A lot of stuff needed

Mark Turner was timely to write about ZipCar this week as I have been thinking about signing up for this very service. Today I woke up early and drove the Suburban back to Kelly's house where it will reside henceforth. So, as of today I don't own a car. My home and work are separated by, perhaps, 100 yards at best. Do I really *need* a car? Not really, I mean probably 50 yards at a 90 degree angle from my beeline to the office from home sits the new Durham transit terminal. But.... the bus? Me?

What if I need to, say, go see my physician in Cary? It's hard to get a bus ride there. Still even a cab there and back would be less expensive than making payments on a car I don't use. There is a larger problem at work I'm afraid and that is the just about perfect for me ZipCar service does not extend into Durham. Chapel Hill, yes. Durham, no. The service may be coming to Duke University but we just don't know yet.

So for the next few months I'm paying for and insuraing a friend's 2004 Jeep TJ. She's not using is so why not? In fact she says it would help not having the payment for a while. That's good enough logic for me.

But what about after that? What then? The reason I'm waffling on purchasing a new ride is my boss made the statement flat-out that I can work from any facility where our company has a footprint - including any global office. That's when the light went off in my head.

I could, if I could figure out how to pull it off.. go totally without a permaent address starting the spring of next year when my one year commitment/lease is up. The less payments I have the more I could afford to live (cheaply) on the road. Could it be possible? If I were going to do the global explorer role I'd want to do it right - leave the country and stay out for as long as possible. There are seveal "main" offices that I could visit and stay for a long time, perhaps even a month. The first places I'd want to visit would be the corporate UK HQ in London followed by Poznan, Poland and Malaysia where our "tech centers" are located.

After that anything is possible - Russia, Italy, Czech Republic, Japan and of couse South Korea. Hell we have offices where the Peace Corps dare not tread. I woudn't put myself in harms way intentionally but, yeah, why not Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Isreal, South Africa and other assorted locations?

Travelling about Europe would be easy enough but these other places, I'm not sure about them. But I'm getting well ahead of myself. First and foremost I have to get through this year and save money so I could, if I were able, undertake this oddyssey. I'd be sure to take LOTS of pictures.

I may be staring at a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. I think it would be doing myself a disservice were I to not at least consider something as insane as this.