Sit down to eat, drink and travel

I don’t like to travel. Never have. That’s why they invented the Travel Channel. For me, traveling is like going to Colorado. Once you’ve seen one mountain you’ve essentially seen them all. That’s about a ten-minute experience and a life-long memory.

    I know people love to travel and good for them. Travel is a huge business world-wide. It just doesn’t interest everyone. I get worked up if I have to drive over to Yoder.

   I remember going to Colorado with lots of film one summer and when we returned I had rolls and rolls of film developed and when the prints came out it looked as if we had photographed the same mountain over and over. I was not amused.

   My rich sister just got back from Mexico. She told me she saw something earth-shaking and unique while avoiding drug cartels and serial murderers. She visited a salon where people in search of pedicures placed their feet in a bowl full of tiny fish. The fish are employed to bite the dead skin off feet. I realized this is one of the many reasons I am not rich. This sort of exercise is lost on me, so why have a bunch of cash to waste just for the opportunity to feed fish with my feet. Just consider the mind it required to come up with that practice. Somebody certainly has a lot of time on his hands. It’s no wonder Mexico is a homicidal wasteland.

    According to the Central Intelligence Agency, “Since 2007, Mexico's powerful drug-trafficking organizations have engaged in bloody feuding, resulting in tens of thousands of drug-related homicides.”

    That’s just the place I’d like to go. Bring your friends. Better yet, bring your enemies. If you ever wanted to bump someone off, what better way to do it? Invite your really aggravating neighbors to come along on your trip and once there invite them down for a pedicure and then let the fish and the cartels do your dirty work for you.

   I recently traveled to Chicago. I had no choice. My daughter ordered me to go up there. All I learned after four days was that Chicago taxis list a bunch of fees and fines on a little plastic list on the backseat for the passenger. The most interesting item was “Cab vomit cleanup fee $50.” I immediately wondered if I were traveling in one of Chicago’s premier vomit cabs. I would have asked the driver but he was listening to loud foreign music and talking on his cell phone and no doubt texting as well, by the haphazard way he was driving.

     While I was in Chicago I had the best hamburger on the planet at the Rosebud Restaurant, which is just up the street from The Drake Hotel. The Drake, by the way, has some old-fashioned stuff. In their Palm Court every afternoon they hold a Ladies Tea, and any day of the week women show up in their Sunday best to hang out with one another, drink tea and gobble pastries. I attended and seated myself at the back of the well-appointed room.

    Suddenly I was listening to “Somewhere over the Rainbow” played by a harpist in a sultry black gown who was performing in front of an enormous running fountain.  This was better than therapy or liquor. It was the sort of momentary escape that soothes the soul, except I remembered I was in Chicago, a city that breeds gangsters like rabbits. The thought made me glad I had picked a seat against a wall in the corner so as to observe any funny business. After all, to date Chicago has reported 2,361 people who have been shot, 408 of them killed.  Funny how none of the travel ads note such mind-numbing numbers.

    I’ve considered traveling to exotic places: the Great Wall of China, the Pyramids, the former Berlin Wall, and the Amazon. But the hassles always outweigh the rewards.   

    Anyway, anyone who travels these days carries a phone around just to show off their last trip. Like it or not, once the subject comes up, the person with the phone has your attention and shows you photo after photo of a desert: fine, beautiful, endless white sands, hundreds of photos that sure look a lot alike. And then once you’ve experienced every detail of their last trip, for dessert they want to show you cute cat photos they found on the internet (always an in-depth entertainment), or photos of their grandkids. Here’s where I get into lots of trouble. Show me a grandkid on your phone and I’ll usually provide a reaction. “Holy mackerel,” I might say, “Honestly, that kid’s actually uglier than the last one.” This is why I have few friends.

    I’m usually very adept at interrupting my visitors and getting out of there but I’ve not mastered a good smooth excuse to remove myself without being rude while enduring an endless display of travel photos. I’ve considered keeling over while screaming “call 911!”, but I know the ambulance folks have better things to do.

    The worst trip I ever had was aboard a Greyhound Bus. I worked in the baggage department of Greyhound, so my trips were discounted. I traveled to Newport, Rhode Island, to attend the famous jazz festival there. Since I sat at the back of the bus, I sucked in fumes all the way from New York to the festival, which gave me the worst headache of my life. After an hour or so, I returned to the bus depot to await the morning bus. I sat most of the night observing a prostitute and a sailor making eyes at one another. That proved to be better entertainment than the festival. Returning home, I swore off bus travel.

    There are really only two things I’d like to see. One is an oozing volcano rich in running lava; the other is the icebergs of the Antarctic. I would need to travel to see either one of them, but it’s not like either one is a cab ride away. They both require some heavy- duty travel; then there’s the passport, the reservations, the packing, the planning, the calling of everyone on the planet to help with last minute chores, parking the cat, getting cash, buying a camera phone, learning how to use it; and then, of course, there is the planning for the return. Many people make the mistake of coming back on the Sunday before they return to work. That’s bad business. You need wind-down time during which you can arrange your lava photos or pix of icebergs to stir the imaginations of your friends.

    Humans need a vacation after their vacation and most of us don’t have the time for that. We can’t wait to get back to work to wow our colleagues with photos or get to the family reunion to show off pictures of our latest adventure.

    I say stay home and avoid the hassles. Get a library card and check out a picture book and camp out in your easy chair. Chances are you won’t get arrested or shot. You might get a headache, but the trip is worth the price of admission. Anyway, that’s one of the many sacrifices you make when you travel.