For many reasons, some professional, some personal, I travelled more this year than I have any other year of my life. I was on a plane on January 3rd, 2010, and my last flight of the year was on Dec. 30, twelve months later. There was not one chunk of two weeks in between without a flight, over 100 for the year. And this does not count thousands of miles by bus & van, and the odd train trip for good measure. I travelled so much it utterly ceased to become remarkable. Somehow all this motion became normal. I have been home for two weekends in a row this Xmas, and that in itself seems strange. And though I should be exhausted and sick of it all, I am not. Instead I am plotting more escape. I am beginning to think there is something wrong with me.

I have been to so many different places it seems hard to believe. The band started the year in New Orleans. This turned into an odd experience at a bunch of levels. We went there to find new inspiration, only to discover that we had already been inspired before we left, and really, we might not have bothered for all we achieved there. The city was freezing cold, something for which we were ill prepared, and the time passed slowly. It is all like a dream now, wandering home late at night along Magazine Street after aimless recording sessions, drinking wine in a huge old house while listening to the wood creak, waiting in the rain for non-existent cabs, walking lonely Garden District streets that seemed to have been forgotten even by their residents. The music became secondary to the experience, but that is often the way. Travel is never exactly what you think it will be, a lesson I have learned over and over again this year. New Orleans was supposed to teach me something, although I am still sure exactly what.

Before I could get my head around all that, we were off to Vancouver for the Olympics, a whirlwind of flights and shows and interviews. It has not often that we have been bit-players in a larger - a much larger drama, and it was a good experience. I have never liked Vancouver itself much; the dichotomy between the beautiful geographic setting and the often depressing streetscape has always bothered me. However, the city transformed itself for the Olympics, becoming the sort of lively and exciting place it always should have been. It felt like Montreal in the summer, or Florence on a good day, and it was wonderful and hopeful and proud of itself. I have been back a few times since, and the glow has not yet worn off. I hope it doesn’t, Canada needs Vancouver to be itself. Vancouver should be a beacon of greenery and youthfulness and playfulness and optimism, and for a while it was.

And then there was the tour, the endless tour, which started in March and continued on and off until Xmas. All the provinces and most of the States were touched this year, so many that it felt like a merry-go-round, one which flung us on and off at increasingly random points. More than once I woke somewhere in parking lot, and peered blearily out a bus window, and had to pause for a long moment and think ‘where am I?’ The answer was always the same really, ‘here, where we are going to do a show tonight’. And for those who came to see us play, that was usually enough.

In between, I walked around enough cities to actually wear out two pairs of shoes. Besides St. John’s, Paris, Helsinki, New York, Orlando, Puerto Morales, Cavendish PEI, and Toronto were all long-term stops. I only wrote something sensible about Paris, but all of them taught me something. I am sure there is more, but right off the cuff, I can think of three things. One is that there is always something to see, even if it is just the end of your own driveway. I have often been a little disappointed this year, but not often bored.

Second, I have pretty much completely ceased to care about my stuff. This year, due to tight airplanes, cramped buses, hurried hotel exits and general stupidity, I have blithely lost or abandoned half my wardrobe, a small library, an octave’s worth of harmonicas and tin whistles, several pairs of sandals, my iPod shuffle, a pair of sun glasses that I was very fond of, three cell phone cables, and more toiletries than any heterosexual man should own. Whatever constant travel did to create this zen like attitude was cemented by the Hurricane Igor, which washed away all our studio gear and a good chunk of my instrument collection. Insurance will replace the investment, but I am finding it really hard to care about the stuff itself. I have been having a recurring mental conversation that starts with, ‘oh shit, I just lost my _____’, and ends with something along the lines of: ‘Actually, I still have two fiddles – do I really need more? And who needs their own blow dryer anyway? Or, really, when am I going to read that Steven King novel again?’ Time to stop collecting.

And, third, Niagara Falls is just Blackpool or Brighton with a waterfall instead of a slimy beach. Once you realize that it makes a whole lot more sense.

There is a school of thought in India that says when a man reached a certain age, when he has taken care of his family, and fulfilled his obligations to those around him, he should take a bowl and a dhoti and head out on the road, to spend the rest of his days as a wanderer, finding succor and enlightenment wherever he may. Twenty years ago this seemed absurd to me, and I am still a very long way from that point in life. Still, it is starting to make a whole lot more sense. As my favourite writer said, ‘further in, and further up’.

The rising sun beckons.