Here we are almost in February 2023, but this post will be looking back on 2022 . . .

I actually wrote almost all of this on the evening of 12/31/22, but never used the WordPress publish button. Not sure why, but I haven’t had anything new on this blog since March of last year, and that was to finish up my recap of 2019! Time to get back to, well . . . not the present, but let’s call it the recent past.

This past year was one of my best ever for travel.  

I ventured from my home in Miami Beach to Boston (twice), Puerto Rico, Las Vegas (twice), New Orleans, Brussels, Bruges, Frankfurt, Heidelberg, Amsterdam, Key West, and Nashville.   The math on just the flights adds up to 32,916 miles, more than the distance around the earth (24,901 miles according to National Geographic). 

Yet, other than my travel notebooks scribbled in the moment, I did not write one word about these adventures.

I’m not sure why.  When I returned from New Orleans last June, I started a blog post and got 660 words down before I abandoned it.  I could say it’s because I’ve been trying to use my precious spare time to finish the sequel to Lost in the Fog, but that’s not entirely true.  I feel if you’re truly motivated, you can find the time for the things you love.

I love writing and I love sharing my travel stories . . . so why didn’t I find the time?

I don’t have the answers on the last night of 2022 on January 28, 2023, but I will say this year I plan to do a lot more writing. Be it blogging about travel, finally finishing the sequel to Fog, completing a new script, short story, or non-fiction piece, I’m excited to compile a massive number of words this coming year.  I have lots of ideas that I want to put into action and onto the page. 

One of those projects is to redo my solo 2003 cross-country trip.

Mostly without a radio and not at all with a cell phone, on 6/19/03 I set out from Los Angeles in my beat-up Passat Wagon. The route was north up to Seattle, and then after a few days with friends I headed east all the way across the country (including venturing into Canada) to Boston.  It was over 5,000 miles with a tape recorder as my only companion, and I dictated hours of notes that I later typed up describing this adventure.

The goal in 2003 was to fictionalize my trip as a novel, and I eventually wrote around 150 pages that have languished in digital purgatory.  For years I would go back to that project, but I’ve never been able to finish it.  Maybe someday I can, but writing a non-fiction piece looking back on the journey while taking a new one 20 years later would be pretty cool.  On this New Year’s Eve 1/28/23, I will try to manifest that, as well as all my other writing goals.

While I didn’t blog about my travels or anything that happened in 2022, here are some of the photos looking back on the year. There’s lots to say about these images and all the good times, but I’ll let the pictures speak for themselves. As Hunter S. Thompson used to say, Res ipsa loquitur.

Wishing everyone an amazing 11 months and change that remain in 2023!