The GCW Tour, Buenos Aires & Antarctica: I Apologize in Advance If I Inadvertently Kill You

It may just be my age, my religious upbringing or the classes I took in college, but I seem to have spent a lot of time in my life talking about which of the four horsemen -- War, Famine, Pestilence or Death -- would most likely lead to the apocalypse. Given the number of nuclear weapons in the world, and then the number of terrorists out to cause problems, War has seemed to be the preferred answer in most of those conversations.

I'm not so sure about that any more.

Consider the following: I'm a mess. I am oozing body fluids from nearly every orifice -- and some places that aren't orifices. Allergies and chemotherapy have combined to make my eyes red and watery. My nose runs constantly, and occasionally erupts in spontaneous bleeding. Most recently, my cuticles have decided to start peeling down my fingers so most of my fingernails are caked with blood, and every time I stick my hands in my pockets or into a bag they start bleeding again. My hair's fallen out, and I walk like I'm a hundred years old. To say the least, I am not a picture of health.

And the minute I got sick what did I do? Whip out my passport, and start traveling the world. 

At the various border crossings I've made in the past year, I've experienced a fair amount of concern over whether or not I might have weapons. My bags and body are scanned every time I go through an airport. Further, I've experienced an inordinate amount of concern with I would consider bureaucratic trivia. Some of this is certainly a revenue issue. Wanna come into our country? First, you gotta pay the fee. But beyond the $160 reciprocity fee, passport control at the airport in Buenos Aires was very concerned with where I was staying. I tried to explain I would be at three different hotels and on a boat, but they just wanted me to randomly pick one hotel so they could fill in the blank in their database. 

But the one thing I have not experienced, ever, is anyone looking at me and asking what strikes me as an obvious question: Are you bringing a disease into my country? Granted, none of the diseases I'm carrying are contagious, but you wouldn't know that by looking at me. In the wake of the Ebola crisis and all the rest, it seems amazing to me that no one's asking that question. After movies like Outbreak, Contagion and the recent Planet of the Apes reboots, you'd think someone would be asking that question.

But I guess not.

So, for what it's worth, my money's now on Pestilence.  It just doesn't seem that hard for someone to get a really nasty disease and then, intentionally or otherwise, hit the road. Spread a few germs at an airport or two, and it wouldn't be long before the opportunity to get sick had spread the world over.

My apologies if I wind up being patient zero. 

And now I really need to go find some hand sanitizer.