TRAVEL SCHEDULE? KEEP IT FLEXIBLE

A travel schedule works right up until it doesn’t.

You get to the airport early only to find out the plane is late, the gate has changed, and it took a minute to lose your boarding pass.

Still, you remain calm and collected and make plans to overcome problems, just like real life.

But travel problems feel more anxious than real life.

There are good reasons for traveling long distance, like looking around.

Why not take a good look around?

Do it often enough and you might find someplace you like and go back, which is still travel, still a journey of discovery, but more familiar.

I’ve been to London three times now and found it as enthralling as an ancient city ought to be every time.

Aging cities in modern times have one thing in common: pollution dirt on limestone buildings. More than once I’ve thought, ‘This would look a lot better after a good power washing.’

For the first time someone thought the same thing.

And it does look better in places.

Will this fad catch on in a city like London populated by encrusted monuments and darkened walls?

Other cities may notice and start cleaning up?

Where to start? Paris for the Olympics.

 

Scratching The Travel Itch

Why do people travel in the first place?

There’s work travel, pleasure travel, and family travel.

As a kid the big family trip with mom and dad and brothers and sister was loading into a Volkswagen camper and driving to Dallas, Texas to meet my mom’s people.

She wanted her aunties and uncles to know she turned out right, and to show off her kids and husband.

A few years later my big trips were sports related.

I got on a bus for a wrestling tournament in Stillwater, Oklahoma. Another bus and another tournament in Fort Collins, Colorado.

Inspired by Rick Sanders, I hitchhiked to Iowa City for yet another tournament.

My first plane ride went to Army bootcamp in Fort Ord, California.

Let’s call those work trips on the travel schedule.

Is it considered travel if you go someplace to wander around with no travel schedule?

What I’m getting at is this: is it worth the rigors of travel if all you want to do is wander around?

You can wander around your yard, your town, or drive to the nearest city with a building over five stories tall and walk around the block.

Do that and you won’t get nagged by tricky parking rules, congestion tolls, and fancy people at high tea.

This is the Pump Room in Bath, England.

It’s near the famous Roman Baths and a block away from the local church.

Three different churches have occupied the site of the Abbey since 757 AD.

First, an Anglo-Saxon monastery which was pulled down by the Norman conquerors of England; then a massive Norman cathedral which was begun about 1090 but lay in ruins by late 15th century; and finally, the present Abbey Church, which started in around 1499, as we now know it. 

The wife and I wandered around Bath just fine.

Tea seating was at noon and two, but I told the man the romantic story of my wife’s mom and dad meeting in the Pump Room and he let us in for a modified tea.

It was nice.

 

The Rigors Of A Travel Schedule

You need to be on time.

If you’re not an on time kind person, start practicing.

The plane won’t wait for you.

The flight may get canceled and screw your plans up, but it won’t wait.

You know who else won’t wait? The loud fucker on the Seattle airport escalator who yelled, “Move it, you can’t just stop on the fucking escalator.”

The departure gate may change, and if it does and you miss your plane? Oops.

Being on time, and flexible to schedule screw ups are the rigors of travel, along with checking in early for a boarding pass, but only twenty four hours early.

Check your bags in if you’re bring a change of clothes, which means standing in line for a bag tag.

I’ve never lost a bag. So far. Put a piece of tape on your handle for ID at the luggage return.

Security check-in? Oh, yeah. Fill up bins with your stuff, all your stuff, even that tissue in your back pocket.

Be sure and tell all about your hip replacement like they’ve never heard that one.

Say as little as possible, if that.

In the end, no matter how much of a wanderer you are, or feel you are, if you’re going anywhere you’ll be on someone’s travel schedule.

You’re the same as an Amazon package delivered the same day, and that’s for the pleasure of wandering around a new place.

It’s a high price to pay, but you’re worth it. Right?

Married people traveling together may risk divorce, abandonment, or worse. Not this time.

Lovers traveling together may learn too much about each other too soon.

Friends traveling together may find more togetherness than they’re used to.

How ever it all works out, travel is always an enlightening experience both personally and publicly.

If you can get out and back in one piece you’re doing it right. That’s always my plan whether it’s work, pleasure, or family.

There’s something special about being stranded together that creates a bond.

Or the other thing.