Tag: travel

Work Party

After today, I can say emphatically what a work party isn’t.

No cake, no candles and definitely no balloons.

Slog work. But fun and useful and productive slog work.

Guest bedrooms are dressed and settled. Mostly.

Paintings were hung. Cabinets were arrayed with my husbands’ blue china and other pretty things. His hand-woven Iranian carpets were laid down in various rooms.

The oak display cabinet was filled with my husband’s airplanes. I won’t call them models (though that is what they are) as I don’t want to suggest they are child’s toys.

They are models of the planes he flew as a pilot, both in the military and as a commercial airline pilot. They mean a lot to him. He doesn’t fly any more these days.

Today was a day of consolidation and integration. Me and my work party made strides in pulling together the collective remnants of two lives lived separately until only recently.

These strides are both a physical and emotional milestone for me.

It has been hard for me to make a “home” and make it stick. I moved around a lot when I was younger under the delusion that by changing spaces I could ditch my demons.

It took a long time to learn that didn’t work so well. I have owned houses and heaven knows, I tried to turn them into HOMES. But it has always been difficult for me to land and stick.

Not an abnormal reaction given a perpetually unstable childhood. So the quiet satisfaction of putting a house together that aligns with my vision is unfamiliar. Pleasant but unfamiliar.

So with the willing hands of two ladies from my church and the equally willing effort of two good friends we tackled a chores list that was a page and a half long. We got through almost all of it.

Things I’d hoped would happen – like my husband’s planes proudly on display – were accomplished. Gratifying.

I see how much my decorating taste has been influenced by my Asian travels. And by long days sitting in leather and oak soaked libraries surrounded by books. And Masterpiece Theatre on PBS.

Alistair Cooke would be perfectly comfortable and at home in my current living room.

Friends visit from the frigid North next week. I’m almost ready. I look forward to their company.

I am equally enjoying getting ready for their visit.

I am finally pulling my living environment together. It has taken awhile for me to settle in to the process of home-making.

It has more creative elements to it than I had imagined. Can we talk about the process of choosing wall colors? I went navy blue on one room. I middling mango in the other.

If I could only convey to you completely how risque and out of character these bold color choices were for me. And how well they work!

I didn’t really appreciate the whole house decorating process much before now. Certainly not as much as I do now. I was more of a dabbling dilettante. But I’m changing.

I’m just learning to appreciate a lot of things that were either foreign to me or out of reach when I was younger.

I may even doing some baking in anticipation of their visit. Nothing says loving like something from the oven, I’ve heard.

Holding a successful work party with friends and fellows was not something I expected.

And I certainly didn’t expect to enjoy it quite so much.

Keep living, keep learning.

Pablo Neruda Said This

I agree with him.

“You start dying slowly;

if you do not travel,

if you do not read,

If you do not listen to the sounds of life,

If you do not appreciate yourself.

You start dying slowly:

When you kill your self-esteem,

When you do not let others help you.

You start dying slowly;

If you become a slave of your habits,

Walking everyday on the same paths…

If you do not change your routine,

If you do not wear different colors

Or you do not speak to those you don’t know.

You start dying slowly:

If you avoid to feel passion

And their turbulent emotions;

Those which make your eyes glisten

And your heart beat fast.

You start dying slowly:

If you do not risk what is safe for the uncertain

If you do not go after a dream

If you do not allow yourself

At least once in your lifetime

To run away from sensible advice

Don’t let yourself die slowly

Do not forget to be happy!

~ Pablo Neruda

On the Road

I awoke this morning enveloped in dead silence. Aaaah. So lovely.

I am in a hotel miles away from home in Osprey, Florida. At home, I realize, electronics run perpetually about me. The ceiling fan. The bathroom fan. The outdoor heater. The air purifier.

In this here hotel, there is none of that. My ears awoke this morning to nothing and I was struck by how different that is from my normal.

I am abed and luxuriating in this simple and peaceful environment. I am headed for a Christmas weekend adventure to stay in a houseboat overnight. Florida is unquestionably an odd state in the union.

Known for its weirdness and tackiness and Disney World. But Florida affords travelers unique water-based experiences that you would be unlikely to find, say, in Nebraska.

No doubt Nebraska has its own unique charms and surprises to discover. Houseboats on the ocean is definitely not one of them.

Isn’t odd how we end up living where we live? The possibilities are endless but eventually we must all decide on somewhere. Maybe we were born where we live. Most unusual these days but still, possible.

Or we transferred jobs or got a promotion. That planted us somewhere across the country to a place we have become deeply attached to and now call home. Or we retired, and deliberately sought out sun, sea and sand and zero personal income tax. Maybe John and Susan moved here first, talked it up, had you visit and now you live here, too.

I know people whose whole extended family has pulled up stakes and moved several thousand miles across the country to live around each other in retirement. I consider them lucky to have family relationships strong enough to merit that move.

So my intent this weekend is to see a little more of the surrounding countryside in the place I temporarily call home. Gathering me rosebuds while I may and all that.

There is something mentally refreshing about simply seeing different signage along the road or as you pass through small towns. Meandering down highways that are bordered by different landscapes than you are used to is visually interesting snd stimulating.

Last night, I ordered take-out from a Mexican food chain called Tomatillo’s that I had never heard of before. Mighty tasty steak tacos.

So soon I shall rise, eat a hearty breakfast and get back on the road. My chosen route is through a backcountry route where I hear alligators laze up on the side of the road. You can’t get a more extreme than that for a change of scenery.

What I like about travel is what awaits me when I go back home. I always see my home with fresh eyes after an outing, regardless if it is long or short.

We never travel any distance in reality in the long run. Wherever we go, there we are. But travel does stretch and educate us, if we’re lucky. I used to regard people with disdain who travelled in developing countries and spent little time outside their hotel and constantly complained and made disparaging comparisons to their living conditions at home. So why did they bother to leave home at all, I often wondered?

I have only another day of wandering around before I head back to my “permanent address” and pay my respects to the biggest day of the Christian calendar. Meanwhile, I am going to milk this day and tomorrow for all they are worth.

I hope to return home with a new perspective. And if I’m lucky, pictures and tales of alligators I encountered lying along the road.

Eventually we all come home again. To a physical one here on Earth or to our spiritual home. It’s just a matter of time. My responsibility on this planet is to suck as much of the marrow out of this earthly experience before I light off for a purely spiritual one.

At that point, I will live each timeless moment in all the silence I ever longed for.

Leaving on a Jet Plane

I’d like to say all my bags are packed and I’m ready to go. I’m not. That is what I will do today.

I used to love travel. I remember the excitement in getting ready for a big trip. And there were some very big trips in my life.

From my home base in Canada, I flew to Sri Lanka for a three month walking trek and sojourn through India and Nepal. On another occasion, I flew to Seoul Korea to connect with my family on tiny and dazzling beautiful black sand Jeju Island off South Korea’s coast.

Then there was the southern sojourn to Argentina to take a ten day horse trek across the Andes. And I once flew due North and landed in Iqaluit, Nunavut for several frost filled days to attend the Arctic Winter Games.

Many writers laud the benefits of travel. I do. It changes you. It broadens your perspective on so many things. It can shatter the illusion of cultural superiority that some secretly harbor if they have not travelled very far from their home base.

One look at a carved monument in almost any country should knock that out of your system pretty quickly. Not always, of course. But often.

Travel is a kind of education that you cannot replicate by reading books. Books stimulate the imagination. Travel stimulates the senses. Nothing could replace the overwhelming sights and sounds of a spice market in New Delhi, India.

Celebrating Holi, the festival of colors, is one of the most unique occasions I’ve ever taken part in. In under an hour, me and my traveling companions were physically drenched in a dozen colors from handfuls of special chalk thrown at us. Deliberately!

As you wander the streets of New Delhi (or anywhere in India on that unique, special holiday), everyone is equally streaked with multiple colors of dust.

Indians generally have a great sense of occasion. Nothing can match the style and splendor of an Indian wedding drenched in rich fabrics, brilliant colors and enticing smells.

When most of my college buddies were working at traditional summer jobs after the term was over, I spent every summer traveling on some pretense or another. Europe. First as a waitress in a massive tourist hotel and the following summer as a student. Then Egypt as a student after my third year.

After graduation, I spent several months traipsing through Asia. So many indelible memories. So much experience and learning – mostly good.

I am leaving my country again. This time, on a more permanent basis. We cannot predict the future with flawless accuracy but we can make some educated guesses.

For me that means the next few years will be spent among my continent mates directly to our South. Living in the USA at this juncture in history is an ongoing daily education. I won’t make a qualitative call on what I’m learning there.

Travel brings you home with new eyes. You see everything that was familiar and there before but differently somehow.

It is easy for me to appreciate the old song, “How you gonna keep ‘em down on the farm after they’ve seen Pa-ree?” Travel was like an addiction where the more I did it, the more I craved. I deemed it a healthy addiction and only now see the cravings diminishing somewhat.

Hours from now, I’ll be winging my way South to rejoin my husband and put this country in the rearview mirror for awhile.

When the jet place departs, I fully expect my bags to be packed and ready to go.

As ready as I’ll ever be at any rate.

Coffee, Tea or Cyanide

Nothing like an early morning flight to remind you how precious sleep is.

Over years of intermittent early morning flights, I have come to rely on my internal alarm clock.

I don’t rely on it so much that I don’t set an actual alarm, mind you. But inevitably, I wake before the clock chimes the hour. I rouse myself no matter how sleepy I am when there is something important to be done. Like catching a flight.

I used to travel enthusiastically. I am not sure what has taken off the edge of excitement. These days I dread travel like I used to dread going to the dentist. Given my druthers these days, I think I’d happily hop in a dental chair.

I’ve been to a lot of places in the world, so there’s that. But no, I think it is that the overall quality of travel has dipped precipitously. My recent flight plans were a shining example.

Flying Leg #1 from North to South was straightforward enough. But at a central hub on the Eastern US seaboard, Mother Nature had her own secret plans for a messed up travel day. A messed up heyday, in fact. Thunderstorms. Complete with thunder and lighting. Travel cyanide.

I have to admire how cleverly the airlines handle such disruptions these days in their own best interests. There was a time when the merest hint of bad weather would shut down flights. The airline would hie its’ passengers off to a nearby hotel with meal vouchers to ride out the storm. Ancient history.

Instead, the airline’s tactic today is to keep passengers baited and on the hook. “We regret to inform you your flight will be delayed by one hour. It is now departing from Gate Whatever at whatever time one hour from now is.”

The same email and text message gets sent out hour after hour after hour. It keeps people dangling and on the hook. Clustered sleepily in the airport waiting lounge sipping bad coffee and chewing on hope.

To be fair, the airline finally made a humanitarian offering of “hydration and refreshments”: warm bottled water and Goldfish pretzels. You’d be within your rights to see the close comparison to the “bread and water” regimen they once served incarcerated prisoners as punishment.

Until finally, when pilots can no longer safely fly because they have passed the allowable FAA regulations deadline, the airline cancels the flight. I don’t know what people do or what happens to them when that happens. I didn’t stick around to find out.

Operating on fumes, I finally bailed at around 7 PM to find a hotel room for the night. I would have felt foolish if my flight actually made it out that night. Luckily it didn’t and I didn’t feel foolish. I awoke this morning to find a text message advising all passengers at close to midnight: “The flight has been cancelled.”

Ominously I had been checked into Room 911 at the hotel. That was particularly ominous in light of today’s chilling anniversary. It was a minor nuisance to learn there was no bathtub, so I asked for a room change. Thus I avoided two undesirable scenarios and my uncomfortable feeling.

There was an eeriness in seeing the room number 911 assignment in a Washington, DC hotel exactly 22 years after the fact. And a “shower only” bathroom. I’m old school and need a bath to relax. Especially after a travel day like this.

The flakiness I sometimes exhibit both confounds and comforts me by times. So many had so many more feels to wrangle on this horrible anniversary and likely still do. But damn, travel is different. No room service. “Only at dinnertime,” said the chipper young thing at the front desk.

I pleaded illness and incapacity to get a basic breakfast delivered. (“Oh, we can give you a mask when you come down.” CYT offered, cheerily.) The whitener served with the coffee was totally oversold. It barely turned the coffee a dark mocha to say nothing of the host of chemicals that cannot be good for man nor beast.

I am about to go all Dorothy in The Wizard of Oz on myself after this necessary travel jaunt. “There’s no place like home!” At least, I can count on a full breakfast any time of the day or night and a readily available bathtub to soak away the cares of the day.

Travel was once the playground of adventure, learning and tolerable inconveniences. These days it is a passage through purgatory to get to wherever it is you absolutely want or need to get to.

Purgatory is a polite way of putting it. Occasionally it can be hell on earth.

Yesterday’s travel came perilously close to that.

Ask anyone who was waiting all day yesterday to board Flight 4424.

Which, of course, they never did.