In years gone by, I'd be someplace like Mexico City today having made the flight on Christmas afternoon. My group of buddies and I would stay in our own hometown to open presents with our families, then, when things were done, we'd head to the airport to hop a cheap flight out of the country. Perhaps today we would be navigating our way to a village at the foot of a volcano we intended to climb. This happened many times. We travelled every chance we could get. Not just holiday trips. Many were quite extended. Back before the tourist crush, in the first days of "adventure travel" before the Golden Horde, places like Mexico, Venezuela, Peru, Argentina, or Ecuador were very inexpensive to get to and cheap once we were there. Even on my paltry salary, I could manage to live large.
My last big trip was with Ili to Paris for the last Fashion Week in 2019. We went to Detroit a month after that. Actually, as I am thinking about it, I had a lot of travel that year. Since then, I haven't been more than a few miles from home but for a couple drives to the coast.
I am ready to travel if only I can get the vaccine. But the "roll out" is slower than they thought it would be. What happened? I thought Trump had put one of our best supply chain Generals in charge of this. Perhaps they should have hired Halliburton.
You knew it would be a cluster fuck. Today I read that one out of every thousand people in America has died of Covid. I had to look at that several times thinking it was a mistake. One in one thousand! From a virus that was going to disappear like a miracle.
So, it looks like it will be awhile before I can travel again. It is another cold ass morning here in the Sunny South, but it will warm up later and I will get outside. I spent yesterday inside moping. I haven't had a shower in quite a while. I think maybe I've got the blues. One of my buddies suggested not drinking in 2021. It's a good idea in so many ways, and I think I should jump on that wagon. I think we could stay on it until we get to a good cafe in some other town, but you know, travel and drink and romance (or the possibility of it) are irrevocably connected. I mean, there is, at least, always a drink. So maybe what we should do is quit drinking and put all the money we would have spent on booze each week into a travel fund. By the time we are able to go somewhere, that pot ought to be pretty large. That might be just the thing, right Bud?
Let me know.
ReplyDeleteDid I ever tell you I have paid for all my trips with cash? Ever since. My mother did it when we were kids and for her adult alone travel too.
Every week I would put some amount of dollars into an envelope marked "Paris" or "Africa" or "NYC" or "Jamaica" or wherever. Even just little trips - an envelope of cash so I could count it and dream it and make it happen.
And when the time came to put down deposits or whatever, I'd take the cash and deposit it my bank account and pay for the airline ticket, the apartment rental, the car rental, the necessary shots or VISA.
It is really the only time I am good at saving money (except when it was/is automatically deducted from my check and sent somewhere by authorities other than myself).
Where are we going? All of us? When we can? What is first on your list, C.S.?
I was just flipping through Mr. Maisel's travel collections. I wish I could find my Jamaica photos. I have no idea where they went to. (I sound a bit like him).
I miss it all. I miss walking down the wrong street and discovering something. I miss mapping out the days activities in a diary and checking them off as we go. All things off the beaten track.
I miss discovering Rose wine at the liquor store down the street from our apartment in Aix is equivalent to about $2 bucks a bottle USA price. Driving brand new/ancient roads.
I want to see Graceland. And even Dollyworld. Just cause. I want to go to West Virginia and see the hollers and the trees on the mountains that T. said reminded him of cathedrals. Walk the Camino.
I'm not terribly picky TBH. My fellow traveling partners have always said "Lisa can find fun in a brown paper bag."
But the Brown Paper Bag of Covid has smothered me. Sure I had a trip to NYC recently. And I was grateful - but it was marred by rules and regulations of Life During Plaguetime.
Yup. It's a terrible disease to have.
That is The Love of the World.
Hope you can get a little unblued. Always. But it is also okay to be that way - just not for too too long. Then it is really hard to change colors.
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