Category: Message From the President

Nat King Cole sang about those “lazy, hazy, crazy days of summer,” and so these “dog days” seem like a good time to remember what travel was like before the invention or use of travel tools we take for granted today. A half-dozen years before my first trip overseas, I flew with my parents and…

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At this writing, I am preparing the final “check list” for an overseas trip. We leave in just a few days and, by the time this edition of The Centurian is online and printed, we will have returned. Now, we all journey in different modes – from group to independent travel, and from those who…

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We all began with One. For new TCC presidents that might mean one, first, official Message. And, indeed, this column is it. But for all of us — TCC members and everyone else–it means something entirely different. From the moment we took our first breath, we all began with One — One Country among the…

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I’d be hard pressed to think of an utterly more seductive feeling on earth than to stand in an airport or train station and watch the overhead sign whip through its letters to announce the faraway destination I’m off to. All those options! They’re the definition of freedom. (Okay, maybe I should get my head…

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What am I doing here? Who hasn’t asked him – or herself this question in some forlorn, neglected part of the world? This theme runs through the latest Paul Theroux book, Last Train to Zona Verde, a narrative of his travels from Cape Town to – ideally – Timbuktu. Only, after enduring a wretched border…

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It’s stinking hot and dusty. You feel a press of sweaty bodies moving in on you as you inch forward ever so slowly to a ramshackle hut marked douane. Sometimes there’s no discernible line and you must scrum for position and brace yourself to keep ten more people from cutting in. Seizing a half second…

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People think that those who have traveled to over 100 countries must lead lives out of the glossy magazine advertisements. You know, the ones where the flight attendant is tucking some entitled-looking guy in with a snuggly blanket, or a gorgeously dressed model is stepping out of a derelict bus with a full set of…

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Stuck on one of those long-haul flights not too long ago, I discovered the movie The Big Year. Steve Martin, Owen Wilson and Jack Black play fanatical birders who give up their daily lives to see who can spot the greatest number of bird species in a calendar year, and thereby gain the title of…

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We’ve all been through it: visiting a foreign consulate in the fervent hope of persuading an official to give us a visa. Indeed, one of the pleasures of travel is to fatten our passports with colorful stamps of unpronounceable and exotic places. Doing this while on the road, gives an extra sense of importance to…

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A wonderful quote by the American writer and traveler Mark Twain expresses how to set off on a life without regret: “Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things that you didn’t do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor.…

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