A Rush Of Blood To The Head

My old passport photo. The year is 1990. I’m nineteen-years-old. I’m wearing a red Polo shirt, huge Perry Ellis tortoise shell glasses, and a silly grin. And I have a pony tail.

My first passport saw a good bit of use: Italy, France, Switzerland, Guatemala, Belize, Bahamas, Aruba, British Virgin Islands. Fifteen years later, I’m finally at it again. I took a new photo tonight, and should have my new passport in a few weeks. First stamp? Australia.

Australia. I know, I know, they speak English there. But check it: Australia is nearly 10,000 miles away from New York City. Ten. Thousand. Miles. The seasons in Australia are the complete opposite from New York City. And the water — get this — the water swirls the other way down the drain. That’s wack.

Yeah, so I depart LAX (following a week of work in MTV’s Santa Monica office) on September 24th. I get to Australia on September 26th. I’m spending a few days in Sydney under the watchful eye of my favorite international penpal Dani, then heading to Cairns, hoppin’ on a boat, and spending a few days diving The Great Barrier Reef.

Me. On The Great Barrier Reef. Solo. That’s totally wack.

See, when I was a youngster back at Syracuse, I spent my summers boomeranging between Upstate New York and Southern California. In the summer of my junior year alone, I put over 8500 miles on my Nissan Sentra. I drove to Montana the week after graduation. I camped in Joshua Tree National Park a few years later. And right before starting at The MTV, I spent a week camping at 15,000 feet above Telluride, then, with just days before my gig began, made a last-minute pilgrimage to Graceland. Since October 1996, though, I’ve been fairly land locked. Sure, I’ve gotten out of Hell’s Kitchen a fair amount (Hawaii comes to mind, California quite a bit), but I haven’t left the country. I haven’t had an adventure.

Adventures stretch the soul. They reset the odometer. They raise the bar. They make us who we are. And I’m overdue.

So if my new record blows (it won’t), or if my marathon time sucks (it won’t), or if you don’t hear from me for a few weeks (you will), well, you gotta’ know my intentions are the best. I have some growin’ to do.