Fragile – This Side Up – Handle with Care

The other night as I was watching The Tourist (yes, more Angelina Jolie), after recently watching The American, all three Jason Bourne movies, inhaling a series of books about a globe-trotting FBI agent, and before watching the new Casino Royale, I realized something. I really like stories set in exotic locales, with characters who can traverse them with ease.  Maybe because I’ll never be one of those people, or go to any of those places if I can help it.

Where's the speedboat? The explosions?

I admire traveled people.  There’s something about a traveled girl who speaks multiple languages that I find instantly attractive.  But me… I’d just as soon stay at home with my books.  You’d think that I’d want to be out, hoping to meet a charming, mysterious, well-traveled, multilingual young lady on a train.  But I don’t.  Actually, I once did meet a charming, mysterious, well-traveled, multilingual young lady on a bus (we still keep in touch via Facebook), but that’s another story for perhaps another time.

But no, I don’t travel well. In my family, if we couldn’t drive there, we weren’t going.  And that’s very much my mindset, which is going to make a trip to old-world Italy difficult.  At least there’s always Disneyworld, right?  Honestly, it was traveling that makes up my fondest memories of our family vacations, not the destinations.  The books we listened to, the conversations with my sister, the music I discovered, the roads we traveled—all those memories from the bench seat in a Ford Aeorstar.

Not pictured - A Ford Aeorstar

I’ve flown to Los Angelis and back twice now.  Being herded like cattle by (justifiably) paranoid security into a cramped (and I’m a small guy) and kinda dirty space with a bunch strangers can’t compare with my fond memories of family travel.  Traveling by train is better, except in some strange way I miss being herded around.  There seems to be more room for me to get lost.

Perhaps I just need to travel more often. People who do it regularly don’t seem to mind it all.  The more you do anything the easier it gets, I suppose.  Until then, at least I still have Angelina Jolie movies.