Table of Contents
For my mother, Linda Walcroft,
who is always left holding the bag
or, in this case, the goatskin lunch box
while Im off traipsing around the world.
Introduction
In January of 2001, I believed that intimacy and codependence were the devil. Theyd sneak up, perhaps through a few clever jokes. The jokes would turn into dates, and dates into weekends, time spent getting to know the others family and friends. Id seen it happen to many of my friends, one by one. Theyd think someone was cute and next thing you know, theyd be moving to the suburbs with a spouse, two children, a dog, and an SUV. Theyd once had other plans, but they couldnt recall them. They hated their jobswho didnt?but theyd be chained to the career ladder for life, for the kids, for the mortgage, for lack of a more imaginative approach to living.
Id been on a lot of first dates though the last several years but not on a lot of second dates. I was adamantly independent, had other things on my mind, and dates were just the tempting bait in lifes cleverest trap. I had a little travel problem, almost an addiction, that didnt leave room for lifes trap. It wasnt about the destinationsit was about my reaction to new situations. Traveling made me improvise, think on my feet, and keep my mind wide open. Thanks to a tolerant boss and a freelance contract, I was able to work extra hard for ten months a year, getting ahead on my contract and taking two months off to visit exotic locales.
Problem was, I was slaving away miserablymindlessly coloring and editing comic books as I had for more than a decadefor those ten months to enjoy the two months abroad. Something was obviously wrong with this.
Id started to email travel diaries in 96 when Id been in Central America, and I expanded to an ambitious website in 98 with an eight-week trip across the Asian subcontinent and Middle East. This was with preblogging software, before the term blog even existed. Id code the HTML in Notepad or SimpleText, upload it however I could, and add a few jpegs from photos hastily scanned in an Internet caf. Digital cameras were not yet common.
Keeping an online diary meant I didnt have to bore friends who were not interested with the stories of my travels. Only those who genuinely wanted to see my holiday photos would look. Many people listen and look only to be polite, as they are more interested in their own lives than in mine (funny how that works). But there are otherstotal strangerswho relish tales of faraway lands. People I knew started forwarding my emails to people I didnt know. I started getting responses from strangers. The readers who enjoyed the stories the most were the ones with no hope of ever leaving home, the ones without passports or money, or they were people who used to travel but who were now disabled.
Id just returned home from Southeast Asia in March of 2000. I sat with my mother, uncle, and aunt at a picnic table outside a restaurant. We talked of the trip Id just had, my dissatisfaction with my ten-months-on, two-months-off lifestyle, and of my plans. What, we wondered, could I do on a grander scale to get me out of the repetitive job I was in once and for all?
Perhaps, I mused, I could go as far away on earth as I could. To the opposite side of the planet from New York City, which was Australia. Then Id have to get home by any means possible but would be forbidden to get on an airplane. That could be a good story to have up on the website. Surely that would be good enough for some articles and maybe even a book.
I started to research ships to see if it were possible to get out of Australia or if my plan would be a bust from the beginning.
What this research told me was that it was tough to leave Australia heading west but easy to get there from the east. So easy, in fact, that I could cover half the world in one Amtrak journey from New York to Los Angeles, followed by a ship voyage from Long Beach to Melbourne. Why do half the world when I could go around the whole thing simply by adding an extra month of easy travel?
And so MariesWorldTour.com was born. Id go around the world in a calendar year, and Id do it live, on the Internet. Id go without airplanes, but I wouldnt stubbornly stick to that in emergencies. Id send readers souvenirs from their virtual tour, and readers could vote on my route and excursions.
Richard Starkings of Comicraft liked the idea and offered to host my site. His designer, John JG Roshell of Active Images, was game. Friends contributed artwork and some travel outfitters offered discounts (and a few freebies). I sold my East Village condo, bought when the neighborhood was considered dicey and sold at what seemed then to be its trendy height. Id have to live out of a backpackand by my witsfor a year, across Australia, Asia, Russia, Europe, Africa, and North America.
The plan was to get across Australia, Europe, and North America as quickly as possible. Things running smoothly and easily is not the stuff of good travel stories. No one wants to read about taking a walking tour of Romes Colosseum or viewing the Rockies from a train window. No, the good stories happen when things go wrong. The more horribly wrong, the better the story.
I sleepwalked through most of Asia, having been there just one year before. Russia went smoothly, but Central Asia was a challenge. Uzbekistan was particularly difficult. But AfricaI loved Africa. So much so that I went back there to live for half of 2005. Parts of Africa look like what they call aid porn, those starving-children-in-huts images weve seen on TV that tug at our hearts. But what these commercials dont show you is the dignity of the people living in the huts, how they live their lives with the same hopes and dreams for their families as those in the developed countries of the North. The images dont show the vibrant cities of Cape Town, Kampala, or Nairobi. They dont imply that much of Africa also features flushing toilets, shopping malls, and gas stations just like in Ohio, or that genuine human concern for life is found in villages made of mud and sticks, the kind of concern that is lacking in the hypersocieties Id lived in.
Parts of Africa are a hassle to navigate on public transport. Touts can be relentless in tourist areas, and tribalism often ruins otherwise healthy political systems. Crime rates are infamous in South Africa, people are starving from politically induced famine in Zimbabwe, and populations across the continent have been devastated by HIV. But life can also be a grand adventure in Africa, and while challenging, it can also be a rewarding place to live or travel in.
Crossing Africa in that year of 2001 taught me a lot about myself, and somewhere between Cape Town and Cairowhen Id eaten my 250th meal of the year aloneI started to grasp something. I had met some fantastic people during the year. Some of them had enhanced my adventures and broken through my invisible barrier of solitude. Maybejust maybeit was possible to let my guard down. Maybe dates didnt have to turn into the ball and chain of a traditional life. Maybe Id had it all wrong, and opening up to other people didnt automatically equal a miserable life of routine and a desk job.
