Travel Whore

We're going to Europe. Eastern Europe. Or really, more accurately, Central Europe since the fall of the Iron Curtain. Prague, Krakow, Budapest, Vienna. It's almost all I can think about. I'm like a masturbatory teenager but instead of sex I have a one track mind for Prague.

My mom instilled the travel bug in me early. Sure, all our furniture was picked up off the street or from other people, sure we didn't have a properly working toaster or a tv for much of my childhood and sure our bathroom sink didn't work and we had to brush our teeth in the bathtub but damnit, we traveled.

When I was little, travel meant camping up and down the Oregon Coast, living out of our tiny honda, aka "Little Blue Horse," and making our way to Ashland for the Oregon Shakespeare Festival. When I got older we ventured further south to California, and then, when we were finally above the poverty level, we made two epic voyages, paid for by many years of savings and birthday money. First we went to Hawaii when I was in 7th grade and then to England when I was 16.

For people at our income level, this sort of travel is almost unheard of. But my mom made it happen. When we went to London we only had the money to eat twice a day--the breakfast that was included at the B&B and then one meal out, typically consisting of a sandwich. My sister and I complained bitterly, as we were walking roughly 10 miles a day on too few calories, but I have to give my mom some serious props for getting us there to begin with.

I went again to England and Scotland when I was 17, funded primarily by my first job at the University Village QFC and weird fundraising efforts like playing an extra in a movie that was never officially released.

And then there were the two trips to Tijuana, Mexico to build houses for homeless families taken my sophomore and senior year of high school, funded by a conglomeration of my parents, my extended family, myself and the church. While not vacations, per se, they certainly expanded my vision of the world.

All that before I was 18. And I just kept going after that. I've been ridiculously blessed and lucky. I pushed Hombrelibre on this trip. I really did. We can't really afford it and we're stretching our vacation time to the max. And we just bought a house, so it's doubly stupid.

But you only get one life. And I don't want to spend mine without adventure. And I have a second job for a reason: to blow it all looking at castles.