The journey begins

April 1993
It’s true I took valium to fly, but few knew that. I only slept with the light on alone and managed uncomfortable silences by never shutting up. I suffered aviaphobia and believed firmly in ghosts. I was also afraid of heights, bars, spiders, crocodiles, zombies, drowning, strangers, a fiery death, and of course surviving a plane crash into the ocean only to be eaten by sharks. If self doubt and ceaseless anxiety weren't enough, there was always insomnia.
However, like some, I meandered my way through life looking convincingly confident and in control.

Then, a friend died in a plane crash and Hurricane Andrew blew into town. People I knew suffered tragic, horrendous circumstances. Unimaginable disasters changed my world and made it unrecognizable. Given my preconceived notions about the dangers that surrounded me, this just confirmed what I already suspected: the world wasn’t safe after all.

My approach to sleeplessness and grief was immersion in late night television. In that eerie place of night where sirens and shadows haunted my imagination, I found comfort in other people’s lives. Somewhere between midnight and dawn, my neuroses were powerless to foil dream journeys rich in intrigue, danger, passion, and self-confidence. So, perhaps no surprise that in the deepest hours of the morning, after endless hours watching Heat and Dust, The Gods Must be Crazy, Shirley Valentine and Out of Africa, my path became clear. I had to go. I would make my own destiny, conquer my fears, meet new people, have grand adventures and romance, conceive an illegitimate child and marry a Sultan, a Jewish Sultan!

I studied travel magazines and guidebooks, spoke with travel agents and airlines, and heroically booked and paid for a year long, around the world ticket. After many late night hours finally spent in more constructive endeavors, I created an expansive itinerary for the least amount of money (all that I had). Everything seemed reasonably affordable if I carried just a backpack, slept in a one person tent, used public transportation, and maintained a twenty dollar a day allowance. Budget backpacking - how exciting!

May 1993
Backpackers travel lightly and good shoes are important. My younger brother insisted that a good towel was imperative (this he’d learned from Douglas Adams’ Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy series). For my mother it was clean underwear. My father felt I needed a knife (a gun was his first suggestion). I felt strongly that rope was invaluable. Other items that topped my list were batteries, matches, a lighter, soft toilet paper, my wooden flute from the Renaissance fair (on which I could play the first twelve notes of three songs) and a good leave-in hair conditioner (it really is a necessity!).

Family and friends requested I keep a journal but all those empty pages just added to my anxiety. Instead, I found an 8”x 6” Academic Assignment calendar book with 2 inch spaces per day for data entry. It also contained the following: international weights and measures, conversion tables, national holidays, religious festivals, country names and capitals, monetary units and national airlines, notable dates (such as Boxing Day and Yom Kippur) vintage wine charts for European and California wines, and a carbohydrate grams and calorie chart. What more could I possibly need?

Journal Entry July 31, 1993
I arrived in the evening at JFK airport where friends collected me and headed straight for Atlantic City. I promptly gambled away thirty-five precious dollars of my budgeted twenty dollar a day savings. This does not bode well.

Journal Entry August 4, 1993
I’m off now to Lisbon, Portugal (western most capital city on mainland Europe).
The journey begins. Wheeeeeeeeeee!
I may throw up.