I'm not Dead

I haven't written anything recently because I'm on a vacation, you can follow my whereabouts on this OnTheRoad.to traveling blog. The trip is nice and especially interesting because 23 years ago I did visit some of the same places... The world has changed a lot, but the experiences and memories stay the same.

23 years ago I was a young student, I was top fit, running up and down the different canyons. I was with a friend  on a 'do the south-west of the US on a budget in 10 days' trip. We rented a cheap wreck camped in the bush or national parks and probably lived on junk food. The year before I was an international exchange student and used contacts from that time to gather information and if possible even organized meetings. This was 1986 and we actually wrote handwritten letters to establish contact and organize meeting points. We couldn't afford international phone calls. During the trip we also made new friends and often agreed to meet again in a few days several hundred miles away.

Today we travel in a decent car, use motels and hotels to stay overnight and can afford to eat proper meals. We carry around cellphones, navigation equipment and have WiFi in every single place we stayed so far. We extensively use the internet to gather information, book rooms while we are on the road. We constantly stay in touch with everybody who is interested and even keep up with business email. It all became so easy.

Looking back the past looked so primitive and it surprises me that with all the limited communication means we managed to stay in contact while being on the road. However the memories lasted for more than 23 years and the experiences were the same as they are today. Did we really make progress over the years, cos I really wonder how long today's experiences last?