For the second time this month, I am sitting in the coffee bar of an airport. The difference this time is that I will not be spending fifteen hours here – just another hour until I board a plane on what will be the first of five stops until I reach my final destination – Juneau, Alaska.

To be honest, even last night as I fell asleep knowing that I will be in the air before most people even get to work, it still didn’t feel like I was going on vacation. Be it the fact that I just got back from a vacation ten days ago, the fact that I was so busy this week that I didn’t have time to get excited – or the fact that I did not want to be excited about the trip around Christine – all I know is that as I fell asleep last night realizing that my next night’s sleep will occur on the other side of the planet – it just didn’t feel that way.

But now that I am once again at an airport for the second time in just sixteen days, and considering the fact that as I write this, my luggage is being placed on an airplane – hopefully – the realization that I am once again getting away from it all is finally starting to set in.

For someone like me who spends more hours working then not – and for someone like me who has almost no “down time” – I deserve a little respite here and there. There are times when that respite comes in the form of a day at home with Christine in front of the TV, there are times when my respite comes in the form of a longer night’s sleep – and there are times when I get no respite at all. But even I deserve to leave everything behind and disappear to the other side of the planet for a while to escape, unwind, de-tune – and relax.

As I was leaving work yesterday, a woman I work with asked me where I was going on vacation, when I told her Alaska, she said that she was there before and that I would have the time of my life – I hope she is right.

Even though I am still on the ground and have only traveled to New Jersey so far – which is still quite a ways from Alaska, I get the feeling my co-worker is right. Here I am traveling by myself to a state that is so far away – you have to fly over another country just to get to it. Of all the states in this great country that I have been to and thought I would go to in my life – Alaska was never on that list. Yes, I wanted to see Alaska, but I could never see myself going there. How fitting that I should be flying to such an unfathomable but desirable destination during the best year of my life.

So once again in less then thirty minutes, I will board an aircraft and head for a destination I have never been to, to meet someone I have never met before after doing the exact same thing less then three weeks ago – and people wonder why I say that life is what you make it – and your only limitation is yourself.

It’s time to board now – see you in Minnesota.