A hundred reasons clamour for your going. You go to touch on human identities, to people an empty map. You have a notion that this is the world’s heart. You go to encounter the protean shapes of faith. You go because you are still young and crave excitement, the crunch of your boots in the dust; you go because you are old and need to understand something before it’s too late. You go to see what will happen.
— Colin Thubron, Shadow of the Silk Road
Blogging in the middle of the forest…
When you get on the road for long enough and start to become a serious traveler, you eventually notice that you’re missing something. It may take you a while for notice. At first, you may have a queasy feeling that you’re forgetting something important, like perhaps your bags or your passport.
And then it hits you. You’re a man with no keys. You have no car keys, no appartment keys, no letter box keys, no office keys, no garage opener, no access cards. You don’t have to worry about losing them, forgetting them, getting them stolen. You’re a free man. Keyless.
By the way, do you know the difference between a tourist and a traveler? A tourist doesn’t know where he is and a traveler doesn’t know where he’s going.
No matter how far a tourist goes, it’s the same place. If it’s Tuesday, it must be Luxor. It doesn’t really matter because he goes to the same Hard Rock Cafe and McDonald’d and Pizza Hut. The sights change, the local waitresses don’t understand him as well, but he’s basically always in the same place. He never really left. He has a schedule and he sticks to it. He’s in a momentary state of geographic displacement.
A traveler may have a vague schedule, but he knows he won’t stick to it. Things will happen. Ferries will be missed, planes will be canceled, buses will break down, passports will get lost. The hut on the beach will beacon to stay a few more days, the friends on the road will share tips about a detour not to be missed, a taxi driver will share a secret about a little village where the rest of his family lives.
It’s fine to be a tourist. Sometimes, that’s all you have time for, and it’s better than staying home. But it’s really nice not to have to worry about your keys.
From the minute I step out of the plane, I can´t help but notice it is hot. Mind you, I like hot. But this is really hot. Actually, let me take that back, it´s not so much hot as hot and humid. I´m usually not a big fan of air conditionning, but this time I´m glad my hotel had a unit.
Surpisingly my mobile phone works great here, roaming from my US account. Mmm… and I thought I was going to be disconnected for a while.
At last, after months of planning I am finally in Cozumel. My hotel is in between a McDonald´s and a TGI Friday´s (no, it´s not even called DGE Viernes). There´s also a Pizza Hut nearby. I really don´t know what to make of all this. I suppose that´s the price to pay to have AC and phone service.
On the other hand, I have left home my Powerbook´s power supply. I knew I was going to forget something. Now I know what it is. They don´t have too many Apple resellers around, so I may have to get one shipped. And the reason I really need my Powerbook is because of my digital camera. Just in case you´re wondering 
I met with some friends today at the Farmer’s Market at the Embarcadero. Well… they thought it was the Farmer’s Market, but on Sunday it’s a much smaller set of vendors. The shops inside the Embarcadero were open and we have a good lunch at a seafood restaurant. We had an interesting discussion about interesting services that could be delivered via mobile technology. It’s good for your brain to imagine the world that could be
I took the ferry to Sausalito to visit another friend, then I biked back to the city. It was the first time I was crossing the Golden Gate on bike in this direction. Since I had my camera with me it was a nice opportunity to take some close up shots of my favorite monument.
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Arno Gourdol is a senior director of engineering for Adobe's Web Platform and Authoring team, contributing to the WebKit project, web standards and for all the related authoring tools and services, including Dreamweaver, PhoneGap, Edge, Fireworks, Flash Pro, Flash Builder and BrowserLabs. He has previously worked on the Flash runtime, bringing it to desktop apps and to iOS, Android and Blackberry with Adobe AIR. Before that, he led several initiatives within Adobe's Creative Suite Business Unit, including XMP, Version Cue and Bridge. Prior to joining Adobe in 2001 he was part of the User Interface team at Apple that conceived, designed and implemented Aqua, the user interface of Mac OS X. Arno is a graduate of the Grenoble University. He lives in San Francisco and enjoys traveling from Abel Tasman to Zanzibar.
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