Planes, Trains and Automobiles

Aaaahhhh... home again. Thanks for allowing me a few hours to sleep and spend with Nate before banging your silverware on the table demanding a post (ahem... T-Man). Oh, silly me, you didn’t know I was going anywhere. That’s because I didn’t have time to blog before I left, der her. I don’t know why you want me to post, I’m just going to bitch and brag. I’ll try to be humble, but it is me. I get upset, well, not upset, disgusted would probably be a better word, when someone tries to one up me and fails so miserably that it would feel so good to slam their face in it and twist the back of their head, making sure that humble pie embeds itself quite nicely in their nostrils, creases of their eyes, and their hair back to their ears. But I’m a nice person. (Shut up) Stress is defined as not beating the shit out of someone who truly deserves it. If you can bring me to the point I sneer, I’m pretty close to wanting to beat the shit out of you as well. I felt that way on Friday as my nemesis T-Bird was ferrying me to the airport. Oh pardon, I was ferrying myself to the airport and she came along to drive the gas out of my car, I’m sorry, I meant drive my car home and half-assedly watch my cats. (I don’t really care that "half-assedly" is not a word) Part of me wants to hurt her in a bad way. The other part of me loves her dearly. I think. Anyway, since she’s flown to *ahem* then she felt she could tell me all about traveling and security checkpoints and big, busy airports, as though I have no knowledge thereof. I guess she thought she could impress me by having flown through Chicago, or O’Hare (ORD) as the case may be. Out of the 20 busiest airports in the world, I have flown out of or through seven of them, including Atlanta-Hartsfield, which has surpassed O’Hare as the busiest airport by over 8 million flights. Guess had she known that then flying through O’Hare wouldn’t seem like such a big deal. Or rather trying to one up me by flying through O’Hare wouldn’t have seemed like the route to go. For the first time in a long time, I really just wanted to punch her, physically and verbally. And I still may do one or the other or both. I had to get my ammunition together first. Ammunition as in statistics. I’ve traveled a good bit in my 34 ½ years. I decided using my handy dandy photographic memory, air miles calculator, Mapquest, and common sense to do a preliminary assessment of the number of miles I have traveled in my lifetime. When doing the assessment I stuck to vacations, road trips, etc. Nothing I would ordinarily do, such as the 120 mile round trip to see my parents. So, here’s the numbers (approximated as accurately as possible): 36,037 - air 23,285 - car 2,122 - train 960 - bus 500 - bicycle 400 - foot 53 - boat 63,357 Total I know a lady who makes those numbers look laughable. She loves Thailand and goes back three or four times a year and then squeezes in a trip or two to other places, like Australia and European destinations not to mention traveling in the US. Comparatively speaking, I’m a light weight. When I hit 100,000... eh, maybe I’ll feel like I’ve been somewhere. However, if you’ve traveled considerably less than my two and a half times around the Earth (as in one cross-country flight), then you may want to reconsider telling me you can pack better than I can and what security checkpoints are like, delayed flights, cramped seating, nausea inducing, slamming into the door of the bathroom, drink bouncing off the table turbulence, knocking your head into the seat in front of you landings, electrical storm take offs...and please, please... don’t tell me about the red eye. Don’t tell me about sitting in your seat, the sciatic nerve in your right hip irritated, your sinuses throbbing, and the idiot behind you with the overhead light on the entire trip, while the flight attendants almost break your knee hurtling their crash cart down the aisle to serve a cup of water and a bag of pretzels. I’ve been there. I know you haven’t. (Not you, you know who I mean.) Not everyone can survive a subway fire in Paris, bounce their head off a brick wall in a bike wreck outside of Heidelberg, be sniffed by bomb dogs in Brussels, see both Statues of Liberty, the Lorelei, Notre Dame, and the Luftbruecke (and things that no longer exist - like East Germany and the Berlin Wall). Not everyone can eat gumbo and beignets in New Orleans, barbeque in Kansas City, Tex-Mex in Houston, and strip steak in New York. Not everyone can walk in the footsteps of mad kings, knights, and ladies, nor meet ambassadors and Senators. Not everyone can plan trips to Poland and the Czech Republic and other places in Europe. Not everyone can travel to 25 of these great United States and seven countries. Then again... if you want something bad enough and you know how to budget and split a penny four ways, anything is possible. Everyone around here wants to know... where are you getting all of this money to travel??? Maybe you’re wondering too. Well, I fucking work for it. That is the epitome of rudeness. To ask me where I’m getting my money to travel. I work for my money. My mom said, "You’re always telling me how poor you are...." Well mums, when I’m forking out $400 down payments for summer camp, I don’t guess I can complain about being poor, since it just so happens I was able to have three paychecks that month. Luck... luck has a lot to do with it. Work... hard work has a lot to do with it. But its more than that. It’s the desire. People can do incredible things when they’re passionate about something. I’m pretty passionate about living before I die. Death will find me, whether its on a plane or a train or in an automobile... sitting on my front porch in a rocking chair... or watching the sun rise over a volcano... where ever death finds me, I hope its tired from chasing me. So.... T-Bird wants all those things, but she wants them given to her. People, nothing is free, except peace of mind, and that’s negotiable. Work hard, be passionate, be frugal... live well. Hey, has anyone seen my tornado chasing brochure?