Travel Bug Feature Story #3

Now, I am currently working on an entry about the Houston Livestock Show and Rodeo, but I am waiting to develop the pictures I want to put on here before I post it. I am a girl who really needs a digital camera! Meanwhile, though, I wanted to bring you this week's travel bug feature story. I am alternating between my personal TBs and my favorites I have found "in the wild". This week it is one of my own.
I had trouble deciding which one to talk about, and the sad part about going through my TBs is that I realized just how many of them are AWOL through doing this. I don't want to focus on those, though (yet). This is for the happy stories.
After I released the first TB I made (see earlier entry), I started buying TB tags in groups of 3-5 at a time. I had picked up two keychains at the Museum of Natural History for about a buck each, and made them both into TBs, Sha-man Over Here and Astarte.

"Sha-Man Over Here", if pronounced slowly, almost sounds like "Ja, Man, over here", like a Jamaician calling you over to enjoy the island. It just sounds inviting to me. The keychain to me looked like a shaman, or some kind of magical totem with a mystical appeal. I was just thinking, "magic man" and "island" when I looked at it. I gave it the goal to go to "exotic locations, lush and beautiful locales, and near beaches, mountains, or deserts. My dream is to go to South America." So far it has traveled 3270.8 miles in about 20 months. It's been to New Mexico, Colorado, Ohio, and is currently in Georgia.

I especially love it when people post pictures of my travel bugs. I try to do this myself often (have you seen my gallery? I don't know if you can see it if you don't have an account on gc.com but I have 259 pictures on there! I am a mad woman). Only one picture has been posted, but it is a really cool one. Since Blogger is being weird right now, you'll have to click on the TB's name above to go to the page to check it out.

The other TB I mentioned, Astarte, was released at the same time. I named this one after a goddess of fertility. I was interested in studying ancient goddesses at one point in my life and had gotten very into the mystical aspects of Astarte. I even wrote poems for her! Long ago, people often made artwork as a tribute to Astarte, thinking that it would help bring them children. Usually these were clay statues of a womanlike figure with a large belly and breasts, signifying her fertility. I assigned pretty much the same goals to this TB as the other one, the difference being I asked people to post pictures of the TB with women and children.

Astarte has traveled 2356 miles in the same amount of time, but the TB got stuck about a year after traveling. The last log has it entered into a cache that was archived not long after, with a note posted from the owner stating they were moving the cache to another location. I am not sure if my TB is still in the cache or with the cache owner or missing. I wrote them a note many months later and haven't heard back. However, I did get some cool pictures out of the deal so far, one really neat one of the TB in Puerto Vallarto that is at the top of this entry and one with children and their mother.

I would love to see these TBs again. Who knows what might happen from here?