virtualbox.org

My dilemma...

I want to be able to carry an image wherever I roam that I can place on the machine of the person I am visiting and bring up an OS with the applications on it I have installed. I understand the VM notion (create another machine on a guest machine) but what about having it portable. Is there a player so to speak?

There is no player like version of VB. VB needs a kernel driver, so it's not really portable too. If the external drive is a hard drive, then you can put all settings and all on that drive by setting the environmental variable VBOX_USER_HOME. Then start VB, create a VM and install everything you need. Now at that friend, all you do is do the same steps, install VB and set the variable.
It's best to make sure the external drive has the same drive letter, so you don't need to modify the xml files each time you change location. Drive letters are managed in Computer Management, accessible through the Manage option available when right clicking on the My Computer icon.