I’m preparing for a trip to Washington DC and it’s stirring memories of the past. Sometimes I think the pre-trip planning is as much fun as the actual trip. It’s been well over thirty years since I’ve been there—the last time was back in 1991.
There's twenty year old me in my Z Cavaricci jeans standing in The National Mall at night, sunburnt and smiling after a full day of sightseeing with my ex girlfriend. Back then the list of things I was blissfully naive about was probably a mile long. My hairline was lower, and my arms free of tattoos. The future seemed thousands of miles away and wide-open. Neither of us had any concrete ideas of what we wanted out of life. Even back then I knew I wanted to write but didn't have the faintest clue how I was going to make it happen. She had begun talking about, maybe, wanting to go to school to be a flight attendant but was undecided.
My ex had relatives who owned a house on the ocean in Maryland and we stayed with them for a few days and drove her tiny 1986 Chevy Cavalier down to DC for the day. Unfortunately, this is the only picture I have left from that trip but I still have plenty of memories. I remember standing on her relative's deck high atop a hill over a bay and spotting dozens of stingrays swimming. Her family was lovely, so welcoming and generous to open up their home to us.
Her and I traveled—alot. Spring Break in Florida multiple times, all over Ohio, a trip to New York City, Maryland, DC. Those early travel experiences opened me up to the delights of it all and I often wonder if I would have ended up enjoying and having the courage to travel internationally as much as I have later in life without those experiences. Probably not.
It would be four more years before I would even take my first flight. We drove everywhere. This was pre-internet, before navigation, mobile phones, cigarette smoke was still in the air pretty much everywhere. Back then, there was no travel planning for us. We were spontaneous, lived in the moment, and just assumed it would all work out—sometimes it did, other times it didn't.
Fast forward thirty-five years, and I do mean fast forward because it's gone by in a blink, and here I am planning to return.
The world has changed so much since 1991. At fifty-five, and now with well over a hundred thousand miles of traveling under my belt, I see the value of planning. There's so much joy to be found in the daydreaming and the anticipation. Maybe it's because after this much sand has passed through our hour glass we value time a whole lot more. The present day me wants to wring as much as I can out of each trip and each year I have left.
Building a good travel itinerary at this age is a lot like crafting a recipe. It's important to keep the proper balance—to leave nooks a crannies in the itinerary to allow the spontaneity to bubble up and seep through. This, in my experience, is where the magic lives and the great memories tend to arise from.
So for now I'm off to fine-tune the plan. To see how many more herbs and spices I can work into the recipe. It might even be fun to find that exact spot on The National Mall that photo was taken in 1991 and try to recreate it but there's not much wisdom in revisiting the ghosts of the past for very long, especially when that ghost is us.
If I'm lucky, maybe in thirty years time I'll look back on the photos of this next trip to DC with the same kind of nostalgia and fond memories. That's weird to even think about but I know the years will fly by in a blink. For now, I'm just going to try my absolute best to enjoy the present.
All for now. Make this a wonderful day.