Oh, the Places I Didn't Go

This week, among the many other places I didn't go, I didn't go back to Missouri.

I failed to disembark an Embraer-135 at Lambert-St. Louis International Airport, after a brief-yet-not-unpleasant layover at Charlotte Douglas. I did not rent a modest compact car from Hertz, and also did not not purchase any additional insurance after, not pausing for a moment to reflect on my long record of moderately safe driving and considerable knowledge of Missouri roads and thoroughfares, and not deciding I'd rather have the cash for the Burger King upstairs before hitting the road.

While not in Missouri, I didn't drive directly from the airport to join my pal L________ and his brothers at Johnson's Shut-Ins, for L________'s bachelor party. As I did not do this, I also did not glance wistfully at the hills and ridges carved by the two major rivers that converge on the St. Louis area, terrain vastly different than that of my new, coastal home. Nor did I pass my gaze over the landscape with the hesitant longing of a former lover who knows he has moved on to other commitments, as I settled not into the affordable comfort of my rental and cranked not the AC up to four.

No stop was made at Target to purchase a cheap tent and blanket for the weekend so I'd have someplace to sleep since camping gear must travel as checked luggage, and who wants to take a chance on that kind of thing, flying standby. There was no sitting in gridlock for two hours on I-270 as I waited to merge onto I-55 south, and no listening to All Things Considered on St. Louis Public Radio's NPR affiliate, KWMU to pass the time. I didn't call my wife to let her know I made it safe and sound long before any of this.

Upon not arriving at the state park campground in the early evening under clear skies, with the summer drone of crickets not chirping an endless insectoid fugue from the trees, I did not greet the groom-to-be and his brothers or make camp with some difficulty. Beer went undrunk by yours truly around a campfire that un-rememberable night, and jokes untold, and legs unmosquito-bitten. I did not wake the following morning to the smell of frying spam and the discovery that I'd erected my tent on a puzzlingly visible jagged stone and a large colony of ants.

Nor did any of the following occur with me there:

• Drinking a lot more beer
• Hitting one another with sticks
• Execution of dangerously stupid jumps off steep, slippery rocks
• Chest bumps, high fives, exclamations of "DUDE!", and bro hugs
• Meat -- burned and/or thrown and/or consumed
• Tests of strength
• Accidental property damage and the nonreportage thereof
• Improvised first aid
• Even more beer
• Another campfire
• Rare, tender stories of the heart
  

I did not return on Sunday, exhausted and bruised, yet strangely revitalized, and carrying the warm satisfaction that I had performed my duty as a friend and a groomsman, having taken part in one of the few rituals still sacred to men.

People Watching 1

Today I added blog description.

It's true. This is the saddest little travel blog. I like to think of it as brilliantly postmodern. Like Tristram Shandy, a gentleman who sets out to write his autobiography but becomes so mired in backstory that he never actually comes to the part where he's born, I seem to be writing a travel blog from the standpoint of one who does not travel.

I do get a chance to observe other people who are traveling. Typing this now in a Panera Bread on Broughton Street, I am surrounded by even more tourists than normal, when I am sitting in the Panera Bread on Abercorn. The Broughton Street Panera Bread is directly along the tourist pilgrimage route, smugly occupying a corner near some of those squares and statues you hear about when people talk about Savannah. A trolley just passed the window. Soon, a horse carriage will follow, and the scent of swiftly evaporating horse urine will sweeten the thick, sticky summer air.

In here now, a long table of college-age girls in silence, each poking a huge bowl of salad while stabbing intermittently at a cell phone keypad. No conversation to overhear. Sundresses. Sunglasses pushed high on foreheads.

Nearby, a man and a woman who look like they may be planning on jogging later. Track clothes. Also silent.

A father and daughter across the room, the girl wearing a nylon soccer warm-up suit with championship patches. The dad in a polo shirt.

Outside, one of those tricycle rickshaws, sinewy tan dude in t-shirt pedaling, two women with floppy straw hats in the cart.

In walks a tall, bearded man with an ascot and one of those chin strap jungle hats you can button on the side, followed by a girl with pink flip flops, a strapless dress, and severe tan lines, who carries lazily in one hand a large, serious-looking camera which she will likely be reporting as stolen to an indifferent clerk in the police station by the end of the day.

Better get going. I'm going to get a parking ticket here.

Found in Seatback

Two lined, folded sheets of paper torn out of a notebook or diary, covered with columns of names.

I thought on first recovering them from the aircraft seatback, where I found them tucked between the in-flight magazine and the barf bag, that they were the handiwork of a small girl, one who may have occupied herself during the dull, hour-long express flight by copying her own name over and over again, trying on her signature like an accessory. Stretching out her fingers in it like a long silk glove, tugging a little here and there.

Then I noticed the surety of the hand, the confident tails and swoops, the level hyphens, the solid footings -- functional, not experimental. This is a penmanship being worn, not tried on. Then the variations in the names caught my eye. Aha. The author is indeed puzzling something out, but it's not the script, it's the name.

I think this is an artifact left by an expectant mother, one sure of her faculties but a little understandably daunted by the role which she will soon assume. She is assembling a name for her baby, a girl -- another thing of which she is sure.

Makayla
Makayla Grace-Jenice
Makayla Jenice-Grace
Makayla Jenice-Olivia
Makayla Jenise-Olivia
Makayla Lyn-Olivia

and a few lines down, on the back, the hyphen vanishes --

Makayla Janice Olivia

-- the reappears

Makayla Grace-

.

She is playing with syllables, with meter, with sound, seeking the perfect tone --

Makayla Soria-Grace

-- and texture, dabbling with a set of colors for a bit --

Makayla Grace-Imani

-- then fearlessly abandoning it for different set, cautiously, with patience, with repetition --

M
Makenzi Joy-Noelle
Makenzi Joy-Noelle
Makenzi Christina-Joy

-- and finally tearing out two sheets that show her work and leaving them behind, stepping off the aircraft into a new place with its own puzzles to be worked out, as well as the ones she has carried with her.

Arrivals

A bit of quick catch-up with regard to who has dropped into Savannah/Hilton Head and said "hi" since we got here, while I'm thinking about it, because starting a week from now, we'll have non-stop visitors until fall.

Our very first drop-in (is it still a drop in if they have their own place to stay?) was L_________, a friend I made in 2002 while on TDY duty in Nantucket. When we saw her here she was fresh off the road, doing that long, languorous hump up I-95 all the way from Ft. Myers to Nantucket -- a whopping 1507 miles. We met for breakfast at the diner on the island and caught up there. Forgot to take a picture, though. Curses. It was very rushed, as she had to return to the road in the hopes of seeing her sister in D.C. by sundown, but it was great to see her, whom I have long thought of as a kindred spirit in travel. A wanderer, and me, a recovering wanderer.

Next there was B______, whom my wife and I know from our stint as STRIPES volunteers, and who surprised me with tales of the weineriffic new job that brought him and his new co-worker Kylie to Savannah for a week. We lunched at the fabled Mrs. Wilkes' Dining Room and traded travel stories during the hour and a half or so we had to wait in line out front.

His travel stories are way better than mine these days, by the way. Partly because he's actually traveling, and partly because of what he drives. And while sadly we never got a chance to meet up again so that I could tour the thing (and tour in it) I hear it is glorious. Maybe next time.

Also, -- and I just now noticed this -- B______ is tall.

Finally, the last of our recent visitors were M________ and his family. Again, forgot to get a photo. Curses. Anyway, they came down from PA, as they are wont to do every few years, it seems, to relax on the beach for a few days, and we were fortunate enough to catch them one night after my wife got off work. M________ is my wife's friend from high school, and a former coach, if I'm not mistaken, and a helluva good guy whom I liked instantly. I have met so few of my wife's friends that it is always an enlightening and wonderful experience when I find one. It's sort of like finding a long lost puzzle piece in the couch. We all chatted in the living room of the condo they rented until it got late, and we had to get going.

All in all, we've had some good visits here so far. The main drawback is our extremely impaired capacity to extend our hospitality, being guests ourselves. Thus, our meetings are truncated, and must largely be held in public venues like restaurants. We have no home to open up to our friends. Not yet, anyway.

They have been good sports about it, though. Maybe, when next we meet, we can meet better.

Urine for a Long Night with the Dogs

Got caught in the rain while on the beach path this evening -- a cool, grey misting that felt good on my sunburned back and shoulders. Now, it's like the world is breaking apart out there. I'm talking about thunder that shakes the whole house.

That house being the house of my in-laws, who are away for the week with my wife, having left me here to work my job and care for the family's pack of unruly hounds. Very hard to type this actually, as said hounds keep vaulting my arms off the keyboard from below with their snouts.

They don't like thunder, these dogs, and I have a pretty solid hunch there will be a lot of piss to mop up when I return from work late tonight. Partly because they're scared by thunder, and partly because that's par for the course anyway.

Other things they don't like:

• delivery people
• pedestrians
• neighbors
  
• cyclists
• rollerbladers
• children
• other dogs
• suitcases
• waste baskets
• sirens
• creaks/noises normally made by the house
• trucks
• sleeping later than 7 a.m., even though they doze all day
  
• each other
• being good
• walking in a straight line at a reasonable speed while leashed
• me, really

They are, hands down, the most unhappy and ill-behaved pack of curs I have known, and until my wife and her parents return, I am their alpha.

Shore is Complicated

As long as there are beaches, there will be people who long to make enjoying a day at them way more difficult than necessary.

Case in point, this trio and its paddle surfboard, which I was fortunate to behold today on the beach near my abode.

No, true reader, that's not some trick of the cellphone camera. The sea is indeed as calm as a box turtle on vicodin. Just a few foamy, three- or four-inch breakers gently lapping the sand, yet there they are, having a go of this, one in the water, one wielding an oar on the board, and one keeping an eye on things from the safety of dry land. It looked as if it combined all the fun parts of brooming the stoop with all the fun parts of standing up for a long time.

Comparatively speaking, though, these folks had a pretty relaxing day, next to the gals who made the mistake of renting this ... water tricycle ... thing:

I watched the spectacle for quite some time from my spread-out towel nearby, as I tried without success to finish Thoreau's Walden ... again.

No, I doubt Henry David would have much approved of the water tricycle, either.

They entered the water, the two girls and a fellow I'm guessing is their father, about a hundred yards south of me, pedal-paddling with gusto while the older gentleman bobbled along beside, not unlike the guy steadying the paddle surfboard mentioned above.

But wind and water currents prevailed this time, and the intrepid trike was carried far, far up the coast in the opposite direction, the girls pedaling frantically all the while. Soon they were just a cluster of red beads on the ocean, heading to Portugal.

At last, the older man appeared again on the beach, followed by the two girls, all on foot. They looked exhausted as they passed me on my towel, on their way to see the lifeguard. They must have told him that he could go and fetch his water tricycle, if he wanted it back, because, you know, to hell with it.

Sure enough, he abandoned his vigil -- and the forty or fifty people splashing in the water under his watch -- and hoofed it down the sand after the infernal vehicle.

And then there were these two, with their skimboards. Apologies for the shaky video. I didn't want to be caught.

None of these things -- the paddle surfboard, the water tricycle, or the skimboard -- looked even remotely fun to me today.

Thoreau wasn't that much fun, either. But sitting on the beach, feeling the wind and sand and sun, and hearing the low hiss of the water ... that kind of was.

A Flashback

In the summer of 2000, during my first luggage-chucking stint, I made a list.

The list had a bunch of places I wanted to see. The airline gave me free flights, and I intended to make the most of them. What was the point of throwing bags for an airline if I wasn't going to fly, right? Sure, growing big shoulders was great, but my goal was to put 'em to use hauling my own pack as often as possible. Most of the places on the list were landmarks from US history and Americana.

My list from that first summer (as closely as I can remember):

• Grand Canyon
• Liberty Bell
• Niagara Falls
• Space Needle
• Golden Gate Bridge
• That Huge Tree You Can Drive a Car Through
• Grauman's Chinese Theater
• Maine lobster (eat)
• Northern Lights (see)
• Great Sand Dunes

Of those, that summer I only knocked out the Liberty Bell, Niagara Falls, and the Golden Gate Bridge. It would take two subsequent summers of luggage tossing for me to hit the Space Needle, the Grand Canyon, the Chinese Theater, and the lobster. The "huge tree you can drive a car through" lost some of its appeal to me, once I stopped to consider the symbolism of the thing, but I did see some huge trees in Yosemite a couple of summers later.

The Northern Lights and the Great Sand Dunes, I have yet to visit.

When I think back to that summer, a decade ago, I remember what a frenzy of travel that was, and how many things I saw that weren't on my list.

I saw Chitzen Itza. I went to see my godfather in New Hampshire (and got lobster there -- pretty close to Maine). I went to Paris. Almost every week found me someplace different, squeaking through the airline system on standby, occupying available seats as much as I could, subsisting on little packets of pretzels and dixie cups of cola. I got a lot of souvenir tshirts. I got lost all over the place. I got some kind of stomach thing in Mexico, but it went away.

For good, I hope ....

Anyway, now here I am, ten years older, and back at the airport chucking bags again. I have a brand-new backpack.

I'm thinking about where I should go.