Welcome!

Hey Everybody!

Here it is - the much anticipated blog chronicling my trip around the world. Some of you know the back story but more of you are probably unaware of the background. So let me catch you up on the past year and how it is I got to be traveling around the world.

My new year's resolution last year was to do a feasibility study on traveling around the world. My girlfriend Bryn suggested that I set a date for deciding WHEN I would start my trip. That date was June 30. An arbitrary date that gave me 6 months to research my resolution. I spent the next 6 months figuring out my budget, route, means of transportation, parameters and the all important mission statement: to feel all the places that I had spent the past 3 (now 4) years of my life reading about and writing about for my job. Parameters: make it from Iceland to Indonesia without flying.

Today is the first day of my trip, which explains why you're getting this now. I'll be spending the next 8-9 months going places and telling you all about those places, and maybe even sending pictures of those places. Some of  you may remember the "weekly updates" I sent back in college. This will be something like that, with the added advantage of being in blog form, which means you get to read these words will all this nifty blogspot formatting and color schemes. For those of you unfamiliar with Ben's weekly update, just rest easily knowing that this is a huge improvement.

There are certainly people that I will leave out of the distribution list, so please forward this to whomever you think would be interested.

Here we go,
Ben

Welcome to the adventure!