I was meeting a new colleague at a conference this past July and mentioned that Ellie and I had this Baltic trip planned for fall. “A trip of a lifetime?”, she asked. I was embarrassed, but had to answer honestly, “no”. We both blurted “just another trip” and laughed. An embarrassment of riches is what I have had.
Since just after we first met, with or without much or any money Ellie and I seized our chances to hit the road: 1979- in the American Rambler- through South and Northeast, traveling on proceeds of paint fumes breathed in Evanston working on Henry’s house, in ‘81 bumming through Europe on cash salted away from paper routes and “Oregon Fair Share” canvassing, then later- various trips of 3-8 weeks after I began my 40-year stretch of continuous employment in Labor.
For me, enabling these departures involved careful stewardship of “paid time off” and hard bargaining with bosses who didn’t like but tolerated my periodic sabbaticals.
We did, nevertheless, get out and about, off to Mexico, car camping around the American West, also, literally, around the world in 2004, to Beijing, Ulan Bator, Hövsgöl Nur, Moscow, Istanbul and Athens. In 2007 we went with Mike Carney to the Netherlands and 2014 and 2020 we joined Maggie in Praha and ventured on our own or together to Hungary, Poland and the nations of former Yugoslavia.
This is our first big trip since my “retirement.” Our conditions have improved. With any luck, and willing hearts and feet, we’ll travel again!
On the cheap, another trip, and then another, for me, a joy to be doing it and sharing it with my beloved traveling partner, figuring out each strange place, what it takes to get by and learning how others do the same.