Sunday, March 4, 2001

Well, I'm back. (Are those groans I hear? No, I'm sure they're cheers, just muted by the distance.) I've been incommunicado for a number of reasons. (Though, all to the good—I was posting way too much, anyway.) Firstly, there was my communion with the speeding Mercedes; recently I've been sick; and in between I was forced to get a real job at my place of work. I'm now in the professional services group—that's right, a consulting whore. The reason for the move is that this will be one of the few places safe from the rampant, bloody axe-swinging (layoffs) sure to commence as the company that just bought our company identifies . . . "redundant roles."

"It's no accident that in a bureaucracy getting fired is called 'termination,' as in ontological erasure."
- David Foster Wallace, Infinite Jest

Yesterday was my first officially mandated Saturday workday in some time; but I'm sure it won't be my last. I did get today (Sunday) off, and used these precious minutes of pure freedom to go . . . toiletry shopping.

You might think that toiletries wouldn't be (or, at any rate, shouldn't be) a major element in trip preparations. But, I'm such a girlie, I'm afraid they are. There's my Australian macadamia nut moisture infuser shampoo; there's my white clover daily detangling conditioner. (Don't even get me started on the intensive conditioning crap.) There are cute little travel packs of Q-Tips; toothpaste, and deodorant, and shaving cream in just the right sizes; and various medications that I'm either on, or could conceivably need to go back on. You think I can get any of this crap in Turkey? Still, I'm trying to strike some balance between preparedness, and packing light.

In fact, I'm making light packing a real hallmark of this one. There's going to be a lot of inter-destination travel (by rail, ferry, and bus), and I'm going to be humping the ole Eagle Creek Endless Journey quite some distance. So, I'm making a few decisions that lighten the load: exactly one pair of pants (tan), one pair shorts (also tan), two or three shirts. Exactly one pair shoes: black, fake leather, all-purpose hiking boots—suitable for touristing great distances on foot, going out nice places (as noted, they're black), and even athletic stuff (jogging, cycling), in a pinch. Only one week's socks and boxers. (There's no way I can conceivably go a month w/o doing a wash so, once I was reconciled to it, I figured I might as well lighten the underwear load.) I've found a way to lighten the library of guidebooks and language references, as well. I recently discovered the Rick Steves travel guides, and boy does he have some good, very practical tips. For instance, he suggests ripping out the bits of travel guides you actually need, stapling them together, and not carrying the rest 12,000 miles with you. Yay! What a liberating heresy! My Fodor's Italy alone is 750 pages; of which I'm going to use about 90.

You may also be wondering why I'm doing all this 3.5 weeks in advance of my departure. Well, it's an experiment in substituting duration for thoroughness. I'm just doing things as they occur to me, or as convenient, rather than trying to make a complete list and remember everything in one smaller time window. I figure after a month, I'll certainly have taken care of everything. So, all mixed up, in no particular order, I've been taking out items to pack, buying this and that, reading guidebooks, studying Italian, making reservations, etc. Even after all this time, by the way, (i.e. 7 years of screwing around w/Internet technologies), what a giddy thrill to log in and reserve a tour slot for the Galleria at the Villa Borghese in Rome: "Let's see, why don't we go on the Sunday . . . at 9am . . . and there's four of us . . . all done."

Rome, by the way, is starting to look fantastic. The metropolis that was the glowing center of the civilized world for 1,000 years left some really cool stuff to look at. I've also ~finalized the Greek Islands itinerary, and forwarded a titillating summary to the CoWC Greece Team, to get them started salivating. I started to include it here, but probably better to tell you about these places as we actually hit them. The take-home, though, if there is one, is that any and all reading you can do about a place and its history, before departure, is probably time well spent. At the very least it allows one to backfill an answer to the (ideally, antecedent) question, "Now WHY is it you want to go all the way around the world to see these particular places . . . ?"

The dot-com downturn is producing refugees—and travel companions. When Ryan's startup recently folded, he decided, "Screw all this noise; I'm going to Europe for an indefinite period." (You can follow along at, intuitively, followRyan.com.) With any luck, he'll be able to intersect the Cradles of Civ Tour at some point. When Cal's startup hit the skids, he was briefly going to come along to Budapest and Prague; unfortunately, he went and got another job. Jobs!

Happy (recent) birthdays to Mark, Matt, Danielle, Pops, Lesli, and Liz. (I managed to fail to get a single one of them on the phone on the appropriate days.) But I hope all the days of their new year are blessed. I'm so happy I will be seeing all of them in May—as I meander up and down the U.S. East Coast, endeavoring to spend time with all the people I've failed to spend enough time with in the past few years. Really, gloriously, this will include most of my closest friends, both parents, all my grandparents, a plurality of aunts and uncles, numerous cousins, all of the sisters (bliss!), the ole gang in good ole Charlottesville, the remains of the ole gang in Chapel Hill (but what great remains) and, in particular, my new godson, William Alexander, in New York. Yeah, Europe and the Near East will be pretty cool; but I may be more excited about the other half of the trip. Places are only places—but this many of the universe's greatest people, all in one month . . . Though, I should probably start thinking about warning folks about when, more or less precisely, they can expect me to bust in on them . . .

As ever,
Michael