Come Fly with Me

When I was little, an occasional Sunday afternoon activity was going just a couple of miles down the road to the Greater Buffalo International Airport to watch the planes take off and land.  I was seventeen when I took my first flight.  It was the day after graduation.   A friend and I flew on a propeller plane from Buffalo to Schenectady, using our newly acquired student cards which enabled us to fly standby for half the fare.  We were headed off to work at Camp Pinnacle for two months.  The next 3 summers I was a maid at a Howard Johnson’s across from the airport.

My first significant vacation was in 1975 when a friend and I flew from O’Hare to San Francisco early on a Saturday morning.  We stayed at the St. Francis, quite a step up from HoJo, then took a bus tour down the coast Tuesday through Friday, met her family in LA on Saturday, and flew back to Chicago on Sunday afternoon.  I still use the bottle from the wine we bought on the homebound plane as a vase.

Last week I was back in southern California to visit friends.  In between those trips, I have been in all 50 states and traveled some abroad, both for pleasure and work.  There were months where I spent more time commuting on airplanes than in cars.  I was a frequent flyer, built up miles and hotel reward points so that some vacations were ‘free.’  A friend won an all-expenses paid week in Cancun and graciously took me.  When I won a trip to Las Vegas, I took her.  Another friend took me to my fiftieth state (New Mexico) for my sixtieth birthday.

You can see that I’ve been blessed with travel and have friends who go to wonderful places for pleasure, work, and volunteering.  Anyway, here are some musings about travel through the decades.

• People used to dress up to travel, and for some reason, when we’re dressed up, we are nicer to each other.
• Travel is still a big deal, but in a different way than it used to be.  Then, it was special.  It’s great that today’s young people have an expectation that travel will be part of their norm.  What is more the big deal about travel these days is the process of it – from making our own reservations through all of the necessary security issues to everything on the plane being smaller while the people and their bags are bigger.
• The casualness and modern fabrics have made travel lighter.
• Electronics has made travel, like much of life, isolating.   While everyone on the plane or train or bus has a common experience in getting from point A to point B, we no longer share the journey.
• Who you are traveling with can be more important than the places you visit.
• Children still need their afternoon nap regardless of the fact that they are at Disneyland.
• Cities have their downtowns that they want to show off and their outskirts they do not want you to see or remember.
• The better you know yourself, the better your trip will be.
• I’ve done the ‘everything planned’ and the ‘let’s take it as we go’ trips.  Both have their merits, although now I prefer surprise adventures.
• I’m thankful to be traveling safe, but irritated at inconvenience.
• As long as the bed is comfortable and there is hot water, I’ll overlook a lot.

What would you add to this list?

Happy Trails!

Marilyn