Home sweet home. I’m finally back from my 19 day road-trip around Europe. I’ve gotten so used to the rhythm of the road that it is now a bit of a shock to the system to be stationary again. I woke up this morning thinking where I am driving today? Sadly nowhere, except to town to take care of some much needed admin and logistics that have piled up in my absence. Oh, the Ordinary World where is thou release?

The Hero is suppose to return from his journey transformed and carry with him the elixir that will help changed the world. I need some time to process the journey to see if and how I may have changed as result of my 2,962 mile journey across Europe and back. And that doesn’t include the mileage spent being lost driving around in circles looking for places without names, restaurants with killer jaeger schnitzel, and the various other day trips from our nightly base-camps. Although I still have more processing to do, I can recall immediately two very distinct messages.

One I picked up from Thoreau: “There are nowadays professors of philosophy, but not philosophers. Yet it is admirable to profess because it was once admirable to live. To be a philosopher is not merely to have subtle thoughts, nor even to found a school, but to so love wisdom as to live according to its dictates, a life of simplicity, independence, magnanimity, and trust. It is to solve some of the problems of life, not only theoretically, but practically.”

And the other is that the broad themes of my way of life as I approach 40 tomorrow will be focused on enlightenment, adventure, and travel or E.A.T for short.

I suspect over the next week or so I will be filtering parts of the journey on to the blog along with pictures of the trip, so stay tuned. For now here is a link to the road-trip route on google maps and here are some pictures of the aftermath of a 3,000 mile journey: