Born without an identity, The 28th Expedition has had no focus until now. You see, past Expeditions were driven by Spotify playlists around a theme. There was even an Expedition that went with a disco week and another week for The Office! In my return to Spotify, another addition from yesterday, I wanted to create something as both a symbol and a soundtrack to drive success. With everything that is new, while giving off a decidedly retro feel, I wanted to create soundscape that applauds the past while takes the wheels to drive into the falling sun.

And thus I'm doing something new...and old. A playlist not of a daily track, but of an album that has meant much to me over the years. I kick things off with the soundtrack from the second movie of the Jason Bourne franchise.

The movie came out a month after my first backpacking across Europe, an event that not only needs its own post to summarize, but one for which I once typed up 100 pages. It was a threshold of existence for me, a recognition of self-reliance and self-discovery. The highs were the thrill of adventure while exploring new places and meeting new people...the lows were breaking down with the loss of my father and finding no place to sleep to roam the night in Cherbourg and Belfast. It was a legendary time of saving those British girls from their Italian attacker on the train platform, crossing through an anti-American protest by Arabs in Paris, standing atop Vernazza's Doria Castle with the Mediterranean stretching out before me and simply sitting on a bench overlooking a loch in Scotland with a beer and haggis takeout. I felt ALIVE in the backdrop of a 2004 and its impending couch stay in Arizona and concrete floor in Tennessee. I had nothing more than my steel stallion of thunder against the night wind, my '93 Chevy Silverado.

When I listen to this soundtrack, I am 2004.

The 28th Expedition is more than just its music. It's the build up to 2023. Even its weigh-in lands on January 1. It is a return to something special.

Extreme ways are back again
Extreme places I didn't know
I broke everything new again
Everything that I'd owned
I threw it out the window, came along