David Mark Erickson

It has been 68 days since I left home in the United States and 45 days since I left Budapest, my official start/finish point.

Since then I have slept in 17 different locations in 12 cities, including one ferry boat and one bus. I have visited 5 different countries, briefly passing through 2 others.

I have traveled by train, bus and by boat. I don’t know how many kilometers (miles) I have gone, too hard to try and do the math right now. (Maybe someone out there with some spare time wants to figure it out on google maps for me?)

I have taken more that 6,000 photos. I have published 4 stories and I have 6 more in the pipeline.

Calculating since the start of October (61 days), I am averaging USD $42.08/day, $12.08/day more than I budgeted. If I did my math right, I am 40% over budget. October was a funny month since I was on a business trip at the start and then in Budapest, so I was only 0.5% over budget. November was much more expensive because I spent more on lodging than I had wanted (all worth it except in one case), and so ended up 40% over budget for the month.

If you are wondering, I have a very handy iPhone app called iXpenselt which is superb. Sadly, I am not being paid for this product endorsement.

Ups and downs? Yes, I have had a few. I think the hardest point so far was leaving Ljubljana and heading for Rovinj. Leaving Ljubljana was like jumping off the cliff: it was the last place where I felt familiarity in my surroundings, and it was also when the initial burst of excitement began to wear off. I was also well supported by a wonderful network of friends-of-friends, and leaving marked a point where, in my mind, I where was really “on my own.”

Getting to Rovinj started the process of crashing my expectations into reality. There is a fine line to walk between expectation and reality. The “self” will always build expectations, something fundamental and very useful that is part of our programming. But, also something potentially deadly if (when) we allow expectation to inflate beyond reasonable proportions, or if expectations are treated like reality.

In Rovinj, I felt let down because my expectations about what I wanted to do there were not being met. This started a cascade and began to pull down all of my expectations for the entire trip. I started to realize all of the hidden assumptions I had built up, and I began to understand that I would not be able to accomplish all of them.

The hard part was letting go, but like the kid with his fist caught in the cookie jar there is only one solution (not including smashing the jar). So, I make choices. I make choices knowing that the results will have consequences, but that new opportunities truly do exist around every corner. I thought that leaving Ljubljana I would be alone and unsupported. Not true. I thought cutting off visiting certain places would diminish my trip. Not true. I thought that I needed everything in my pack that I started out with. Not true.

The only thing that is true is that which I choose to bring forth, everyday and in every encounter.