I traveled 72 days of the year in 2007, I traveled 85 in 2008, I traveled 103 in 2009, I traveled 126 in 2010, I traveled 125 in 2011, and I traveled a record 130 days of the year in 2012. With 2013 more than halfway behind us, I have traveled a total of just 28 days. This was assuredly by design however, as for the first half of the year I had an increasingly pregnant wife at home, and since the 15th of May, I have had a newborn at home.
I’ve had the travel bug since birth. But it hasn’t been until I’ve been able to be in business on my own and have total control over my calendar, that I’ve been able to embrace this bug – this near obsession. I have spent 781 nights of my life in hotels (more than two years for you math fans), and that’s spread out over 342 different hotel stays.
So with just 28 days of travel this year, have I lost the bug? The first feeling I get when I consider a trip is excitement, and in the second thought, I get doubly excited at the notion that my wife and son can potentially travel with me. If it turns out that this isn’t practical, however, I then take two giant steps backwards because not only do I miss out on an opportunity to share my journey with the ones I love the most, but I then might be called away from them, set to experience travel without them, and worse, when missing them.
I’ve vowed that for every single trip I’m to take without my son, I’m going to write him a short letter on the hotel stationery and send it home to remind him I’m thinking of him on my travels. Someday he will have quite a collection of letters. Hopefully it doesn’t underscore how much time I spent away, but how much I miss him when I’m on the road.
So the travel bug? The caterpillar is still very much in me, but whether that turns into a butterfly or a moth, remains to be seen with each successive trip.