Ready to travel again

Just got my new passport… the fourth of my life. The first, which I got around 17, was almost full when it expired… creased and worn like a rolled-up comic book in a kid’s pocket, stained and cracked from years of living in the back pocket of my jeans while I banged around on trains, bikes, and hitchhiking, jumping from youth hostel to youth hostel in the days when I could carry everything I owned in a small backpack. Good times.

The next one got less use, but still some… living in France for 6 months, popping over to London often enough that the UK customs officers began raising their eyebrows and saying “so how much time you do you want THIS time?”. The next one, my previous one, almost wasn’t worth having… ONE trip overseas in 10 years, the night before 9/11, as it happened, flying out of Boston (to London again) 12 hours before the hijackers left for New York. It all went down shortly after arriving in London. Not much of a vacation, to put mildly, and as I then was running servers for a living and couldn’t stray far, it was the last time I actually traveled outside the US. In fact, my passport expired in July and I didn’t even notice. First time I’d been without one since I was a teenager.

Enough of that. Life drains away with every passing day. Got my new RFID-enabled passport so I can be spied on everywhere I go. I’ve virtualized all the servers to Rackspace and am no longer responsible for moving parts. It’s time to travel again. Breaking this sucker in later this month with a trip to Montreal for the Waterhouse exhibit, and next summer, back to Europe. Haven’t been there since the Euro took over. Since before cell phones and GPSs. I was still using travelers checks. I hope it isn’t too different. But it’s time to find out.

Been far too long. Even just thinking about it feels good.