Browsing CategoryAdventure

From an empty room to the open road

Every noise I make echoes off the empty walls in this now foreign place that was once my beloved bedroom. Four things hang in my closet, and the last of the bags and boxes wait to be loaded into my car (help?) I guess it’s really over. After five wonderful years, my apartment, roommate, and I are separating. It feels like a divorce, the end of an era. Was this movie yours or mine? You can keep the cheese grater, I’ll take the curtains. It all sounds silly when we stop and listen to ourselves. We have grown up together in…

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“It’s a pity we have to work”

The Toronto skyline faded behind us as our tour boat, the Harbour Star, motored out from Queen’s Quay. I had anticipated this ride to be a bit over-touristy, but it was kind of fantastic.  A very animated young redhead narrated the tour. She spoke about the history and the current happenings in and around the harbour and the islands. On such a hot summer day, it was hard to imagine any part of this harbour being frozen over as she had mentioned. We learned of the rivalries between the local yacht clubs (oh, life gets so complicated sometimes…) and even got to witness…

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Love where you live

Home is where the heart is…right? Well what if your heart is all over the world? Then would home be wherever your stuff is? Maybe you don’t have stuff, or are traveling with all of it. So would home be where your family lives? Sigh. Who knows. I suspect I have not found home yet; haven’t found one place where my heart is. But I fear that is an impossible feat, as I have dispersed little fractions of my heart on six different continents. As I walked the streets of Toronto and the Daniels signage blatantly bawled my name, I…

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Coolest. Plane. Ever.

I am flying. I am sitting in the comfort of my fancy, black leather seat, laptop open, and writing this blog. I arrived at the airport a few hours earlier for the second time in a month. I know, I know, I love this place. Besides, after such a long separation from travel we have a lot of catching up to do. I walked into Terminal 3 of Los Angeles Airport to meet a scene quite unlike that of last month’s. There were flowers in vases, fancy carpets, and cute pink mood lighting. Beyonce’s Sweet Dreams was playing in the background.…

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Ciao, Puerto Rico

It’s over? Am I really leaving all this behind?  Every time I leave a country it feels like a break up. Knowing that for now, this country and I can’t be together brings about an overwhelming sense of sadness.  I feel the pain of separation creeping up on me as the plane leaves my newest love behind. I am overrun with thoughts of how we can rebuild our love–of how quickly I can get back to rekindle this relationship.  The first week back home is miserable. All I can think about is that country. All I can talk about is…

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Beauty at the Bio Bay

It was pouring down rain.  Not exactly ideal weather for kayaking on a bioluminescent bay in the pitch black darkness of the night. But José, the driver of the tour bus kept reassuring us that it wasn’t raining in Fajardo. After all, it was one hour from San Juan on another part of the island, and his people at the tour company had told him it was not raining there.  One hour later, the bus having splashed through rather thick traffic most of the way, we arrived. And it was raining.  But considering that he had provided some laughs and a cooler…

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A flight at the end of the tunnel

Aah, the airport. The bookends of all my greatest travel stories. I am finally here, finally feeling the familiar rush of the traveling I have so missed. The crowded, always too narrow walkways are strewn with people trying to figure out where to go. Inevitably, the charming, old couple who appears to have never traveled before, always gets in line right in front of me, asking for advice and wanting to know if they are in the right place. I oblige them with a smile, after all, this is all part of the experience. I watch as lovers part and exchange…

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Life is good again

I finally did it. I opened my wallet, logged on to cheaptickets.com, arranged my flight, and clicked the beautiful blue ‘CONFIRM’ button that would restore my happiness in an instant. I am going to Puerto Rico! The separation between travel and I has been bleak. There were many long nights spent lying awake dreaming of travel, dreaming of what I would do when we saw each other again. I imagined myself in the airport and what I’d be wearing when we met. I thought about travel every day. There were moments of watching others in the ‘honeymoon’ phase of their…

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On the beaten path

I said I was setting out to explore my backyard, and I did. I finally went somewhere! Well I guess 385 miles to San Francisco is more like my very extended backyard, but it’s still in my state! Half shrouded in fog and almost disappearing completely in parts, the Golden Gate Bridge really is incredible (and not in the opening scene of Full House kind of incredible…the real kind). It. Is. Cold. Even though it’s just 52 degrees this marine air makes it feel much chillier as the damp breeze pinches your cheeks and frizzes your hair. Somehow, it’s still so…

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I will travel again

Stage 3: Affirmations.I will travel again. I will travel again. I will travel again. Now that the void left in my life from lack of traveling has reached a whole new level of huge, I have resorted to positive affirmations. Another stage in this disease and I am trying to cope. Maybe it will help, you know, self-fulfilling prophecy, “The Secret”…whatever. If I imagine myself with my toes in the sand somewhere far away, I will get there. At least I have recently managed to gain some perspective. I had the horror of learning that a colleague (a pre-travel-bug-employment-sabotage colleague…

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