Excerpts from postcards sent in September 1988, Dean's World Tour I:
 

Chicago, Illinois, USA, 11 September 1988 -- Postcard Number 1088:  The last one before arriving home!

Greetings from Planet Earth!

Whew!!!  I once heard a comedian say, "It's a small world ... but I wouldn't want to have to mow it!"  After over 31 months (940 days with a few remaining) of determined effort to see the world, scarcely stopping anywhere long enough to claim knowledge of any one place, I've barely scratched the surface of fewer than one-third of the world's nations.  This planet may seem small in this age of supersonic transport and satellite communications, but if you try to focus on its finer details, it seems pretty damn humungous!  Generalize, and the world seems small as if you are viewing it through a telescope; specify, that is, put the world under a microscope, and the world's size seems limitless, as the variety overwhelms one's ability to absorb it all.

What have I learned from my travels?  First of all, I should write that I wasn't traveling for the purpose of learning something.  I was traveling primarily to enjoy myself, avoid responsibilities and feel some sense of freedom.  I was out to experience the present, and was much less interested in retaining the experiences for the future.  As with my college career, if I learned anything from this trip, whatever it was has been long since distorted by time or forgotten.

I have said before that when I am experiencing a new place, perhaps all I am doing is exchanging one set of misperceptions for another.  You can't accurately judge a book by its cover, and you can't know anyplace by merely popping in and popping out of it.  Even if you spend a lifetime living in the same place, you may still be surprised to learn something new about it.  I thought I knew America and the American people until they elected Ronald Reagan ... and then reelected him by a huge margin.  So, it's hard for me to say whether what I think I've learned from my travels is an accurate reflection of the truth.

About myself, have I learned something?  I think that I've only reinforced things I already knew.  It doesn't matter where one goes or what one does or what is happening to a person; it's what's inside one's head that counts.  My head, that is, my attitude has been better than average throughout most of this trip; but traveling is like life in general.  It doesn't matter where you are ... when you're up, you're up and when you're down, you're down.  Lately, I've been a bit more on the down side, but gees, it's about time and probably long overdue!   I've had a fantastic trip, and I'm lucky to have survived it all.  I'm just a bit uncertain as to what my next goal will be.  What will I do for an encore?   It's going to be interesting to see how I adapt (and readapt to normal life again).

Thanks so much for hanging with me through it all.

Peace, love,
Deano

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