And so it begins again, another big long trip with no reason as to why or to what end it serves. Such is life. I got myself feeling a little restless again not more than two years after my cross country venture, thus dubbed "The Walk" as its become known. Follow that link to get the details if you so choose. To give away the ending right off though, I made it to Seattle and decided to settle down back in Denver for good.
That clearly did not stick, but I gave it a good go for, as I say, about two years before moving out to Seattle to try settling down by my sister. I promised her one stationary year, but about two or three months in thoughts of another walk dipped in and out of my mind. Having grown in scale, yet again, this time to global proportions I rallied up another companion, the shotgun toting Rachel, and set to the preliminary half assed plotting level. We got about as far as buying boots, a pack for her, and one camping trip before that fell back into bar stool talk. This was more out of us losing touch for a bit rather than thinking the task too daunting. I also felt like it would simply be a reprisal of something already done, just bigger to best it; and I really didn’t want to be gone all that long either. The calculation was four years which had me finishing around 35.
Anyway, so that was that, but the idea of extended travel was back in my head again and it had a habit of fading in and out of my day dreams until I quit coffee shops and went into the warehouse business. Not that this warehousing move was a bad thing; it was really interesting, sort of fun at times, and mostly proved I could still do something other than sling lattes. A desk and office were about the best thing prescribed, though, to push me back on the road away from a city I was having a time with anyway.
During all of this I’d been getting full on back into my genealogy research, which has been a rather steady off and on interest and late night activity on the days I’d have to rise before the sun the next day. I’d go late into the night pouring over history books finding out what was going on and when who was where so that it got into my head that I should go see these places. By my birthday in April this was still in the loudly-talking-about-it-not-doing-anything-about-it phase when my sister surprised me with one of the finest birthday gifts I’d ever received.
Ten years ago Wendie, my sister, had lived in London as an exchange student and for spring break went up to the Isle of Skye in Scotland where my great grandfather had come out of. All she knew was a little sketchy Romeo and Juliet family story about a MacDonald and a Campbell falling in love despite clan hostilities and that they were from that area. In the course of a few days the whole island had gotten involved with her looking into this and she was treated to all sorts of tales about the family.
Having heard me go on about wanting to do some sort of Genealogy Tour she gave me a birthday card saying she’d treat me to a stay in the MacDonald hostel on Skye for as long as I needed to do some extended research there. That sealed the deal and a week later I bought three plane tickets and a train ticket, a few weeks after that I gave my boss a three month notice. Thus the savings process began as I moved on to my sister’s couch splitting the rent with her and nearly all night time activities outside of the house ceased. Such was the birth of the trip.
The two of the three tickets that I got were for a summer vacation I would take that June. One was back to Denver to visit friends before I shoved off over seas, the other was for a three day jaunt to Alaska just to see it and finally be able to claim that I’d been to all 50 states before exploring the rest of the world. The last was the ticket from New York City to London for November, and the train ticket was for a ride by rail across the US from Seattle to DC which would be the opening gates to my travels.
All this while waiting for the time to departure to tick by I made a new friend who became more and more another intriguing aspect to the landing in London. This is my friend Jane. She’s intriguing because the more we get to know each other, the more we seem like we think exactly the same, she’s become a huge part of the British adventure with the option for the European adventure as well depending on how things go, but we’ve never actually spoken to one another and we’ve never met. She’s a close friend of a close friend of mine in Denver, Loreli, who put me in touch with her way back in March simply as a “hey you should talk to this girl” sort of thing and we’ve kept chatting back and forth nearly daily since then. It’s all very nerve wracking and exciting all at the same time. Perfect for a new sort of adventure.
The weird part for me is that I got very into the Ender book series by Orson Scott Card. If you haven’t read it I recommend it, but the Speaker for the Dead part of the series the main character has a friend who exists solely in the computer. The name of that character is Jane which I just find terribly fitting for this situation.
Anyway, so that’s the lead in to this little trek here. The plan is to do an East Coast American tour then skip over to the UK and poke around England, Wales, Scotland, and Ireland, then over to France, through Germany, Holland, Sweden, and finally Finland. As I go I’m looking to see all the little towns and such that my ancestors came out of and discover more as I go, so that list should hopefully grow and get more detailed.