Concluding Vacation

This time a short getaway.  Leave Monday, return Friday.  And not very far, less than three hours of mostly highway driving.  One major misadventure, but mostly what times away strive to be.  Relocations from home.  Experiences not readily duplicated at home.  Escapes from the routines of home., 

Not a resort or major international attraction this time, yet still with features of a vacation.  We stayed at a hotel, a very ordinary chain.   Not the most expensive or luxurious, but not No Frills either.  Ample parking, Wi-Fi included in the fee.  I would not select a site, at least in the USA, that did not have these if I had a car in my possession, either mine or a rental.  I've come to expect a pool, in fact, use the presence of a pool as a filter on my online hotel searches, if I will be staying more than three days.  This one had a hot tub as well.  Breakfast buffets have become an expectation of family-style chain operations.  Some more elaborate than others.  I have mixed feelings about these.  I like the convenience, particularly as it allows my wife and me to keep different sleeping schedules.  Cruise ship buffets are over the top.  Motels trade fancy or imaginative for convenience.  Coffee, pastry, bagel, and egg will get me started.  Though I do not include breakfast in my hotel search filters.  Often I prefer to go out to a diner that serves breakfast, one with a menu and waitress, one with people who live nearby opting to have their own breakfast there.  Breakfasts are rarely expensive.  Pillows are usually fluffier than mine, and more of them.  Mattresses often firmer.  And activity more tiring.  I rarely experience serious insomnia at these places.

Vacation is partly about being someplace different, but also doing different things.  Over an adult lifetime, I've had the good fortune to vary the experience, though I can certainly understand other people who work all year to get their two weeks of fishing, camping, or golf as their annual destination.  I've been to resorts, geological wonders, cities of international or historical importance, cruise ships with days at sea dedicated to indulgence, and theme parks that attract visitors of global representation. Each selection unique, while I am the same person wherever my travels take me.  I seek out the new, whether from the buffet at a casino, the selection of on-tap drafts, an exclusive store to gawk at items far above budget, or a National Park creature that I wish I could pet.

Wonder does not always appear on the travel brochure.  On my current trip to a bedroom enclave outside my Nation's Capital, my car takes me through many habitats where people live and work.  Despite the proximity to one of the most cosmopolitan centers in the world, what I found just beyond common commuting distance was the preservation of agricultural land.  I found a lot of repurposing.  Historical buildings in the center of town made into restaurants, surrounded by a rim of upscale homes purchased by people of means and imagination for their potential.  Then a rim of where people like me work, shop, and attend school.  Not a lot of churches considering the population density.  And then a rim of homes which I found on Zillow for about $2.2M.  Lots of them.  Enough to make me wonder how so many people earned or inherited so much more money than I was able to generate.  Vacations tend to make me wonder how my life might have turned out differently had I lived there.  Could I be an islander, a pioneer, an immigrant who will never return to the starting point, a person who sails the ocean while the family sees him a few times a year?  At my hotel, native Spanish speakers dominate the staff.  It would be unthinkable to withhold courtesy or kindness from anyone I've met, though not unthinkable to vote for people to represent me who might be a bit harsh to those we know only by a TV news site presence.

I'm probably more polite, perhaps more considerate, as the guest of another place than I am at home.  I know the people who serve me depend on financial tips, so as a prosperous person, I make sure the waitresses and hotel housekeepers get recognized for what they have done on my behalf. 

Still, my travel is limited to a few excursions a year, mostly minor, occasionally major.  Airports are visited infrequently, maybe once a year since I retired.  A lot of people have their travel as an imposition, dependent on airport lounges and bars that I only gawk at, working on their laptops as I gaze downward over farms and towns.  My travel has become recreational, theirs is not.  My destinations never fail to generate some measure of wonder.  Even the small excursions generate neighborhoods to drive through, history to reconstruct, somebody's imagination to create the menus that I read.  And in retirement, I do this in the right amount.  I chance to be my Best Me, the Best Guest I can be.