I'm sitting in a hotel bar in Dallas. I'm overcome with an overwhelming sense of deja vu; I've been here before you see. Yes, specifically in this bar more than once, but this is a sense of familiarity both more broad and simultaneously more general than that. As I stare at the sweat on my bottle of Shiner, I see the ghosts of bottles innumerable, of hotels across this country; indeed, across this world. I see myself checking in as one more anonymous soul embarking upon travels of varying importance, critical in their own sense at that particular moment to myself and presumably to the others that I interact with, albeit briefly.
The song in my head is an odd mix of Piano Man by Billy Joel, All I Wanna Do by Sheryl Crow, Turn The Page by Seger, and Once In A Lifetime by the Talking Heads. It's a song of sorrow and of hope, of loneliness and of pride, of boredom and of complexity. It tells the tale of a wanderer; always seeking, perhaps even occasionally finding. I think briefly of how I need to write this song; perhaps I can get my friend Dave of The New Ben Franklins to help me to get it out.
I hear the murmur of the crowd around me in this bar and I know that we share a commonality. I am alone, but I am not lonely. The braggadocio, the sorrow, the hopefulness, the victories, the failures, the shared sense of being a stranger in a strange land is strong here, on this evening, in this city, in this bar, at this moment.
I think about my life up to this point, specifically as it relates to travel. I remember the first time that I left Colorado. I went by myself to St. Louis to see my Grandmother when I was maybe 7 or 8, I got to sit the cockpit and watch some dial count down to zero before I was sent to my seat. The dude next to me traded me his cookie for my salad. It was pretty damn cool, really.
After that, I can count on one hand the number of times that I traveled anywhere out of state before I was 18. Another trip to St, Louis, a couple of trips to Virginia, a couple of drives to Iowa that I guess technically count. That's it. I remember my Dad taking precisely one week off my entire childhood; that was when we moved from one subdivision in Aurora to another subdivision in Aurora. He drove me to school on my last day of sixth grade, which was a pretty big deal.
The first adult vacation I ever took was to Las Vegas. Blew. My. Mind. I'd never seen anything like it before, and really never since. After that, every year I'd try to go back until we ultimately moved there, which ended up being a big mistake that is probably better suited for another blog during another time of different introspection.
I never went to college. I didn't see the point at the time, and indeed I was so burned out on school by the time High School was done that I was ready to chuck it all one semester before graduation. It's only been maybe the last five years or so that I've not been plagued by nightmares of not graduating, so I guess maybe somewhere deep down I realized how close I'd been to throwing it all away. That is a long winded interlude into how I got a job when I was 23 or so that resulted in me traveling to small little towns in Colorado once every other month or so. Buena Vista is the only one that really sticks out to me after all these years although I do remember driving through Fowler, Colorado and feeling, well, something I guess. I couldn't technically even rent a car at that point, but there I was, driving rental cars, staying in motels, eating at Hardees, and kinda enjoying myself.
From there, my job took me, well, not everywhere, but certainly across this country. I remember driving through Salt Lake City up to Pocatello and Boise Idaho and eating at an amazing steak house. In one of many trips to Philly, there was the Palm Frond Incident, which involved a drunk lady, a guy and a girl who may or may not have been having an affair, the drunk lady getting said lady's room key accidentally, and said drunk lady, myself, and another friend jumping into the lady's room at 2 in the morning only to find it completely empty. I've eaten sandwiches and drank a six pack on the beach in Maui every night for two weeks. I have gotten hopelessly lost in New Jersey. I've stood in the middle of a crowd in Delhi, fully a head taller than anyone around me and felt more out of my element than ever before. I have stood before a live lava flow in Hawaii after hiking five miles into a National Park with only a flashlight that I bought from a vendor that died halfway back to the car. I have taken my wife to Hawaii completely for free on the miles and points that I have earned. I've snorkeled in the Bahamas and in the Virgin Islands. I've swam with dolphins. I've fished off the coast of the Florida Keys with my Father In Law and lamented the massive thing that was on the end of my line that got away. I've stayed in the tower at the Hotel Colorado. I've stayed at more Disney properties in Florida than I knew existed. I have eaten jerk chicken and gotten more sick that I have ever been in my life in Jamaica. I've seen the sunrise at Hollywood Beach after taking a redeye into Ft. Lauderdale. I've seen AC/DC in Houston, Bon Jovi in Chicago (and Vegas, and in Philly and in Minneapolis), Motley Crue and Van Halen in Denver when I didn't live there. I have never seen a sunny day in Seattle despite having been there at least half a dozen times,
I never aspired to any of this. I remember being a kid playing with my Dad's flowchart stencils and accounting journals and wanting to be an Office Guy. Well, that or an Army Guy, but I certainly never thought I'd like leave the state if I did that. I like to think that I have travel down to a science, but it still always makes me just a little uneasy. I've missed more than a few flights in my day, on more than one occasion I've had mishaps with my hotel rooms; one of which resulted in me finding another room at 1 in the morning and getting comped a suite the following two nights at the original hotel, complete with a complimentary bottle of champagne. I've been dead ass broke more than a few times hoping that my credit card would go through and I've discovered a couple of hundred bucks in my pocket that I didn't know I had once.
I readily read the stories of greater adventurers than I. I read the tales of Tony James Slater with not a small amount of envy; I'm torn as to whether to let my wife read his books for fear that she might get some ideas. (If you've not read Tony's work, you really should. For a self professed idiot, he's quite simply brilliant).
I sit here in this bar in Dallas, and I know that I have been here before. How I got here, I haven't a clue. Call it luck, call it desperation, call it fortuitous timing, call it fate.
I call it my life, and I am damn glad to have lived it even as I know that I've not the faintest idea of how I got here. And I look forward to the adventures in my future (Cabo is coming up next month, and there are rumors of Peru next year).
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