For Some of Us, the “Travel Bug” is a Nasty Virus

Years ago, while visiting my mother in Syracuse, we suggested taking her to a movie.  “It’s too far,” she said, “too far” being Baldwinsville, about a 12-minute car ride.  Perhaps there’s some of that in my genes, because growing up I always thought going to Rochester to see my Dad’s family, an “arduous” eighty miles away, was reserved only for very special occasions. 

I know why some people love to travel.  Yet whenever I contemplate a trip longer than a few hundred miles or a week, here’s what it looks like to me.  The preparation is hours of deciding where, making reservations for hotels/airlines, and figuring out who will take care of things back home. Then there are the few days before, deciding what to pack (and later realizing what I should have packed), making sure the car is in good shape and finding the best route to take or, even worse, figuring out how to get to and from the airport, if connection times between flights are sufficient (in an airport I’ve never been to before) and worrying about being squeezed into a middle seat next to someone who decided to park his carry-on under my seat so he could spread his legs out.

When I grew up airline passengers wore dresses, suits and ties, sat in comfortable seats and were attended to by people who brought drinks and food – all included in the ticket price.  That’s a nostalgic view and I acknowledge air travel is much safer now.  But here’s a contemporary experience.  In flying home from Paris through Frankfort, we sat on the plane at the gate (with the cabin door closed, of course) for 90 minutes waiting for it to be de-iced.  Then the pilot, in the nicest voice he could muster, told us the flight crew exceeded their time on duty and the flight was cancelled.  Six hours of standing-in-line followed in order to schedule a flight the next day, and, as we reached the front of the line we were told that the ticket agents were themselves now off-duty and to come back tomorrow.  Lufthansa is not my favorite airline.

I’ll admit it. I have stayed in some nice hotels. Yet I’ve learned that an “ocean view” room and an “ocean front room” are quite different, the former meaning you can see a sliver of water in the far distance, across a massive parking lot.  I’ve learned that having the ice machine nearby is not so nice when you it drops frozen cubes with a loud bang from its dispenser all night (assuming you can sleep through the elevator “ping” every time its doors open).  I’ve also learned that everything in the room beyond the bed, bathroom and minimal TV is an extra charge – the lovely little drinks and snacks, the pay-per-view movies, an internet speed that means your email will not take 5 minutes to send, the safe and the daily “resort fee” which enables the hotel to act like your room charge is lower than it really is.  

I know I sound like an ungrateful curmudgeon, especially to those unable to travel. I do admit I’ve seen some beautiful places - Acadia National Park’s “thunder hole”; Sausalito’s art galleries; the hauntingly beautiful Cliffs of Mohr on Ireland’s Dingle Peninsula; and Central Park is, well, Central Park. I also know it’s the only way to see family members that for some reason won’t live down the street from me.  But then there was the Vatican tour, amazing until we left the Sistine Chapel and found ourselves in the middle of what seemed like a million school children who our guide did not know would be visiting that day.  It took an hour to go 200 feet to escape the crowd, and that included getting pushed by three nuns. 

This was all before COVID made me wonder which of the thousands of people in airports who see no reason to wear a mask are going to give me the gift or their virus and which makes the 99 percent of people without one look at my N-95 like I’m crazy or just misinformed about the disease.  Being on the airplane is supposed to be safer, except nobody there wears a mask either and I have to eat by lifting my mask just enough to sneak a small morsel of food (which of course I had to bring myself) into my half-open mouth, all without my mask coming off.

I know lots of people (actually most of the people I know, including the one I live with) who don’t see travel this way at all.  For them, the “travel bug” is joyous and they have long since gained immunity against its downsides.  They love getting away, having new adventures in distant lands and, yes, even grappling with the unexpected.  I admire them.  In fact, I wish I was like them.  It may be partly my age – or maybe my mother’s view is carried in my genes.

Photo Credit: oshuaworoniecki-pixabay.com