On the Road

Full backpack, full duffle.  Extra tote bag.  Portable comforts of home while traveling along with some comforts not at arm's lengths at home.  It took nearly two days driving to arrive in Nashville, my first venture anywhere in Tennessee.  Very pleasant hotel with a treadmill more sophisticated than mine.  A breakfast buffet well above the economy hotel grab-and-go that I am used to.  And a pool, a slightly chilly experience for late summer in a southern destination.  Don't have these at home.  

Offsetting this, at home I have a fully functional laptop, cell phone, and most importantly car with readily accessible service the few times an urgency arises.  I have parking spaces where I need them.  My home bathrooms have every imaginable comfort.  Cars and electronics are designed to be portable over great distances.  The securities of home are not.

Travel serves as an adventure, exchanging some of the familiar with uncertainty, at the price of hassle.  Our travel industry has deprived us of some of this.  The hotels advertised at each exit have franchises at the exits I take to go home.  Fast food logos prompt our minds to their ads we saw on TV, The Convenience stores still seem regional.  My WaWa was replaced by a slightly different sometimes better Sheetz in the mid-Atlantic or by Weigel's which I first sampled in Tennessee.  They have a similar format but differ a bit on coffee dispensers and what type of travel food they will assemble for you.

Destinations always have something that prompts the trip.  Sometimes better weather.  For me, unique attractions and aspects of geography.  The people are recognizably distributed differently.  The Grand Ole Opry entertained with music I would not seek out at home, yet dominated by white Christian Nationalists who stay far more under the radar at home.

And within the recognizable populations, there are universities, some rather grand, that create their own diverse enclaves.

At the hotel, my car has a secure place to rest overnight.  The internet access could be better.  But I also have country music, a different expression of patriotism and religion, Halls of Fame for people who I don't think are that famous but have excelled in their niches, some history, some living vestiges of that history.  Worth the automotive and electronic inconveniences.