It’s my birthday.  It’s also the day I gave my “exit talk” which nominally crowned me with a p h d with a bit of champagne, but enough about that.  For the past two months, I have lived out of a backpack, practiced at being a nomad, wandered through three countries while preparing for this road trip through another ten.

I’ve identified some of the skills I will need to endure the road and came up with questions I would like to answer on my path.

• How do I deal with travel fatigue, and how do my interactions with people I meet for the first time and for not more than a few days become something other than an protracted amorphous hello and goodbye?  I need to have my own center and goals, and channel that at productive conversation that I will be responsible for conducting from place to place, leaving and taking.
• I’m curious how successful we will be at using CouchSurfing.com to identify individuals curious to engage and share their realities with us.