On the Road Again...

United States of America

It was the summer of 1998. I'd finished my first year of college, and my brother was about to enter his first year of law school. We both had no plans... so in November of the year prior, we grabbed a United States map and started tacking all the places we wanted to visit. On June 7th (a year and a day after we'd gone skydiving), we loaded up the van and took off for a 36-day, 35-state tour of the country. I took my laptop computer with me and sent to my hometown's newspaper a weekly report of our travels. These columns ran under the name Road Dispatches, and are available here:

• Opening Statement: Hittin' the Road; Columnist Prepares to Explore Our Country From Behind the Wheel
• Week One: Falling Water, Hot Wings, And Feathered Friends
• Week Two: Visiting Appleseed, Lincoln, and the Great Midwest
• Week Three: Reliving the Heady Days of the Old Wild West
• Week Four: Encounters with Baseball, Llamas, and the Great Pacific; Close Encounters of the Woolly Kind
• Week Five: From Neon Lights to Natural Sights, Adventure Continues
• Week Six: Exploring the Mysteries of the Deep South
• Closing Statement: Weary Travelers Return Home with Stories Found Only on the Road

Czech Republic

As a member of the WPI Men's Glee Club, I went on tour to the Czech Republic in March of 1999. We saw Prague, Kromeriz, Cesky Krumlov, Terezin, Vienna, and many other well-known sites. There are some pictures on the official tour web site.

Ireland

The Glee Club goes on tour biennially, so having conquered the former Czechoslovakia, in 2001 we went to Ireland, where audiences stayed at home rather than brave Foot & Mouth Disease to hear us sing. Here's the official tour page, though there's nothing there that should interest people who weren't on the tour. There are a few pictures from the tour grouped together on my pictures page.

Australia

As part of my studies, in 2000 I went to Australia to research and produce a document for a government laboratory. (see the school section of this homepage for more details) I spent eight weeks in Melbourne, where I joined AUSOM (Apple Users Society of Melbourne), played laser tag with Apple II programmer Peter Watson, and went to Tasmania for Easter/ANZAC weekend. Then I took a train to Sydney where I joined a two-week Contiki tour of the Gold Coast, during which time I took a surfing lesson, circumnavigated Magnetic Island on a jetski, went scubadiving at the Great Barrier Reef, and bungee-jumped in the rain forests near Cairns.

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