Tick Tock

Posted on September 22, 2008

Only 88 days now. Insane. When did that happen?? IN just under 90 days I should be underway if all goes to plan.

Therein lies the rub, though. “According to plan.” This has never been my strong suit, and historically things have so often gone so far from “plan” as to build an unnatural superstition in me. Deep down, I tend to tell myself it’s because I don’t actually think things thorugh completely, I make assumptions about situations and people because I expect people to be less random and chaotic than me. Thus, if one element behave erratically, my light-weight web dissolves, a frail ether in a strong wind.

As often as not, though, it’s something completely out of my control. So I try to keep positive and be general. I do have tickets & hotel rooms (so far as I know), and as of right now, the airline still exists and is operational.

So 88 days. I hope to be in Paris.

Practice Trip

Posted on September 5, 2008

I can’t believe I’m already getting close to double digits now! Only 105 days left, just 15 weeks until I go. Unbelievable. I know I have no real concept of time (I never have had) but I look over here at previous posts and I’m just amazed that months have passed.

Last weekend I took an impromptu trip to San Francisco and had a really great time. I also learned a couple of things about myself (especially the traveling me) and realized that certain aspects of the Paris trip would be similar, I think. I walked tons, explored and basically just did whatever I wanted, picking up a tour here and there and just finding my way. I talked with random people, made conversation with complete strangers and just blended in as much as I could. I stopped moving only when I felt like it, with no real schedule or design, and when I was in motion I did what I could to stay in motion. Catch a bus, too slow? Walk, keep going. Wrong street? Take the next one, they all lead somewhere and you can always call a cab. Know where you started, know where you have to end up. Everything in between is adventure.

And that’s the way I treated it: like an adventure. Nothing was lost or a waste. If I got lost it meant I saw something I hadn’t seen before, went someplace new. Last weekend I was genuinely happy and it showed, I think. People just smiled at me and said hello, and I did everything I could to enjoy it. While I don’t know that France (and London, actually) will be as easy to move through in this way, I can imagine this is just how I’ll try to be.

That’s kind of how I discovered something about me. Some time on the flight back I think I finally gave into a thought I’d been pondering for awhile. At our core, we really never do change. We grow, shrink, learn, get programmed, jaded, whatever. But some piece of us is always us, and I think it’s from birth. I’ve been thinking about it a lot lately.

A friend of mine once said she didn’t really think of me as a loner, that she believed I needed people and a group as a part of who I am. I wonder. She’s right that I’m not a loner, but I do have a certain lone wanderer thing going on. I think back to when I was a kid, even a very little one and I realize some things really haven’t changed. As far back as 3 I can recall running off on imaginary adventures, just me and the world, exploring, losing myself in a city, a culture, another planet or place. I would see it on TV or hear someone talk about it and I would fall asleep playing it out in my head.  Before I was 5 I was doing as much of that as I could for real…slipping off in to woods or a new street or lost basement or attic or wherever, as long as I was in motion. By ten, dissappearing was the game of the day, just so long as I found my way back by dark. If I was inside an apartment complex, even dark wasn’t a barrier.

Sometimes I would drag whatever friend I was closest to at the time (I almost always had one or two, but no more who were close) along for the ride, but more often than not, it was just me, lost in wherever. I honestly wonder if I went alone because I preferred it that way, or because the reality is that finding a kindred spirit willing to go without a plan (or with a very loose one subject to change) and find adventure is a little harder than just going. I really don’t know the answer to that one. I can tell you it makes me wonder about a lot of the choices I made early on in life, though. How did I not end up in the Peace Corps or as a tomb raider? Seriously, right? I’m still not 100% positive how that happened. I guess maybe I just did what I thought I was supposed to do.

Regardless, I’m a lot more settled now, despite whatever genetic hard-wiring takes me from a coffee shop in Decatur to a plane taking off for San Francisco in just three hours. Perhaps it’s through that elusive thing called time, or just life’s use, or hell, maybe it’s just hard to raid tombs without bus fare. I don’t know.

I know I still fall asleep almost every night thinking up some adventure.

And even Indiana Jones had a real job.