Final Day in Victoria

Warning: This first blog post is more about thoughts and feelings in the final moments before I take off, and therefore lacks the wild stories and cool pictures that I promise future entries will have.

The to-do lists are as done as they are going to be, I've packed everything I think I need (and probably more), the money belt is loaded with ID and I am wearing my travel outfit. On top of all this I have a general sense of ... well I guess that is what this first blog post is about.

Everyone I know talks about how excited I must be to be going on this trip. And I am, I absolutely am, but it is about more then a vacation, chugging beers, or chasing international skirts.(Fear not lads, there will be plenty of those stories to go with the deeper thinking on this blog.)

The idea really stems from a rather rough month of March. I was overwhelmed with school, and then my girlfriend Elise (of several years) and I split up, I had my 26th birthday and then to top it all off I didn't get the job I had long pictured myself getting at CSIS (Canadian Security Intelligence Service, basically our CIA.) I really felt lost and like running away from it all to re-evaluate things. But I had to finish off the classes I was enrolled in at the time as the drop date had passed. When that semester was done I was able to finish my degree with just 2 summer classes so I felt compelled to get those done. Two days ago I finished that second class and I have now completed all my degree requirements. But have not regained the sense I had of a very clear and obvious progression.

To a large part I have to give credit to my travel partner Heather Fitton for this trip actually getting off the ground. The idea, hatched over a late night's drinking, turned into much more with Heather's encouragement and my following of an old drinking aphorism: "Always do sober what you said you would do drunk." In late April we began to seriously look at this trip and by May we had booked one way tickets to Mexico City from Seattle for 200$ (Cheap if anyone else wants to come down).

I appologize but this has to be cut short and published late as Heather showed up and we had to mozzie to theclipper.