A train station somewhere

Is there really something wrong with me? I love my family and a few friends. I’m interested in the goings-on of quite a few people I know and many I don’t know. My job’s decent, my apartment’s fine, my health is probably above average. I just returned from a generally pleasurable 10-day East coast trip with a granddaughter. My clothes are washing and the walking pain in my left knee is easing.

AND, as we speak, I am packing for my next trip which begins August 24^th.  

I will go to every country in the world before I die. I WILL.

Recent blogs have focused on family journeys. The kind where you visit people and places and the kind where you celebrate lives lived and now over. NOW it’s back to the ‘every country in the world’ task I have set for myself!

Yes, I am packing for an August 24^th trip but I am not mad…it is a trip to 12 or so countries and I am doing it all by bus and train with ONE rolling suitcase/backpack. So I am following some advice I once read which said to pack everything you must have with you a few weeks before you go, remove half of it, carry the suitcase with the remaining stuff around the block a few times and then make your final cuts.

My new suitcase is an REI Stratocruiser 22 which can be used as a backpack and has wheels. It seems ideal for this crazy ‘backpacking for the elderly’ thing I’m doing. I will take two jeans, four shirts plus hoodie, sweater, pajamas and underwear in addition to what I’m wearing.   

Any traveler will tell you preparation and planning are frequently the best part of travel: More fun—as you imagine the exotic new sights and sounds you will soon experience; more stimulating—as you read travel literature, social commentary, and novels about the historical sites and national treasures you will soon visit; more controllable as you make those tidy lists of how much bus tickets, hotels, meals will cost, how much you can allot for tiny and light-weight but still meaningful souvenirs.

This adventure begins.