Sunday, June 08, 2008
TRAVEL DREAMS
We went out to friends for dinner last night and so I got to bed late.
9:30 PM.
So, today was sleep catchup.
I had one of those naps that goes on and on.
My usual day nap is about 60 - 90 minutes but this one lasted 3 hours.
I had one of the classic travel dreams that I get.
Not all my dreams are memorable but some are classic and repeat themselves so reliably that I can remember details for at least a day afterwards.
For many years I dreamed about missing class or not doing the lab work for a course or having a final for a course I had never attended. The academic dream.
Then for a long time I would dream training dreams. I am leading a group of managers and I have no idea what the lesson plan is or, perhaps, I am being asked to speak and have no idea who the people are or what is expected. Sometimes I find that I have no clothes on.
Dr.Freud would have an easy time with those dreams.
Now, the memorable dream is about travel. All those years on planes, trains and in automobiles, almost weekly, are coming home to roost while I sleep.
There is always a border crossing. There are papers that are needed to get across. There are various flights that must be connected. There is always a problem getting out my passport. Sometimes I don't know where it is that I am going.
The gate is always hard to find. Sometimes there is a toll bridge and I do not have the cash.
Sometimes I actually get on the plane and the plane does not really fly but goes along the highway. Other times the plane does fly but only a hundred or so feet off the ground. Sometimes lower than the trees.
The interior of the plane is always more like a bus than a plane cabin.
I never have language difficulties.
There are complex schedules.
Today, I had to meet someone in England and then connect to Russia where the same person I talked to in England is going to meet me but I can't get there in time because the person at Heathrow checkin wants to see a travel magazine instead of the passport, tickets and other papers that I have in a very thick envelope sort of on the scale of a FedEx envelope. Maybe it is FedEx.
There are no motels on these trips. I often leap across time and end up meeting the person I am expecting to meet without an intervening trip. A bit like a time warp.
There is no real anxiety. There is frustration over the fact that I do not have the magazine that is required but I ask to see the clerk's supervisor and I am so effective in complaining that he simply lets me pass.
When I wake up I remember all of it. In detail.
The actual fact is that I traveled a million (?) miles and rarely had a problem.
My luggage was delayed once in Dusseldorf and another time, on vacation, in the Virgin Islands.
I always had all my papers.
I was a healthy road warrior who could take the bumps as well as the pleasures.
There was a lot of pleasure in being on the road. I always liked the hotels and the cities and the people.
Of course, those days are over.
Travel now is a vast wasteland of waiting, checking in, arriving late, being pushed around in crowds and so on.
I came in on the DC3 and went out on the jumbo jets. The DC3 was better, as much as it shook us around. It had a long glide path too. If the engines failed they had a long time to put it down.
I think that hotels and food are better now.
But maybe not.
When I first traveled it was mostly from Philadelphia to the Eastern Shore of Maryland and in a car.
There were no chain hotels or restaurants. Everything was local. You looked and asked for direction from locals.
At the end, I stayed in big chain hotels for the most part. I ate in the hotel a lot of the time.
The best regular hotel I stayed at was the Marriott at the World Trade Center. They had the best food too.
You know what happened to that.
Actually, it happened twice. The same building, under a different name, was right over the place the truck bomb blew up. They got my room and the restaurant that time.
I often asked to have the same room in a hotel I returned to. And got it.
The second best hotel was the Holiday Inn Royale in Geneva. Overseas, the Holiday Inn chain is a premium stay and the Royale is the top of the line.
They had terrific breakfasts. I would stay over the last day of the program, get up and go the two miles to the airport and ride back home.
The flight I took back and forth from Geneva to New York City was on the same plane. It went back and forth every day. About a year after I quit going to Geneva it blew up going out of Kennedy. Gas vapors ignited through a wiring flaw. Everyone died.
Is there a trend here? Things blowing up after I am done with them?
No wonder I dream about travel.
I can remember almost every place I ever stayed. Can you imagine? I think that is because when you work on the road you learn the shit fast and absorb it. You do not have time for getting lost. You get it right and keep it.
Obviously, I kept it better than I thought.
I am destined to fucking dream about it for the rest of my life.
