September 7

Houston

After months of planning the day arrived to start my trip.
This journey first came into my mind last winter when I was in Phoenix. I'd always wanted to backpack abroad. With the slow realization that I no longer had a job or rent to hold me back, I found myself more and more rergularly looking up things like Australian return-ticket requirements, Bankok public transit and ferries between Russia and Turkey.
It was an escape. While my world was very small, it was a welcome relief to bury myself in Russian visa proceedures knowing that some day I could go there if I wanted to.
Now I can.
The day before my flight, though, didn't feel like it would be my last day in the US. I stored my car and Stephanie drove me back to her apartment. While she was at work I sorted throught the last list of bills and minutia I needed to settle before leaving. I was excited, but something started placing small question marks at the end of the sentances in my head. I'm going to pre-pay for my car storage for four months? My cell phone will be shut off Monday? I need to withdraw $300 US to keep on me in case of an emergency?
What I hadn't envisioned in Arizona was how much comfort would be waiting for me in the Lone Star State and while visiting friends on the way there. I never thought I'd say this, but I'm going to really miss Texas in the coming months.
Stephanie was great, though, and assured me she understood the opportunity I had and that the trip was the right thing to do. My rough itenerari includes Ireland, Brittain, most of Western Europe, Russia, Turkey, Tanzania, India and Southeast Asia. That could all change. I could get bored, or homesick or just chicken out. But right now I'm still determined to see the world.
Although she works until midnight, Stephanie drove me to the airport at 7:30 a.m. We parted ways outside the terminal and I began my fairly uneventful day of international air travel. Houston was a breeze, and it took less than a half hour to get to my gate. We landed at JFK a little late, but it barely made a dent in my 6 hour layover. Using my new eye mask and earplugs and my day pack for a pillow I managed to sleep for a few hours on the terminal floor. I woke up with the same group of people lounging near me. Two of the wore vests and expressions that made them look oddly similar to Walter from the Big Lebowski. Of course that could be because I read lengthy Rolling Stone article on the film's 10 year anniversary at a magazine stand in Houston.
I snapped a picture of the IPod vending machine, begged some hot water for my cup-o-noodles off the the clerk at Starbucks and slept some more on the next plane across the Atlantic.
Darkness delivered the next morning wrapped in a pastel haze above the clouds. With the earth turning and the plane fllying opposite directions, I arrived in Dublin at 7 a.m., 6 time zones ahead and minus a full night of sleep. My first sight of Ireland was the odd glipse of green pasture between the clouds.