10 Long Years of Travel

I received my passport yesterday complete with Visas for Bangladesh and China. Back in January, I started the process of renewing my old one and getting the visas. I thought I had plenty of time to get all of this accomplished with room to spare. I didn’t. Unless you count two days as “room to spare.”

It took the government 10 weeks!!!! (7 more than their website promised) to get my passport back to me. When I finally got it back I had to use a pricey visa service and expedite all of the shipping.

I’ve changed a little.

In the 1997 photo I was a senior in high school. The world was one big unexplored adventure waiting for me to discover it. 10 years of squinting at sunsets, SCUBA diving, chasing horizons, and working on a writing career while balancing the demands of the real world, have, apparently, lengthened my nose and made my smile crooked.

In my defense the pic was taken after my morning workout and I was a little tired. I must have been up late blogging the night before.

The next 10 years of travel will be ones with new realities to balance. A wife. Kids? A mortgage. I welcome the challenge.

Here’s to another 10 years of travel.