America is big. Really big. From my plane above, I witnessed it’s immensity, like a giant rock carved out of the ocean floor. I saw the vast stretches of land from coast to coast that consist less of the marks of human civilization and more of rugged empty barren wastelands until, finally, I saw the Pacific spread out before me.

My visit to the west coast made me realize how behind I am in my travels and how little I have seen of the county and of the world. The life that I am used to here is so different elsewhere. There are new places to see, new people to see, and new … experiences to be experienced. If time and the institution of working a day job were not tying me down, I would be gone already.

I read in a travel magazine about how Americans get screwed over in terms of vacation time. Most of us get only a couple of weeks of vacation time, plus holidays off if we are lucky. Meanwhile, everyone is Europe gets far more, which would explain why those wily Europeans are going on vacations all the time. I think France is the best. 35 hour work day plus 5 weeks of vacation! Yet, I can only envy this kind of freedom that comes from having a lot of free time to ones self. I’m sure that I would feel more like an individual, and less like a cog in the corporate machine.