personal inspiration

For one reason or another, I have yet to fulfill a small fraction of my traveling goals. Matt Harding, on the other hand, has accomplished a lifetime's worth of world travel, twice, six months at a time. For those with a sense of unease about the state of world travel as an American, he offers this:

Melissa and I got in a car wreck last week...I turned off I-90 and was merging onto I-5 when a car zoomed up behind us...we felt a bump from behind and had an instant to brace before the car spun around in the left lane and the tail end smashed into my door, hard...The experience has reinforced my conviction that I am not going to die while visiting mountain gorillas in Uganda or chasing humpback whales in Tonga. I am either going to die in a car accident or from heart disease or cancer.

And so are you. And you, and you, and you. [link]