On the Road Again

With apologies to Willie

If you were lured here hoping for some Willie Nelson, sorry to disappoint. Nope, just travelling. Which has to be one of the great contradictory human undertakings. It is difficult, infuriating and stupid, but I argue that travel is also not only inspiring, enlightening and fulfilling, but imperative. The opportunities provided to us by leaving our comfortable environs are only found in travel. Seeing new things, immersing in different contexts and cultures, meeting not just new people but people who are different give chances to learn and grow that nothing else can. But before I get waxing on here, lets have a few caveats and disclaimers.

I’m pretty obviously not talking about the road warrior type of travel that is often just a soul-sucking exercise designed to see just how much one can endure before going full stalk of bananas. I feel deep sympathy for anyone whose job requires them to spend their lives navigating the vagaries and myriad frustrations of being on the road. It is bad enough doing it when you want to for the sake of something fun. When you have to it can reeaallly suck. I spent many years where I was forced onto the road - planes, trains and automobiles - at least eighty or ninety days a year and it felt like twice that. Even with my attitude of how important and rewarding it is, when you have to check your phone to figure out what time zone you’re in or walk into the closet instead of the bathroom because your current hotel room is exactly like your last one except reversed, it is hard to give a damn about what might be new and interesting about Austin vs Chicago. Those poor souls who spend 250 days a year on the road deserve our thoughts and prayers.

Also, let’s not be too snobbish about international travel over domestic. I have been lucky enough to get to a dozen or so different countries and am truly blessed for what I experienced and learned on those trips but I am no less grateful for my time spent visiting - or at least setting foot in - all 48 contiguous US states. The awe of the sun sinking into the North Sea in St. Andrews, Scotland was no greater than the moonrise on the Loneliest Road in America in the high desert on the border of Nevada and Utah. Stumbling into Hangar 49 in Potter, NE because we were exhausted and hungry was no less fabulously fortuitous than finding the Martinus Brewery in Groningen, The Netherlands because I was lost in a rainstorm. They both had amazing beer, wonderful people and were joyous in their randomness and sheer dumb luck. And being stuck on a stalled, hot, stinky and crowded train outside Venice is pretty much on terrible par with being delayed from 2 AM to 6 AM with five people in a four seat bus station in Somewhere, West Virginia. Things for marvel, magic and misery separated by thousands of miles, one ocean and at least three languages.

Which underscores the point that you don’t have to get on an airplane to be travelling. To be sure, the ability to breakfast in New York and supper in San Francisco is mighty freakin’ cool - if also somewhat disorienting - but there are things you simply won’t see or experience without putting in the miles on good old terra firma. There is a very large part of me that, given the time and energy, will stay on the ground and spend the hours every time. Especially since, let’s face it, unless you are flying in the big seats up front, air travel really blows. A digression:

You might be old enough to remember when flying was cool, even fun and a pretty neat experience. Even in what used to be called “coach” (a great piece of language in my estimation, way better than whatever the airline uses as its euphemism for “cattle car”) you had a seat at least marginally wider than your hips, the seat in front of you was more than ten inches from your nose even if they reclined, they fed you - and I mean fed, like a hot meal with silverware, even if they were famously and decidedly not tasty, you weren’t charged for checking a bag (those fees came about during the notorious fuel prices of the early eighties and, huh, never went away) or the exit row or getting on board first or whatever nickel-diming horror they come up with next. People actually dressed nice to fly because it was an event, an occasion, something to look forward to and enjoy. Now our best hope is to not have a massive delay or a lost bag or a fellow passenger meltdown or, yikes, a piece of the plane fall off. They pack you in the like proverbial sardines, begrudgingly give you a can of soda and a bag of pretzels, charge you for anything you might need - the nerve to want to take stuff with you! - and are surprised when you aren’t grateful for the opportunity to give them a bunch of money for the opportunity. Is it too obvious that I am writing this from seat 28A between LAX and JFK? We were delayed for about 80 minutes, they had no sandwiches left - to buy! - by the time they got to the back, my headphone jack only has one channel and the power outlet under my seat is both almost entirely inaccessible and so old the plug falls out unless I keep it wedged in place with my leg. You’ll be hearing from me JetBlue, for the fat lot of good it will do. The highways and trains for sure have their problems, too. Traffic, idiot drivers, stupid fuel prices, dirty highways and coaches, wildly inconsiderate fellow passengers, detours and delays, etc. Did I mention idiot drivers? So pick your poison. But go do it. It is still a pretty good trade, if just for the sensory jump start.

All five senses get awakened and challenged by the road. Your eyes and ears and nose are all asleep in the little world in which you muddle about day in and day out. The sights and sounds and smells have all been taken in, identified, catalogued and rendered mundane by your brain. And for good reason. Sensory overload is real and if you start over every day highly likely. But busting out of your accustomed environs gives those senses good reason to perk up, question and classify, all of which stimulates your brain and, lo and behold, you. Having spent right around half of my life in Southern California and half in the Hudson Valley in NY, my brain has two pretty thorough catalogues of what I experience in either place. But that doesn’t keep me from coming to life when I change coasts. SoCal air smells and feels different than Poughkeepsie air. And no jokes about smog. The space, the light, the resonance and the vibe are all distinct and I revel in the awakening those distinctions brings me. This is part of why I seldom use headphones much when I travel. And of course there are the vibe changes you get to, or have to in some cases, deal with.

Walking the streets of a different city or town should be a spiritual and psychic barrage. The rhythms, pace, tensions, patterns - not to forget the aforementioned sensory differences - are different and unique to their environs. You admittedly have to get a little further afield to really experience this as neighboring towns or suburbs or exurbs or whatever tend to feel pretty generic to themselves, but leave your region, crank up your sensors and antennae and take it all in. New is good, different is fun, strange is exciting. Yes, all that can also be daunting, even terrifying, but if all we are is comfortable we are not evolving.

Probably most importantly, and what most plays into my ideas of travelling being a human imperative, is the chance for knowing different cultures and peoples. One of our most glaring and harmful conditions right now is our lack of connection. The inability to relate to, get to know and maybe understand, even a tiny bit, those not like us is a prime mover of our decline and will ultimately spell our doom. Having ridden Greyhound across the country - three times no less - I have a theory that anyone who wants to run for national office must undertake that very journey. There are things that can only be seen on that road. Can you imagine Lord Dampnut in a bus station in East Bumblefuck trying to borrow a quarter for the pay toilet? Oh boy, I can. We are dying from lack of empathy but you can’t empathize with something of whose existence you are totally unaware. There is a great old piece of film showing Bobby Kennedy (the RFK I wish we had) on a visit to one of the poorest parts of Appalachia, wherein you can quite clearly see him being both astonished and appalled at the conditions he encounters and the impact of the people with whom he interacts. It is quite moving, and I don’t think he becomes one of the staunchest and most fervent defenders of civil rights and committed enemy of poverty of his generation without that trip. You can hear about impoverished and marginalized communities without leaving Richtown, Mass, but walking into the unplumbed, unlighted dirt floor homes of those poor communities is a little more striking. Some people, of course, don’t want to know because it makes not caring much easier, and they would rather not care. But the morally and spiritually bankrupt are usually beyond redemption. It sucks that so many of them get in charge.

I think we need to go back to ideas like AmeriCorps and the Peace Corps and by golly make it part of being a citizen. Too many people do not have the means, even if they have the motivation, to get out of their bubbles. To hit that road, get that sensory bolt of lightning, feel a cultural vibe other than their own. We need to make it possible and then we need to make people do it. That soapbox got a little high, this is me stepping down.

So travelling can really be a bummer and it certainly isn’t getting any easier - at least for those of us in coach. (The folks up in Emirate class aren’t really travelling anyway, they’re just moving their twisted bubble somewhere else and they are most assuredly missing out. That said, if JetBlue wants to make it up to me with a Mint ticket who am I to say no? Travelling well and experiencing well don’t have to be mutually exclusive . . .) But it is still worth it. So hit the road of your choice. Embrace the chaos, cherish the unexpected and let it all wash over you, good and bad, magic and mundane, silly and sublime. It will do you good. And us. We will all be better from each other’s shared experience. Thanks for reading. And if you liked it, share it with someone else who you think might. The more the merrier.