Chronically Affected by the Travel Bug

My wife and I love to travel. We like to experience different cultures, eat their food, meet the people, and be there in the middle of it all. We have been traveling for quite a few years.

Lots of people ask, "When was I bitten by the travel bug?" I reply, "It is all because I took a job at 3M Company."

Why do I attribute my travel addiction to my employer? Let me try to condense the story. I started working for the 3M Company in Bristol, Pennsylvania in the summer of 1971. Up until this point, I had not traveled more that a couple of hundred miles from my birthplace, Philadelphia. In 1972, I was given the opportunity to take a sales job in Ohio. I flew to Detroit for an interview. This was my first plane ride. I had a window seat on a Boeing 707, breakfast included, and 3M paid for the ticket. I got the job and moved to Toledo, Ohio. Life was good.  

I accepted jobs with more responsibility and more travel. This took me to much of the continental US and Canada. In 1989, I was offered a European assignment in Brussels, Belgium. This led to my first international flight, Dallas to Frankfurt to Brussels. I didn't have a window seat, but it was in business class. The job responsibility required that I travel to and work with subsidiaries of 3M in each western European country. In my business travels, I was with locals and got to experience their country through their eyes. With my colleagues, I ate local meals, I visited local sites, and I generally saw how they lived. When I was not working, my wife and I spent our weekends and vacation time visiting Europe on our own. Life continued to be good.

At the end of the European assignment, I moved into a small business within 3M that was truly a global business. The business had 3 main focus areas, US, Europe and Asia. My travel continued in the US and Europe, but I now had the opportunity to travel in Asia. My first plane trip to Asia in 1993 departed Minnesota traveling to Japan followed by Taiwan, South Korea, and Singapore.  That first Asian trip was followed by many more taking me to Malaysia, Thailand, the Philippines, Indonesia and China. Life was good and now global.

That's how it started. At least, that's my story.

Once the Asia travel began, our personal travels expanded as well. We have done lots of traveling in the US, Europe and Asia. We have added quite a few trips to South America, too. In the last two years, we have visited both polar regions as well, Antarctica in the south and the Svalbard Archipelago in the north. 

Depending on how one counts countries, I've been to 76 (per The Travelers' Century Club) or 55 (UN list of countries) and six of the seven continents.

Where to next? Too many choices.