Welcome...An introduction.

Well, well, well...welcome to my blog. I'm new to this stuff, so forgive the spartan appearance. A little background:

After graduating from Franklin Pierce College in 1993, I spent 5 years in the sales/advertising business, in varying capacities. I hated it. I just wasn't made for the regular 9-5 world, at least not in the same place I'd lived my whole life (Nashua, NH, north of Boston). I was restless. Unsatisfied. I yearned to explore faraway places beyond the usual yearly two week vacations. So it was in the spring of 1998 that I decided to quit everything and join the US Army. I was guaranteed an assignment in Germany (which is what I wanted), as well as money for my Master's degree. It was quite a leap of faith, but turned out to be the best decision I ever made. I quickly fell in love with Europe and got a transfer to Italy in the year 2000. I've been here ever since - I've since separated from the Army, but still work as a contractor.

Suffice to say, traveling around Europe was my main motivation for joining the Army. Had they not agreed to send me to Europe, I never would have re-enlisted. Because of that, every spare moment in Germany was spent traveling. Those were memorable times to be sure. I had no responsibilities, no strings, nobody to worry about but myself. Most weekends I would just go down to the train station, look at the map of Europe in my travel bible (I'm holding it in my profile picture), pick a place, and go. By the time I got to Italy, I had outgrown European travel a bit and therefore decided to expand my travel scope to include Asia. To that end, I ended up meeting and falling in love with a beautiful Filipina who had been living in Hong Kong and I'm happy to say that she's now my wife. We also have a 13 month old boy named Xavier - better known as the X Man. With my new responsibilities, traveling has slowed to a trickle. Also, as I'm no longer in the Army, I don't have as much leisure time in which to do it. So now that I'm a civilian again, I'm back to the yearly two week vacation and occasional weekend trips. Alas, it seems I've come full circle.

I have a website that originally started out as a place to post my travel photos, but ended up growing exponentially. If you'd like to see the "Travel" section of it, click on this link: www.rikthib.com/travel.htm. There's also a list I call "The Best and Worst of Europe", where I list 'em as I see 'em. Check it out and please, feel free to chime in.

So why am I telling you all this? Hopefully it'll give you some background as you read my mundane posts and give you a better understanding of who I am and where I'm coming from. I was planning on keeping this blog mostly travel related, but why limit myself? I'll just write whatever is on my mind.

One note however: I'm busy, and there's absolutely no way I'm going tobe able to keep this thing updated as often as I'd like. Between this and my website, I just don't have the time. So just accept that fact now...