ABSTRACT
Outside my office window in central Massachusetts, an early winter storm is tapering off, leaving the ground, the trees and the roads covered in several inches of snow. A pale sun hangs low in the sky as the last few flurries swirl past my window. Inside, I am looking at a different kind of window. I have opened several browser windows on my computer screen, each displaying a travel blog published by one of the flashpackers I have been studying. The panes cascade to fill my monitor: India, Argentina, China, Fiji. An image of a white sandy beach, aquamarine water and palm trees in one of the browser windows seems a cruel contrast to the wintry scene unfolding outside. I scroll through another post displaying vibrant photos of the Yangtze River and read the accompanying descriptions and comments posted by readers. ‘Your photos are insanely beautiful,’ they gush. On another blog, I click on a video link and watch as two travellers wish their families a happy Thanksgiving from a beach in the South Pacific. A post from Argentina appears in yet another blog, illustrated with photographs of Magellanic penguins. At the bottom of the post, an icon pinpoints the travellers’ exact location on a Google map. I click on the map and zoom out to see how much distance these travellers have covered since their last post from Tierra del Fuego a few weeks ago.
