May 10, 1984
I had always heard about students backpacking thru Europe after college. To have done it after undergrad was out of the question. My finances were non-existent and certainly my horizons didn’t extend much outside the St. Louis area. With grad school coming to an end, I decided this was my one chance before starting work again.
The student travel agency had everything I needed for several months in Europe. I applied for my passport and then bought the Harvard Student’s “Lets Go Europe” guidebook and their Europe-friendly backpack, a plane ticket to London, a tiny Olympus 35 mm camera, and a 2-month Eurail pass. I even got my father to pay my credit card bill while I was away. I cleared the money out of my checking account and bought AMEX travelers’ checks. Not knowing the ropes I went downtown and got a few of them denominated in British Pounds and French Francs. I also got some Pimsleur foreign language cassette tapes from the library to learn some basic French phrases. While finishing packing, I was amused to see the Olympic torch relay for the upcoming summer Olympics in LA passing by my dorm room window. The torch had landed two days earlier in NYC on the 8th and it was being delivered cross-country on foot. I took that as a good luck omen.
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