At the tail end of the last millennium, I found myself traveling around the USA. I was a trainer, technician, and systems engineer for a medical software company in Vermont, at a time when this kind of work couldn’t be done remotely. I love to travel, but hadn’t really had the means to do much of it. Traveling on a company expense account was a big thrill for me and I wanted to share my experiences.

This was before the age of Twitter, Facebook, and other social media. “Blogs” were unheard of. The word “blog,” was coined in 1999 to describe the hand-crafted personal web pages that had begun to spring up. The best way to get my writing out was to send a bulk email.

This was the email that I sent to my contact list on January 23rd 1999.

I’m writing this to about 60 people, pretty much everyone with whom I correspond on the Internet, to ask if you’d like to receive regular letters from me about my journeys around the country. Some of you know that I’ve love travel stories almost to the point of obsession (I’ve got several bookshelves full of them). Others will be aware of the fact that my job at IDX has called for a lot of travel lately. In fact, it’s been too darned much travel. I’m thinking that an email-published series of letters would be a good way for me to get back in practice writing, and would be fun

If you’d like to subscribe, please reply to this letter and let me know. If you know somebody who’d like to subscribe, send me their name.

I don’t go to exotic places, just places that have large hospitals. This usually means the larger cities in the US — Boston, Chicago, Portland, Atlanta, etc. Occasionally I get to go to someplace incredibly boring like Gallipolis, Ohio. So what could be interesting about business travel to unexceptional places? Well, Marco Polo was a business traveller and wrote some interesting stuff, and old Hank Thoreau claimed to have “travelled extensively … around Concord.” I think I’ll find enough grist for the mill. Still, If there’s nothing interesting to say about the places I’m visit, the people I meet, or the meals I eat, I’ll talk about the books I read. And I read some interesting books.

These will be unedited journals, not finished essays. I don’t expect them to be filled with wit, but I expect an occasional flash of brilliance. I expect to travel about twice a month (more if I’m not good at saying “no” to my company, less if I stick up for myself), so my musings shouldn’t fill up your mailbox too quickly.

I’m not sure the form these essays will take. Come to think of it, I’m not sure they’ll have any form. Some days I may feel like writing about the alienation of hotel life, the effect of hotel art work on one’s psyche, or the twists and turns of airline food. Other days I may want to write about the people I’m working with, and on others I may write about a walk I took through a neighborhood. I suspect my writing will be a little like that of Calvin Trillin, John McPhee, Bill Bryson, Dave Barry, and Mark Twain. But not as good. Nope, not even close.

I’m inspired in this effort by three of my friends. Bob Blue, a retired teacher from Amherst sends out wonderful essays on parents, teachers, and children twice a week. My nephew Daniel Maynes-Aminzade has a web page (www.monzy.com) filled with amusing essays about his life as a college student. Joe Kelly, a friend from Lawrence, Massachusetts travels the planet teaching municipal finance, and sends regular journals from such exotic places as Romania and Turkmenstan. If any of you want to subscribe to Bob or Joe’s mailings, let me know.