Last night I watched my first episode of Dawson's Creek in about four years. I'm wondering what the hell happened. First of all, Dawson himself was not even in the episode. What's the point of having an episode in which the title character does not even appear? That's like Knight Rider without KITT. Or like that one season of Welcome Back, Kotter, where Mr. Kotter appeared in like two episodes because of some contract dispute. Or like that season of The Dukes of Hazzard, when Bo and Luke were mysteriously replaced by their two cousins who happened to look exactly like them.

Anyway...back to Dawson's Creek...when the hell did Pacey become a stockbroker? The last time I saw this show Pacey was barely passing high school. And, as near as I can figure, most of the show now takes place in California rather than North Carolina. Not that I'm really worried about it, because it will probably be about 4 more years before I see another episode.

Anyway....I've got this personal goal of leaving the United States at least once a year. I set this goal for myself in 2000, after returning from a trip to the United Kingdom and realizing that I had gone abroad in both 1998 and 1999 as well. In the summer of 1998, I did the typical post-college backpack trip through Europe. When I travel, I'm not the kind of person who likes to plan out an itinerary. I don't like making schedules like, "I'll spend three days in London and then go to Paris for four days..." I've always just sort of winged it...kind of deciding where to go on the spur of the moment.

This somtimes creates small problems, such as not being guaranteed a place to stay. In 2000 when I went to the United Kingdom, I decided to head up to Edinburgh over Easter weekend. Unfortunately, because it was a holiday weekend, there was not a single hotel or hostel room available in the entire city. While I was standing in the train station trying to figure out what to do, I met this wandering musician who was making his way from Berlin back to his home on the Isle of the Skye, north of Scotland. He was in a similar situation, and told me that he happened to know of a youth hostel in Glasgow, which was about 45 minutes away by bus. So, we hopped on the bus and headed over to Glasgow and managed to get a couple beds.

From Glasgow, I took several day trips to different cities that were nearby. Of course, I spent a day in Edinburgh, and also went to Sterling on Easter Sunday, where I attended services at this quaint stone baptist church and met this Scottish chap, with whom I still exchange the occasional e-mail. Anyway, after a few days in Glasgow, I decided to head up to Inverness...which, after visiting there, ranks among my favorite cities in the world. It's actually little more than a village, and it relies heavily on tourism for Loch Ness. I went to the Loch but, despite by best efforts, caught no glimpse of the monster.

One of my favorite things about travelling is the people that I meet while doing it. That is somewhat surprising, considering that, back home, I have to be forced to say hello to somebody I don't know. Travelling Matt is somewhat of a different creature, though. Travelling Matt can walk up to a complete stranger and strike up a conversation, have dinner with a group of strangers or whatever.

On quite a few occasions, I have ended up sleeping at the home of some kind European I didn't even know. For example, I once met this British guy in Nice, and he and I were going to go to this small town in the Swiss Alps called Boltigen to go mountain biking and stuff like that. Anyway, we decided to stop over in Geneva because he wanted to visit a friend of his who lived there. So, I tagged along and got to stay there as well, even though neither of them really knew me. I could have been a psycho or something.

Recently, I was disappointed to learn that I had remembered something incorrectly. See, the first time that I went to Europe, I wore this one shirt. When I went to England two years later, I decided to make it my travelling shirt, because I remembered wearing it on the way to Europe and, also, on the way to New Zealand. Well, last December while I was at a Christmas party in Temecula, somebody had some pictures of the trip to New Zealand and there were pictures of me boarding the plane in Los Angeles wearing a different shirt. I don't know what made me believe that I had been wearing that other one on the trip to New Zealand. Maybe I just wanted it to be that way, so I convinced myself that it was so.

Does that last paragraph even make one damn bit of sense to anyone?