...

I think that should cover the basics of the trip and the blog, so now I'm actually going to stop procrastinating and start packing.

Next Stop: the west coast of Ireland (Limerick, Tralee, & the Dingle Peninsula)