It was about a year ago that I had a text conversation wherein I thanked someone for helping me out with... something. I wish I could remember what he did. I was either just about to travel to or perhaps already in Vancouver for the weekend to go to a football game. This is a thing I do every year, not necessarily Vancouver but a football city within Canada. I've been doing this for more than 10 years. 2012 could be a repeat Vancouver year since my options are limited to Montreal and Vancouver or a not-so-likely playoff game.
I offered to bring something back from Vancouver as a gesture of thanks. Since my noble friend is rather weird, he requested a pink unicorn. He probably thought I would never deliver. He probably thought it would be too hard for me to find a pink unicorn.
Ha.
Haha.
Hahahahahaha.
He clearly doesn't know me that well.
Challenge accepted.
Not being from Vancouver, I was at a bit of a loss. Where exactly would one go to buy a pink unicorn? I appealed to twitter (and by extension, facebook) for help.
Having friends scattered over the globe is extremely useful at times like these, for in no time my friend Laura clued me in. She told me about a cool market in north Vancouver (that I have since forgotten the name of, I'd have to go back to facebook to figure it out and I am too tired and ill to bother right now) and we made plans to meet up when I was going to be back in Vancouver for a conference a few weeks later. Win win.
So I went to the market and wouldn't you know? I found a gorgeous stuffed pink unicorn. The horn was shiny and pink and the body was fluffy and pink. Perfect. I think it cost me $20 with BC's outrageous taxes.
I think the first emailed picture of a pink unicorn, sent from my Vancouver hotel balcony, surprised Earl when it arrived in his email.

I think that the lesson here is simple: don't ask for something if you're not prepared to receive it. Anyway. Now I had this pink unicorn. I'd bought it while traveling, and it seemed logical that the unicorn should come with me when I went to Banff the following week for a conference.
It was on that trip that the pink unicorn got her name. Punicorn, Puni for short.

Top left photo, the namer of Punicorn, pictured at the delicious donut wall at the Donut Mill, in Red Deer. I considered teaching Puni to drive, but she wasn't really a natural. We stopped at a bale sculpture advertising Big Rock beer, my friend Val posed with Puni and there's a record of an unfortunate incident between Punicorn and a bear in Canmore where we'd stopped for beer and some juice. I didn't send every picture to Earl. Pretty sure I sent the one with the bear, though.
She came back to Vancouver with me a couple weeks after the visit where I'd acquired her.

We spent an early morning run/walk together that Sunday morning and visited the olympic torch from 2010, above. That afternoon I flew to Ottawa for a meeting. Naturally Punicorn and (more unusually) my guitar came with me for the ride. Taking guitar lessons is kinda hard when you travel as much as I do. I've missed probably as many lessons as I've attended in the past 2 years. Despite my crazy travel schedule I've actually gotten better at guitar, likely because I started taking it with me whenever I was traveling. Thanks, westjet for letting me gate check my guitar.

When in Ottawa, one must visit Parliament, and naturally, Punicorn did just that after meeting Earl in person for the first time. He was surprised by her size and general shiny pinkness.

Strangely, Earl seemed reluctant to take possession of Punicorn. So she stuck with me.
Once you start carrying a pink unicorn around to landmarks, it kinda just becomes a thing. Kinda like a flat stanley gag, except with a less-easy-to-mail stuffed pink unicorn. I'd carry her along whenever I left town and for good measure I'd even equipped her with a geocaching travel bug tag so I could log our travels from city to city.
It should surprise no one that lugging a stuffed pink unicorn to busy landmarks can be a great conversation starter and the cause of some rather odd looks. I've met some interesting people while carrying Punicorn. Luckily, I stopped caring what people thought of me a while back.
Punicorn met my family, and my favorite niece named Sarah became swiftly enamored of her.

The picture above should make it clear what Sarah's favorite color might be.
If you've followed me at all, you know that the past 12 months have been busy for me, travel-wise. But since I've started this bizarre travel diary, I'll keep it up. The trip to Ottawa was followed by the annual drive to Californa with my parents in November. I sent pictures to Earl whenever Punicorn and I got somewhere interesting. Like places with palm trees.

If memory serves, the first picture of Punicorn near a palm tree got me an 'I hate you' email response from Earl. Heh. I'm a bit of a jerk, especially when on vacation in hot places during an Alberta winter.
That trip to California was a good one. Puni joined my family and friends for an American thanksgiving dinner after perusing the Black Friday ads. Nothing like a thanksgiving dinner served outside in the hot desert air. If I don't get to do that this year I will be very sad.

If memory serves, Earl was impressed by the sheer volume of ads in that newspaper above and requested a Christmas present from my Black Friday shopping.
Seriously? You request a pink unicorn, renege on your request and now you want another present? When I need all the room in my suitcases for things for ME?
I don't think so.
Punicorn went truly international by visiting Mexico and watched in awe as my mother and I demolished a giant (and wickedly strong) pitcher of margaritas while my dad sadly drank a coke. We all inhaled that awesome plate of nachos. I should point out that this was the first time my parents had ever eaten a meal in that part of Mexico. This was not the first time my mother and I have over-ordered on the booze and gotten gloriously silly together while on vacation.

She went geocaching with my cousins and I, visiting a haunted tree. At the end of that day we enjoyed a cold beer. Later on we visited a casino and beheld the weirdness that is a skating rink in southern California. (It was meeelllting). We had limeade from Sonic. Puni visited Salvation mountain and looked out over the desert and the slabs. This paragraph basically sums up every trip I take to California.

Then, my California vacation over, I had to go back to work. I arrived home on Sunday afternoon and flew out again Monday evening. For work this time. Puni flew with me to Washington, DC to do some training. I had one day for sightseeing so Puni saw both the Lincoln and Washington monuments. She visited the American pop culture museum (riding in my backpack). She even got as close as possible to the White House and saw the rather lame national Christmas tree. She hitchhiked in my backpack one day while I was taking my sas course. She is a smart unicorn, but some of the stuff in that course went right over her head.

She
was in my suitcase when I woke up at 6:25am for a 7:00 am flight from Toronto
to Edmonton. That was the first (if only I'd known it wouldn't be the last)
time I was supremely late for a flight. I still get freaked out just thinking
about it. I still can't believe I made the flight AND that my luggage did too.
Punicorn
was with me when I escaped for 10 days in Cabo. I only managed a few
pictures of her during that trip, since I spent most of my time either trying
to dive, actually diving or drinking. She went to dinner and spent time with a
horse. Weirdest thing - I was given a bottle of gringo tequila after
passing my dive certification and my housekeeper decided to create some art.

That gets us to February. Took a bit of a travel hiatus until the end of March when I flew to California for my annual spring trip. Puni and I did some serious relaxing, geocaching, drinking, quadding, etc. Then when the family headed for home, I rented a car and went to the Grand Canyon. Punicorn even went on a brief hike down into the canyon. One day we'll go back and do the complete hike in and out.

I did that thing I love to do. Rent a car, open up a map and see what looks cool within driving distance. That's how we ended up visiting a pile of national parks, drove through Arizona and New Mexico, and briefly dipped into Texas. We went toboganning on the White Sands (for real!), watched for gunfights at the OK corral and saw a whole lot of cacti and drove through Why. Also saw a giant pistachio nut. How could you not stop when you see that on the side of the road? So glad I did since they had free pistachio wine samples. Naturally I bought a couple bottles.

At the end of April I jetted off again. This time to Orlando, Florida for another conference. Punicorn didn't actually visit the Disney parks with me but she did visit the space centre and the Everglades. I wasn't a huge fan of Florida, but I'm really glad I got to go.

A few weeks later and I was on a plane again, back to Palm Springs and Mexico so my mom could go to the dentist.
It was blasted hot.

My mom and I finally took the Palm Springs tramway (much better than in winter, when it would be covered in snow and not a trip you make in shorts and a tank top). We wandered over to San Diego too, taking a seal tour of the San Diego bay. We even got to see the bomb/mine seeking dolphins being trained in the bay while we were on the tour. That was pretty cool.

The Palm Springs trip ended on a Saturday, and sometime around then I noticed something odd about my neck. I started the Brazil travel visa paperwork the following Monday (June 4). The lump showed up in my visa picture... and well, that story has been told starting here.
Punicorn naturally came with me to Brazil. We saw the sights. I really didn't have room in my bags for her, but dangit, she's become such a habit I couldn't send her home with Val when I shipped my early souvenirs and extraneous clothing home. (I'd bought 2 pairs of jeans in Miami and really only needed 1, etc. By the end of that trip though, DAMN. SICK OF EVERYTHING IN MY SUITCASE. Sad, because a few things were new).

I intend to write about the Brazil trip at some point. Just not right now. Above I present Punicorn's adventures in Brazil.
My favorite kidlets are big fans of Punicorn.

A while back I set a goal. I'd traveled quite a bit and with a bit of planning I figured I could really go crazy. I wanted Punicorn/me to travel at least 40,000 miles in 12 months. Thanks to my geocaching travel bug tag and my habit of trying to find a geocache when I travel, I had a pretty reasonable way of tracking my mileage. It's not perfect since it measures the straight distance between geocaches, but I'm ok with that. Punicorn didn't come on every trip, either. Both my Vancouver trips so far this year were either medically or madonna related.
I'll admit it. I was so preoccupied I forgot Punicorn.
I know. Shame on me.
I am pleased? shocked? to report that I achieved that goal. And then some. A year to the day that I got Punicorn in Vancouver found me back in that city. The coincidence got me thinking about where I'd been over the past year, and voila. This post was born. I couldn't log a geocache in every place I traveled to in Brazil, since there weren't geocaches everywhere. However. I am enough of a nerd that I tallied up the mileage between cities (6,955 miles, thanks, google maps!) and voila. I present my mileage total for you.
49,834 miles. Give or take a mile or two, anyway.
Wow.
Dang.
No wonder Punicorn needs a seam repair or two.
Now. Throughout the past 12 months, Earl would get random pictures of Punicorn in all these places. I expect I am far more amused by this than he is, but, hey. That's what you get for asking ME for a pink unicorn.
Will Punicorn and I travel again? Absolutely. I just booked my flight and ticket to the football game on October 19. I won't forget her for that trip to Vancouver.
Will we make 50,000 miles in the coming year? I'm thinking not. I'm too tired and spent at the moment to plan much. But then...
I'd drop everything and head back to Brazil and the rest of South America in a heartbeat. I've heard good things about some islands down in the Carribean. (Curacao is a great dive spot I hear...) I've never seen the rain in Spain fall mainly on the plain. There are parts of Mexico I haven't been to yet. Asia is a place I think I'd like to visit one of these days. I actually know people in England!
My wandering soul will always keep wandering. And no, even if Earl changed his mind and decided he actually wanted Punicorn (perhaps to stop the email pictures?) he can't have her.
We've traveled too far together. And Sarah would be very sad.
Punicorn is mine. Although I could be persuaded to make a bequest in my will...