Why?

Do you remember, when you were a child, how the most exciting part of a lazy afternoon could be riding your bike into a part the neighborhood you've never been to before and finding out that there are houses and trees and your new best friend and his dog and a park with a big swing set and ohmygodapool - things that had been there the whole time, but you never knew, because you'd never thought to look?


It's like that.  But bigger.

When I started this blog, I had grand ideas about writing from the road.  Piling my whole life into my little Beetle and driving across the country, stopping wherever my whims took me.  Nothing could be too sacred or too cheesy - I wanted to see everything.  I wanted to climb mountains.  I wanted to lose myself inside America's strangest museums.  I wanted to hurt my feet on walking tours of every great American city.  I wanted to laugh my stomach sore over beautiful things.  I wanted to cry when it was all over.

My plans didn't end there.  Why be just an American tourist when I could be a tourist of the world?  I could island hop through the South Pacific.  I could ride the rails across Asia and Europe, and follow the Nile down Africa.  I could drive from Ushuaia, Argentina to the Yukon territories in Canada and hold my breath for everything in between. 

I can't go any of those places in real life, not yet.  But I'm going anyway.  It's all very hypothetical.