Me… Travel

[arthur_p_dent]

Most of us like to travel, and I’ve been fortunate enough over the years to see many great places - six Canadian provinces, almost half of the US states, six European countries, and China. Many of these I’ll never see again; some I return to regularly. And of course, there are still several destinations on my “to go to” list.

You know what makes these posts interesting for me? Each time I end up realizing something about myself that had never occurred to me before. In today’s case, I never realized just how structured my travels are. Sure, most travel involves some sort of planning - flights, driving distances, overnight stops, etc. Sometimes if you’re doing a large tour, you’ll have daily itineraries. But beyond those normalcies, I have a couple of idiosyncrasies that always seem to be present.

First is that I tend to gravitate back to the same places. It’s a comfort thing I think - familiar things are easier to cope with. And it’s not just the destinations themselves - even stops along the way tend to repeat. For example, every trip down I75 is timed so that I hit Newport KY at lunchtime, so I can go to a certain pizza place. Almost every golf trip to Myrtle Beach has an overnight stop in Asheville NC so I can visit the main strip (the one exception was the time we stayed in Knoxville TN so we could go see the Sun Sphere at the old World’s Fair site, just because they did it on the Simpson’s).

Second, I cram a lot of things into a trip. I invariably end up with a list of specific places, events, restaurants, etc, that each trip is “built” around. I go to NashvilleTN a couple times a year for work, but I always work in a stop at Bridgestone Arena for a hockey game or a concert (both if I’m lucky). Golf trips have rounds pre-planned for every day, even knowing that we won’t be able to lift our arms by the end of the week. There’s even a “maybe” list most of the time - things I would like to do if I can manage to fit them in.

What’s one thing I want to do in the future? Take a trip NOT have everything planned.

Why haven’t I yet? I simply don’t know how.

I can picture it now. Me, trying to plan a trip without any plans - makes my head hurt just thinking about it. I feel like I would need someone else to handle the details, and just hand me a plane ticket and say “let’s go” [that actually sounds really wonderful, not having to do all the “heavy lifting” for a change]. 

Well, time to wrap this up for another week. Tiredness is finally starting to push back at the insomnia, and I think I can get about 90 minutes of sleep in before having to get up for work.

Until next time, thanks for reading. =]