It's true, all those places Johnny Cash rattles off in the song are places I've been too. I've been in every major city in the US, most of the lower Canadian provinces, and of course the odd other country. I've visited every US state except Alaska, Idaho, and Vermont. Sometimes people ask me what it's like to travel so much.
What I like about all the traveling I've done:
- Meeting new people
- Learning to place people by their "accent"
- First Class
- Good books that make long plane rides shorter
- Getting upgraded to Premium Class rental cars
- Beaches
- Moutains
- Going to rodeos, baseball, football, or basketball games in whatever city I'm in
- The occasional dinner in a place like Ruth's Chris or Morton's or other highbrow steak houses
- Wandering around the Vegas Strip
- Nice hotel rooms, especially suites
- Good days at work
- Trying local cuisine
- Visiting local museums, parks, malls, attractions, etc.
- Getting travel-worn, jet-lagged
- Flight delays and cancellations
- 3 hours of sleep before the big morning meeting
- Fleabag hotels
- Loneliness
- Missing kids' events
- Spending very little time with my family
- Inability to create or sustain close friendships
- Cramped seats in coach and on puddle-jumpers
- Having my knees bruised when the passenger in front of me reclines hard into them
- Sullen, uncaring airline employees
- Dinner alone in a restaurant
- Getting sick away from home
- No irons in the hotel for my rumpled clothes
- Missed flights, missed connections
- Rental cars breaking down
- Botched airline, hotel, and rental car reservations
First, people everywhere are, at their core, pretty much the same. No matter where I go, I find mostly nice, mostly friendly folks who aren't really all that different from everybody else. Sure, New Yorkers are the rudest, Southern Californians and San Franciscans the strangest, Midwesterners the most taciturn, Texans the friendliest, Southeasterners the most laid back and easygoing, Indians the most family and heritage-oriented (but not very motivated), and Canadians the most, hmm, hockey-obsessed? But everyone is the same in their desire to make the best lives they can for themselves and their families.
Second, of all the places I've visited, my home is still where I consider one of the best places anywhere to live and raise kids. I find that the really attractive places, where the weather is great and there's plenty to see and do, have been overwhelmed by so many people who choose to live there that they're too crowded for me to be comfortable. But the most rural areas tend to be so poor that they have very little to offer in family life and education for the children. So I'm convinced that you can't do much better, in terms of a place that's affordable, relatively safe, with OK schools, but with plenty to do (at least in Indy), than right where I live in Indiana. Or my hometown in another part of Indiana.
Well, gotta go. At least tonight I have some people to meet for dinner, so I don't have to hang out alone in my hotel working and watching television.
2 comments:
i thought about pressing assault charges against the guy on the plane back from florida who smacked me in the head 4 times with his enormous roll-on while trying to get it into the overhead bin. planes are too small. excessively profit-motivated airlines have driven the entire industry to the sardine concept, and i'm tired of it. i'd be willing to pay 10-20% more in order to have that much more space on a plane.
In the past 20 years, the air travel experience has declined more than any other business that serves the public, in my opinion. I tend to think the airlines going bankrupt are getting what they deserve for losing sight of what counts - their customers.
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