So I’m planning a few big trips this year. For the past year, with two weeks of vacation, I was fairly limited on what I could do for big reporting adventures. I got to go to Iraq because I had arranged it when I took my job at the Sun, but it was kind of a one time thing. Now, however, I’ve proven myself at the paper and have permission to do things like that more often.

Not all of them will be to war zones, mind you. I’m working now on putting together a proposal for a travel article for the Boston Globe. That will hopefully be on climbing the largest piece of granite in the United States, El Capitan in Yosemite Valley. And then I’m putting together another project to South America to report on the impact the eroding glaciers have had on the tourism industry.

I’m also looking at going to Southern Sudan for the one year anniversary of their declaration of independence, but that is a bit more touchy (Islamist militants and such). But I have the green light to get out there and freelance a bit more aggressively, something I’ve been having a hard time finding the time to do.

And best of all, I don’t have to leave the job I love. It’s awesome when this stuff works out.