Away We Go

I have been getting some questions as to why my blog is listed as EscapeFromPeoria. I meant to mention that when I first setup, but I seem to have forgotten. My great-uncle Dan Crowley made the Guinness Book of World Records back in the mid-80’s as the Most Traveled Disabled Man. He spent 53 years traveling all over the world, and telling everyone in the family, and anyone else willing to listen, about it. He would send us all the infamous Christmas Letter. It was never about bragging, I don’t want to make it sound like that. He just loved to tell stories, and to travel. He was in a wheelchair the whole time, which made it difficult. He was also a professor of Anthropology at UC-Davis, so he had to publish about these “work trips”, so he could get grants for the next and the next. It was through him many of us got this wanderlust. I have always had it, and he tried in vain to get me to succumb to it. I wouldn’t go with him because it involved flying. I missed any number of opportunities out of nothing more than garden variety fear. 
This first trip, and in all honesty, the rest will be dedicated to him. In an interview, when asked why he traveled so much, he responded, (I’m paraphrasing, but it’s pretty close to a quote as I recall) “I can’t walk, so I over-compensate by flying. I grew up in Peoria, IL and have spent the rest of my life trying to escape.” 
So that’s why that’s my blog’s name, it’s an homage.