Travelogue
Travel. Especially long trips. Trips of more than two days. Always wears me out. It’s a litany of bathrooms with no room for dopp kits, showers with no water pressure, digging in bags for clothes, sketchy meals, and hit or miss beds. It was true in my youth as a business traveler and true now as a retired traveler. It’s the part that people who don’t travel miss or fail to understand. The pleasure of travel comes with a price and you have to be willing to pay it.
But when you do pay it, you get to ride a tram to the top of a mountain and see a sunset. You get to sit in a hot spring mineral bath and be happy you’re alive. You get to see the headwaters of the Rio Grande iced over. You get to drive through tall mountain passes to isolated mining towns. You get to hear your friends make music, as though they’re singing just for you.
There are times these days, however, when I think I just can’t pay the price anymore, partly because the price used to be shared by my companion, my late wife. But a solitary life is still a life and there’s still a world to see. And even though I might be nearing the end of my journey through it, I might as well get out and see what the world has to offer an old man while I’m still fit and ready to fiddle.