I love to travel and see the world.  I also love returning to the U.S.  Every time I come home, I find something about the U.S. to be thankful for.  Usually it has to do with the little freedoms that we take for granted that many other countries lack - like true freedom of speech, personal property rights, or effective tax rates of less than 50%. 

As I drove home from the airport Saturday, I thought of a few less profound but meaningful things to be grateful for.

1.  Wireless broadband.  I am addicted to being able to connect just about anywhere at any time I want.  No looking for a cyber cafe.  No trying to configure my computer to work with the wireless system in the lobby of the hotel.  No paying 6 pounds 50 pence ($13) for an hour of access.  Pop in the card and I am good to go.

2.  Wide streets.  Driving a 9 passenger van with a stick up and down the side of a mountain is bad enough.  However, when the road is only about 15 feet wide and there is a three foot deep flood control channel on one side and a 50 foot drop on the other, driving can get pretty stressful.  At one point I had a 600 foot drop on one side and a 70 degree slope for 600 feet on the other side.  The road was eactly two feet wider than the van on either side.  I truly enjoyed driving the Yukon XL home from the airport on a four lane freeway - each lane having plenty of room.

3.  Paying in dollars.  With the unfortunate slide in the dollar, it was best on the trip to simply view Euros as dollars and go from there.  Somewhere in the back of my mind, however, it was understood that AMEX and visa will not convert them straight across ($1.48 to the Euro last I checked).  Sometimes it is best to not know what things really cost until later.

Anyway,  we had a lot of fun, ate a lot of good food and spent enough time in planes to lose any desire to travel - for a couple of months.