FROM THE BACK OF THE BOOK:"I'm not angry. I don't hate my job. I'm not annoyed with capitalism, and I'm indifferent to materialism. I'm not escaping emptiness, nor am I searching for meaning. I have great friends, a wonderful family, and fun roommates. The dude two doors down invited me over for steak or pork chops—my choice—on Sunday, and I couldn't even tell you the first letter of his name. Sure, the producers of The Amazing Race have rejected all five of my applications to hotfoot around the world—all five!—and my girlfriend and I just parted ways, but I've whined all I can about the race, and the girl wasn't The Girl anyway.All in all, my life is pretty fantastic.But I feel boxed in. Look at a map, and there we are, a pin stuck in the wall. There's the United States, about twenty-four square inches worth, and there's the rest of the world, seventeen hundred square inches begging to be explored. Career, wife, babies—of course I want these things; they're on the horizon. Meanwhile, I'm a few memories short.Maybe I need a year to live a little."