The Love Tour
The Love Tour
People Are My Paris
Saturday, August 15, 2015
I took my first plane ride at the age of twelve. I was with my family and we were flying down to Miami. It was also my mother’s first flight and she was scared witless. Let’s just say she didn’t make any attempt to allay my fears. In fact, I nearly lost an arm, but that’s a whole other story. Suffice it to say, I have flown many times since but never without trepidation.
My earliest jobs, ironically, were in the travel industry. I got to fly all over the world for free and get wined and dined by tourist agents who wanted me to recommend their locations to clients. So, off I went to London and Paris and Rome and Milan and Zurich and Brussels and Ephesus and Negril and Santorini and on and on and on.
I got to see lots of churches and museums and architectural marvels. I got to eat ant-covered goat meat in Montego Bay and listen to yodeling bus drivers in the Alps and watch beautiful young men dance in skirts at Greek tavernas. I traversed ice fields in the Canadian Rockies and went snorkeling in the nude in the Caribbean. I got pursued by land crabs on a deserted beach in the middle of the night in the Yucatan and smoked pot at the Fillmore East and climbed Mt. Monadnock in fashion boots. And it was all great fun (except for the time I got seasick on the way down to Tunisia – that was a drag).
All this to say, I’ve been places. I’ve done stuff.
For too much of my business life, I always seemed to be chasing a plane down the tarmac wearing high heels and carrying a garment bag that weighed more that I did. And a briefcase. And a purse. Thank God people weren’t flying around with laptops yet. (But then they were and I had something else to account for.)
For some reason, I was always singled out for special scrutiny by security guards, long before the TSA started harassing grandmas in wheelchairs and infants in carriers. And that sometimes made me miss my flight altogether.
I must’ve looked like Public Enemy Number One. Or maybe it was my dark, curly hair and aquiline profile that made people think I had evil intent. Whatever the reason, my co-workers often left me in the dust – and they were the reason for all the rush to begin with. I like to arrive at airports early so if something screws up, I can still make it to my destination. But, too often, I flew in a flock.
Nowadays, I hate plane travel altogether – although the TSA hasn’t bothered me lately. That makes me worry that I’ve lost my edge, but it does get me to my flights on time.
I frequently end up squeezed between two portly men or next to middle-aged women who have never flown before or restless babies. Every once in a while, I get lucky and get to sit next to someone fascinating, like a young bull rider heading out for his first rodeo. But, mostly, I’m less than thrilled with the occasional rough air and the delays and the stupid bags of peanuts I can’t figure out how to open. I become fidgety on flights that last longer than three hours. Guess that leaves Australia out. And, since I mostly fly out of Albuquerque, that leaves out 90 percent of the rest of the planet.
I do enjoy a good road trip. I especially loved the few trips taken in childhood, like the one where my grandmother threatened to throw up for around 300 miles on the way to Florida – and then finally did (my grandfather didn’t even make it out of New York without hurling); and the one where my brother and I tried to throw my mother into the Grand Canyon.
Keep in mind, I was traveling with a mother who insisted, “If you’ve seen one mountain, you’ve seen them all.” I wasn’t encouraged to marvel at the beauties of the world. But the personal dynamics on these road trips were priceless. My enduring images were my brother feeling up statues at Caesar’s Palace and my father flooring the Buick in a fit of rage on the way to Jackson Hole and not so much the St. Louis Gateway Arch or the Salvador Dali Museum in St. Petersburg.
I have taken great road trips with my husband. I enjoy seeing where the road takes us (even if we’ve already plotted out our course and made hotel arrangements in advance.) There are still interesting surprises along the way, like Basque restaurants in the Great Basin and getting stuck in the sand in the middle of the southeast Utah desert with a storm coming. Taking adventurous trips can test your resourcefulness, but they’re worth it – if you survive them.
I don’t need to travel with golf clubs or skis or skin diving gear or ice axes. I don’t give a damn about zip-lining (although flailing my way through a tropical rain forest sounds like it might be fun for a couple of hours) or climbing K2 (because I don’t want my nose to fall off from frostbite). All I need is meaningful encounters with people – and sometimes animals – that I care for.
My friends are now taking fabulous trips all over the world. Sometimes, they invite me to join them – but I don’t. Instead, I take tours of loved ones. I know people all over the place and tend to make them the primary reason for my journeys (although I typically want to stay in my own place). I would rather fly thousands of miles to chat with old friends face-to-face and touch-to-touch than drive six miles to see yet one more art gallery.
What can I tell you? I’m a relationship junkie. And people are my Paris.
Who doesn’t love to travel? I don’t. I hate packing. I hate the early morning scramble to get to the airport. I hate bouncing around in a metal tube for hours. I used to do a lot of it. But now that I’m older and less patient, I do less of it. When I do travel, the one thing that excites me is seeing people that I’ve enjoyed having in my life – and meeting new ones. That’s the one thing that keeps me on the road. That, and I like to escape the southwest during fire season. But, even still, you won’t find, “I must see Outer Mongolia” on my bucket list.
© Copyright 2017, Mindy Littman Holland. All rights reserved.