Uncharted Territory

This article originally appeared at Veritrope.com

Forget what T.S. Eliot says about April being the cruelest month — it’s February. In New York City, it’s the time after all the fun holidays have passed and the novelty of the first snowfalls has worn off.

It’s just cold — unremittingly, depressingly cold.

But frozen soil is good for growing at least one thing: my escapist daydreams. During one such February a couple of years ago, my girlfriend Lauren and I started talking about weddings while having dinner at our favorite neighborhood Thai restaurant. It was a time before we were actually engaged, but after it was clear that we were going to be. And it was one of those light — almost incidental — conversations that you have as a couple that throw off some longer-lasting insights which help you figure out how you both think and feel about things.

But I’m making it sound heavier and more portentous than it was. It was really as much a way to pass the time on a cold winter night as anything else.

A Journey Of A Thousand Miles Begins With Me Shooting My Mouth Off

Probably primed by both the warm surroundings and the Chicken Curry Puffs, I asked Lauren if she had ever heard of an Around-the-World airline ticket.

“Wait…They sell those?”

“Yeah. They do.”

Without giving it much forethought, I think I then said something like this:
“What if — instead of spending a ton of money on a wedding — we just spent it all on a honeymoon trip traveling around the world?”

Lauren just looked at me blankly. Crickets.
Then she said “We totally have to do that!

And so we have.

Greetings from Phuket, Thailand!

Veritrope.com has always been a pretty “nuts-and-bolts” place: Working with technology has always been something I’ve enjoyed and, one way or another, it’s a central part of how I make a living. So writing about it here has been a natural off-shoot from that, and it’s how I’ve felt that I could actually be of help to my readers. You know — earning your page views by keeping things practical… more signal than noise, as it were.

But if I may be especially blunt about it, I’ve found that writing solely about technically-focused items just bores the shit out of me after a while. After all, computers and gadgets are just tools — and tools are less interesting to me than how people use them.

Since I’ve started publishing this blog, I’ve heard from people all over the world who use the tools and tips that I’ve shared here in their own work. Novelists. Researchers. Screenwriters. Programmers. Stay-at-home Parents. I’d like to take a moment to thank everyone who has reached out and shared their experiences with me. Hearing how you’ve been using the tools that I publish here has been both humbling and incredibly gratifying.

The Road Forward

And so now I’m actually traveling around the world. There were any number of things that I had to learn about in order to pull this off because, corny as it may be, you don’t go from Thai-food to Thai-land without doing a hell of a lot of planning and research. In the weeks ahead, I am going to write about as much of it as I can. Most of the posts will have the Veritrope “nuts-and-bolts” aesthetic, but applied to travel. Planning your trip. Product reviews. Equipping yourself for extended travel. Paying for it. You know… the practical stuff.

But some posts will probably be a little more literary than literal. The “why” of traveling and not just the “how”. Just as this website has been a place where the distance between people has been bridged online, I think that technology can help collapse the physical divide as well — and the physical distance between where you are and where you want to be.

Maybe that’s too coy of a way to say it because I *know* it can bridge that distance. After all, I’m sitting here right now, looking out into the deep green vegetation of tropical Thailand with my wife and that’s exactly where I wanted to be.

So buckle up and place your seat-backs and tray-tables in the upright and locked position: We’re hitting the road, people!

I truly hope you enjoy exploring these new territories, both real and figurative, together.

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