Welcome to all friends and family checking out this latest addition to my growing family of blog-children. Hopefully, this blogbabe won’t die before it gets to elementary school age. I certainly hope not, as I intend to make this my principal means of relaying information from the other, older side of the Western world. Rather than burden kith and kin with episodic updates (which tend to be either unsatisfying or unsolicited), I’m going to try and focus the energies I typically devote to a travel journal to this creation, The Doughty Traveler. Fortified by my previous, and often less successful sojourns abroad, I intend to assume the mantle of wizened wandered with lesser incidence of the incidents that have plagued my travels in the past. Those who are in the slightest interested need not await my selective updates, but rather can tune into this ongoing chronicle of my time spent across the pond at their discretion.

There’s a space for comments at the bottom of each post, and when I figure out this mythical language called H-T-M-L, I’ll be sure to create other means of bouncing information back to me. For those desperate to send me an electronic slap on the back, I can always be reached at wgoodwin at usc dot edu (do note the studious spelling out of the address in order to prevent spam from trawlers and to demonstrate my web-savvy). Those more inclined to slug below the belt can reach me at nick@commedus.net.

I do not intend on tracking visits to the site as it would no doubt be rather depressing. Instead, I’ll fantasize at night treading in the footprints of literary giants and imagine the chorus of praise swelling round the globe at my delightful descriptions of my comings and goings.

And now I must conclude packing and prepare for my imminent departure for Greece.