Travel Bug
I’ve become a little obsessed with Rick Steves lately. For those of you who don’t know him, he is a locally based travel writer and hosts a TV show that you can find online on Hulu.com. When I got the flu a couple of weeks back, I started watching his show just because it seemed like a good way to sit around and do nothing but not be totally brain dead at the same time. I love to travel but haven’t actually done a ton of it in the last couple of years (I got laid off two weeks before our last planned trip to Buenos Aires and we never went), and with the baby on the way I don’t imagine I’ll be doing a ton of international traveling next year either.
When I was growing up, both my dad and my mom took me to Europe a lot and I spent some time going to school in Germany. Those times have had an disproportionately large impact on shaping who I am (or at least who I think I am). I get the itch to travel and can feel a little depressed when it’s been too long. Watching his TV show has been like scratching the itch. It’s mostly making me feel like I get to experience some international flavor without having to leave Seattle. The other tiny part makes me want to travel even more, but for the most part, I feel better.
Last weekend, I went up to Edmonds, where he is based, to hear a talk he was giving. It was basically just a slide show of his summer trip to Europe, but he was really funny and had a lot of good insight and thoughts. And then this weekend, my friend Jeff and I are going to hear his Travel as a Political Act talk. I’m pretty much a Rick Steves nerd at this point, but I’m OK with that. Bonus – the guy is really active in Drug Policy reform. He gave a plug at the end of his talk for his drug policy work, and when you look at his schedule, it is liberally sprinkled with NORML conventions. Funny.
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