Happy new year! This is the first in a series of posts looking back at stuff I did a lot in 2009. Reading, traveling ... and seeing music. So, here we go, with travel:
Indiana, Maryland, Washington D.C., Illinois, California, Nevada, Michigan, Iowa, Minnesota, Tennessee
New States: 0
Wow, bad showing on the new states front this year. I didn't cross a single one off the list. Which means...
States left before I reach 50: (still) 7
Louisiana, Maine, North Dakota, South Dakota, Montana, Wyoming, Rhode Island. I was hoping to check Montana off in early 2010, but I don't think that's going to work out. I still have hopes of hitting Maine sometime this year, though. Maybe a business trip to North Dakota. What else? I'll have to wait and see. Overall, though, I don't feel too badly about my failures in the new state field. Because...
Countries visited: 5
England, Spain, Portugal, Italy, The Netherlands. And all of them were new! As always, my goal for 2010 is at least one more. Maybe another new continent?
A note about travel this decade:
If you consider the decade to be "years in which the first numeral was 2 and the third numeral was 0," which most people seem to be doing, this was a huge travel decade for me. Understandable, for me it spanned ages 20-30. But before the year 2000, I had never been to a country outside the U.S. Not even Canada. Now I've visited sixteen countries on four continents: not too shabby. Before 2000, I'd been to thirteen states. Plenty of progress there, too, reaching forty-three.
I don't like ranking best vacation spots or best trips; I see no need for those kinds of comparisons. I've kept a blog since 2005, which means many of my experiences are already documented. However, one earlier trip really deserves a mention: Moscow and Siberia, August 2001. I will write about that sometime.
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