esrosedotblog

It has been a long time since I stepped onto an airplane.

Longer still since I have been overseas.

Not to be morbid, but I am running out of time. I don't want to become one of those "never" guys. And, as it turns out, if I don't get on a plane I may never see a few of my friends again. My family usually comes to me but for once, I will go to them. I can come and go as I please.

So I balance the costs. Putting up with the "flying experience" against never seeing some important people again. Email doesn't do it in some cases.

So this summer, July, I am going to fly to London and stop in Boston on the way. Then, after London I will go to Toronto and then back home.

I do not plan to spend any time during this trip to see the sights although my friend Lynda has mentioned the big ferris wheel in London. And I love to walk the streets of Toronto. No. It is to see people. I have seen enough sights.

Now that sounds like a curmudgeon but it is more or less true. I live in one of the most beautiful, if waterless, places in the world. What more could there be? Well, a lot and I have seen a lot of it.

With me it is "OK, there it is. Let's go to the next stop".

My wonder machine ran down somewhere.

I am excited about seeing the people though and while it is probably going to be arduous I will somehow perversely like being in airports and doing all that shit again. After all, I traveled almost every week of my work life. My first flight was on an Allegheny DC3 from Boston to Scranton in 1955.

I sort of miss the lousy food, the factory atmosphere of a large transportation system, the impersonality and fabricated friendliness of the people who will serve me.

I miss the time in hotels. Perhaps this most of all.

One of the nicest things about going to San Diego each year is staying by myself in a hotel and being in a room where nothing happens unless I want it to. Well, almost nothing. No chores, no obligations, no hours to keep. I do not even watch the television. I can just sit.

In San Diego I am just a few feet from a marina and water and seagulls and boats, boats boats. That is part of my room.

I will stay in someone else's home on this trip and that is something to look forward to as well. It has been so long since I stayed in someone else's house I cannot tell you. And while this does not offer the anonymity of a hotel stay it does offer the novelty of snooping into other peoples stuff and checking out how they live.

So I am going. Doing something I had decided I would probably not do ever again.

Labels: travel