Let me tell you why...travel is a drug. 

I managed to avoid it for a while, I didn't want to get messed up in dreams of foreign coastlines, barren mountain vistas on top of the world or illusions of ancient ruins.  I didn't want the flashbacks that can come to you at any time of day, disrupting your work.  I sat aside, watching my friends doing it, me passing on the occasional tokes of two-week jaunts around the world.

It's instantly addictive, I would tell them.  The more you see, the more you want to see and the more you realize there is to see.  Timothy Leary's tune in and turn on reference to psychotropic drug hallucinations is merely an overused drug cliché compared to the power of your own memory high on travel.  You know that time between highs is down-time, and its hard, every moment spent looking forward to your next trip, planning it and learning about it. 

It's expensive, I said to them excusing myself from a trip.  Money goes easily like youre a pay-day junkie, its in your pocket for a moment and then its gone, supporting your airplane loving habit.  And just like a junkie, you spend half your time with dirty hippy feet in sandals painted brown by dusty exotic trails.

Your mind expands and you look at yourself standing in a whole different world from your normal everyday world.  You laugh thinking, if everyone else could see me now do they know do they know how high I am?  Everyone around you seems to be speaking weird, things you don't understand like Italian.

I learned how to get high, it was peer pressure, I'm proud to say.  And I'm getting high tomorrow.  I should be stoned for the next two weeks, tripping around Europe on my own time, at my own pace.  I'll be sure to fill you in like a hophead dying to tell you just how stoned he was after he comes down.  Talk to you all when I get back. 

By the way dude, you gotta try this shit.