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“Now, on this road trip, my mind seemed to uncrinkle, to breathe, to present to itself a cure for a disease it had not, until now, known it had.” 
― Elizabeth Berg, The Year of Pleasures






One of the first things you'll notice about this world is that it's big. Really, really big. Not big in a "compared to the rest of the universe big", or even compared to the rest of the solar system. Not that big. But it's big. Trust me on this. Really big.

And part of that bigness, at least when considered from my state of being relatively small compared to the Earth, is that it constantly has places I want to go and things I want to do. And for someone who is essentially a Raman* (*it means wanderer), this is a good thing.

I have been to a lot of places and done quite a few things that were on my Life List of accomplishments. But there are still quite a few left. And what we have discovered, at least in the last decade or so, is that there are two ways of approaching these lists: either ":someday I wanna" or "okay, let's do this thing".

Guess which method notches the bedpost?

So it stands to reason that I am usually asked "what next?"Where are we going, and what are we going to do once we get there. And what is it we want to do that we don't have planned yet (whittling that list down to a single page, please). I am headed to ABQ today, and may do a side trip up to Santa Fe...but I don't think that really qualifies other than as a short road trip.

In the next year and a half, through the end of 2014, we have a variety of longer travels planned. I will undoubtedly be covering the Southwestern United States pretty extensively in my full-time profession, visiting all of Southern California, Nevada, Arizona and New Mexico on a regular basis. That this includes some of my favorite places doesn't escape me, I simply get to put them in a separate "business" column when making plans.

For much more adventurous traveling we will be getting back to the Vancouver/Whistler areas for an extended week some time in October. Our intent, at least at the moment, is to ride a halftrack up the side of the mountains, and at a later date zipline down the slopes near Whistler. Nothing firm is planned for Vancouver, but since it's one of our favorite cities in the world I'm certain we'll find something to keep us occupied.

Then, roughly a month later, we'll be in Annapolis, Maryland for Thanksgiving, with side trips and get-togethers in D.C., Williamsburg and Maryland's eastern shore.

Next Spring...at least in the Northern Hemisphere -- we're headed down under to Australia for visits to Sydney, the Great Barrier Reef, Perth and a hop over to Auckland. Then two weeks in Hawaii in about a year from now.

Plus a handful of day trips to Santa Barbara, Las Vegas, and and San Diego.

All of which you will see reported here, no doubt.

It's a life on the road...but somebody's got to do it.