“You can’t, young man, waste money investing in real estate, or travel.”

Yeah, well who wants a house anyway?

We are all, I suppose, by our very nature intrepid. As soon as we are born, we begin to explore the sights and sounds, the touch and the taste of the things that surround us. We learn to crawl and the floors of our homes become a world of discovery. We lurk about feet, enjoy virgin gastronomical delights in the cats dinner, marvel at the undersides of tables like they’re the Sistine chapel, and we chew on other peoples shoes.

We learn to stand, and new objects are suddenly within new reach become part our domain. By the time we can walk, we have the house mapped and conquered. We peer and poke under our beds, set up camp in the backs of our cupboards, roam under our parents and siblings’ beds and launch hostile takeovers on the backs of their cupboards. Behind the sofa becomes a secret place, muffled from the chorus of family that surrounds, a silent place just for us. There isn’t a drawer or a nook, a box or cranny that hasn’t been thoroughly inspected, and if big enough, occupied.

Soon we learn of the world that exists beyond the front and back doors our mothers carefully guard. We discover the compost pile at the end of the yard, the dappled retreat beneath the trampoline in summer, the middles of bushes and the tops of roofs.

We get a bike and our realm again expands, our friends houses and the spaces under their beds, their sheds, their attics their yards. We explore car parks and shopping malls; high schools on weekends, quiet and lonely. We sneak through abandoned houses with broken and boarded windows as though they are places long forgotten and found by us anew.

Soon we get a car. A set of wheels is certainly the finest tool for any adolescent on a quest of all things new. We drive up and down the country leaving no corner unturned. Every new road seems like some kind of a treat, a fresh discovery begging to be ticked off the ‘been there, done that’ list. We revel in new cities and towns, new people and places.

Then, one day, when the corners are all anticipated and the roads look old and worn, we head for a bluff, stand on the shore and look out to the far horizon. We know out there, beyond where the sky and sea meet blue on blue, there are things that a body simply just have to go and lay an eye on, out there to the north, or east, or west of here.

So we get out a map, a pen and lay it out on the floor. It’s all there in front of us, a world of wonder and adventure waiting to behold, a beautiful collage packaged into neat little technicolored countries. Looking at that map, we firstly wonder at who gets to choose the colours, and why the hell our homeland has to be a pastel pink, before soon getting down to making dots. We make dots on the cities and countries, maybe because we always wanted to go there, or because we heard that it’s beautiful, or perhaps we have some genealogical link to its past. Maybe it’s makes really great beer, or is just cheap and looks on the way. Then, starting from home, we begin connecting dots. A false start here and a back track there, traveling the world on a felt tipped ferry. After a good while, the map begins to looks like a home for charlotte,- especially if one is foolish enough to have used permanent,- but that doesn’t matter, because in there, clearly retraced and drawn heavier than the rest, is a line, a path, a niko trail across the face of the earth.

And then? Well, then… here we all are! And I guess we had better get this business of seeing the world done soon, if, of course, we plan on getting to the moon.

My name is Dan. I’ve stuck that map on the wall above the sink and stared at it for two year’s worth of dishes. I’ve got 12 free months, a fist full of money, and when that runs out some numbers to call to beg for more. Miriam, my wonderful, beautiful girlfriend has stared at that map as well as I have, though scarcely as often I might suggest, owing to her disadvantage of not as often having had pleasure of the same vantage. She thinks I’m crazy I’m sure, though loves me in spite, or maybe because of it and is coming on this journey too.

So I’m going to write it all down, this thing in front of us. Hopefully it will allow me to analyze and organize just why we must do it, just what it all means. I’m sure I will enjoy writing it; I hope you enjoy reading it, although at the very least, I’m sure my mother will.