Old Shoes - New Trip

Adventure addict. Animal lover. Book reader and bookseller. Untrained cook. Bootlegger. SlowTraveller. Wife. Mother. Grandmother. Poor speller.

You can spend the better part of your life being satisfied with summer vacations to visit family, taking your kids to Disney or DC, and the occasional beach vacation get-away. Then an extraordinary opportunity presents itself, and you're in full-blown addiction.

For me that opportunity came in the winter of 1994. A family member bought a partnership in a vacation house in Italy...sight unseen. She called me to tell me about it and to suggest that we go check it out for my birthday. We flew into FCO, picked up a rental car at the airport, and headed straight into the central Umbrian countryside. I drove, she navigated. I feel in love. In love with rural Italy and more importantly with travelling.

A travel addiction develops rapidly and its grip is unbreakable. Each trip fuels the hunger for another. Two weeks makes you crave three weeks. Three weeks is no longer good enough when you know that a month is a possibility. Ninty of the items on your "101 Things" list are trips. Your collection of DK travel guides and your atlases of other countries take center stage on your desk. Your Google search history is filled with discount airfare web sites. You spend hours every week on the SlowTalk message boards. You start thinking of the people you 'meet' there as dear friends.

You begin to view your bank accounts as your travel fund. Every dollar you spend on anything but, feels like a dollar misspent.

And that brings me to the name of this blog. It could have been "Old Cars - New Trip" or "Old Dishwasher - New Trip". We've made the conscious decision to invest in travel instead of things.

My next entry will be a recap of our travel history since 1994. Then I'll get on with the business of documenting our planning for our next major trip - The month of June 2007 to Spain and Portugal.

Since the 1994 epiphany that converted me from myopic American to aspiring World Citizen, I've traveled to Italy (9 times), Mexico, Belize, Costa Rica, & Canada. More about all of those in my next entry.

First I want to state clearly that I'm not a US hater or apologist. I don't go to other countries with a Canadian flag on my backpack, trying to pretend I'm not an American. I'm proud of my heritage and grateful for my country. I think I see it clearly in all its strength and weakness.

So, I must give this vast and beautiful country its share of my travelogue.

I'm in awe of the Roman acquaducts. And I think their architects would be in awe of the Hoover Dam today.
Zip-lining through Costa Rican cloud forests causes a wonderful sensory overload. And a hike through the Ozark Mountains is like swimming in the essence of nature.
Snorkling Belize's Shark Ray alley is a great experience, but how does it compare to the awe of cruising alongside a pod of whales off the New England coast...or quietly boating through the Everglades' mangrove swamps in search of the shy Manatee?

I could go on, but I'd be getting too heavy handed with my arguments. What I'm trying to say is, that we American's sometimes romanticize the natural and man-made wonders of other countries without realizing that we live in the middle of 3.5 million square miles of some pretty amazing stuff.

I wish we'd be a little less apologetic and a little more proud. I wish we'd collectively as a country, put a bit more effort in sharing the core and the heart of this country with the world instead of just our commerce and politics.

I wish that, for every American tourist who visits Florence and stares with mouth agap at Brunelleschi's Dome, an Italian visitor would marvel at the complex engineering and soaring simplicity of the Gateway Arch here in St. Louis.

Our Travels in the US:

One of our missions as a couple is to visit and hike every national park in this country and stay in every historic park lodge. We have been taking these trips for our anniversary every year, and are a long way from completing our mission.

So far, we've visited Yosemite, Mount Rainier, Mount Hood, Crater Lake, Oregon Caves, and Yellowstone in the west. In those parks we have enjoyed The Ahawahne, Paradise Inn, Timberline Lodge, Oregon Caves Chateau, Crater Lake Lodge, and Old Faithful Inn. That leaves four lodges in the Bryce/Zion/Grand Canyon areas and all five lodges in the Glacier area.

Not all of our national parks have these wonderful lodges, however. We don't let the lack of a historic lodge keep us away. We've enjoyed Olympic National Park and the Hoe Rainforest, Sequoia and Kings Canyon National Parks, Wind Cave, Grand Teton, Badlands, Hot Springs in Arkansas, Acadia National Park, & the Everglades.

We've dozens more to go, and haven't even started talking about the state parks!

While raising our daughters we did all the traditional educational trips. Chicago for the museums, New York for the Statue of Liberty, California for Disney Land, Florida for Disney World, & Washington DC, Boston, Philly for history.

And of course, the regular trips to Grandma's house for holidays.

What we didn't do, to our everlasting regret, is take them outside the borders of this country. I'm talking about when they were children and impressionable. Sure, they did the high school and college semester abroad programs. But, think of the experiences they missed seeing through the eyes of young children.

That is why my Christmas presents this year for my four grandsons are passports.

In a few days, I will be attending another one of those all day management workshops. At my age, and after years of participating and leading this sort of thing, I'm more than a little jaded.

Every few years a new management guru comes out with a book and starts promoting his/her revolutionary new principles of teamwork, productivity, blah, blah, blah.

As a former marketing consultant, I admit that I participated in the madness. I've lead more than my share of silly workshops where 6 people were bound together in plastic wrap and forced to work together to get themselves from one side of a room to the other. And, who can forget the classic plank walking exercise?

I thought I had left all of that behind four years ago. But, now I find myself in my "I-retired-but-my-husband-decided-to-retire-too-so-now-I'm-working-again-for-the-insurance-since-we-are-too-young-for-Medicare" career.

Fast forward to next week. As the Community Relations Manager for a bookstore, my job is to build the institutional & corporate portion of our store's business. Next week, our store manager and I will be at this all day meeting. In advance of the meeting, each of the participants must write and submit their "Six Word Memoir". I'm sure the intention is for us to come up with a bunch of catchy business/sales oriented phrases that will inspire all of us to get out there and sell, sell, sell.

But, I decided to be honest. If they want to call it a "Memoir" then I think it needs to be something I'd be proud to have on my tombstone (If I were going to have a tombstone, that is. Which I'm not, but that is an entirely different blog post.)

Hence, the title of this blog entry - "Get a Passport, Gain the World".

I'm not expecting that my "Six-Word Memoir" will be singled out for praise and discussion by the group leaders next week.