{"id":41480,"date":"2015-10-23T15:41:06","date_gmt":"2015-10-23T19:41:06","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/totfc.net\/?p=41480"},"modified":"2020-07-17T15:41:17","modified_gmt":"2020-07-17T19:41:17","slug":"the-pursuit-of-exploration","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/?p=41480","title":{"rendered":"The pursuit of exploration"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"border-image alignnone wp-image-41481 size-full\" src=\"http:\/\/totfc.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/07\/eurotrip.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"500\" height=\"200\" srcset=\"https:\/\/totfc.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/07\/eurotrip.jpg 500w, https:\/\/totfc.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/07\/eurotrip-300x120.jpg 300w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 500px) 100vw, 500px\" \/><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-family: Lora; font-size: 12pt;\">Growing up, I didn\u2019t travel a whole lot.\u00a0 Up until I was like maybe 11 years old, my entire world revolved around the states of Virginia and Maryland, bouncing around between family visits and, family visits.\u00a0 Family vacations as I aged were to places like New York, Chicago, and to Niagara Falls, where we barely crossed into Canada for a spell.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-family: Lora; font-size: 12pt;\">Conventions, afforded me opportunities to visit other states, although I didn\u2019t really explore any of them outside of the respective conventions I went to, but for what it was worth, I started visiting places like California, Georgia and the Carolinas.\u00a0 And when I became my best impression of a functional adult and got super into baseball, the pursuit of baseball parks has given me the best excuse to visit a whole slew of places I never imagined seeing growing up, like Seattle, Portland, Miami, Boston, Minneapolis, Phoenix and San Diego.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-family: Lora; font-size: 12pt;\">However, aside from visits to cities in adjacent countries Canada and Mexico, I\u2019ve never been outside of the United States.\u00a0 In fact, I\u2019ve never been out of the western hemisphere in my entire life.\u00a0 For shame, when you consider the fact that I\u2019ve never been back to the Motherland at any point, and it\u2019s still my goal to ultimately take my mother to Korea one of these days.\u00a0 I never went, or really had the opportunity for any dramatic international travel in my life; I didn\u2019t go backpacking through Europe, nor did I ever have the aforementioned trip back to the Motherland.\u00a0 And up until I was really an adult, I guess I didn\u2019t have the financial means and\/or the drive to pursue it.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><!--more--><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-family: Lora; font-size: 12pt;\">Well, that changes now, because by time I post this, I\u2019ll probably already be up in the air, on my way across the Atlantic Ocean, for a vacation\u00a0<em>in another part of the world.<\/em>\u00a0I haven\u2019t really talked about this much, mostly because I\u2019m kind of a recluse when it comes to my vacation aspirations, but also because I\u2019m sometimes paranoid, and this was planned so far ahead in advance that I also had to deal with the distractions of the angsty summer vacation I never wanted as well that tempered some of the build up.\u00a0 All that, and the fact that I don\u2019t think I\u2019m really that wired to get super-excited and pumped up about things, in general, despite the fact that I know this is going to be an amazing and memorable trip.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-family: Lora; font-size: 12pt;\">But yeah, European vacation.\u00a0 I\u2019m going to see four countries, view a lot of touristy things, take hundreds of pictures, eat all the food and drink most of the spirits.\u00a0 It should also come as no surprise that\u00a0<em>League of Legends\u00a0<\/em>will be involved, since the mythical girlfriend and I will be attending the semi-finals as well as the finals to Worlds while we\u2019re out there.\u00a0 I would be remiss if I didn\u2019t mention that without her encouragement and own travel ambitions, I probably would never have had the push to take a plunge like this in the first place.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-family: Lora; font-size: 12pt;\">I am excited sure, but I\u2019m also a little nervous about the whole thing, because this is the first time I\u2019m really leaving a comfort zone where, even in \u201cother\u201d countries, English is still widely accepted and understood.\u00a0 I\u2019m going somewhere where the USD is scoffed at, and I\u2019ve already gotten reamed converting my money to Euros; this is what Canadians and Mexicans must feel like visiting the United States.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-family: Lora; font-size: 12pt;\">But I know that everything\u2019s going to work out, and it\u2019s going to be pretty incredible.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-family: Lora; font-size: 12pt;\">All that considered, this is going to be the last post for a while (unless I find reliable internet connectivity as well as the desire to write on vacation).\u00a0 I hope my six readers and everyone back in the United States have good times while I\u2019m away, fun and happy Halloweens, and I just realized that I can make the Wyclef Jean reference that is relevant, when I say that I\u2019ll be\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=kI6MWZrl8v8\"><em>Gone \u2019Til November<\/em><\/a>.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Growing up, I didn\u2019t travel a whole lot.\u00a0 Up until I was like maybe 11 years old, my entire world revolved around the states of Virginia and Maryland, bouncing around between family visits and, family visits.\u00a0 Family vacations as I aged were to places like New York, Chicago, and to Niagara Falls, where we barely &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/totfc.net\/?p=41480\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">The pursuit of exploration<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[177,15,65,166],"class_list":["post-41480","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-brog","tag-mythical","tag-og","tag-travel","tag-vacation"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41480","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=41480"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41480\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":41482,"href":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41480\/revisions\/41482"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=41480"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=41480"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=41480"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}