Thoughts About Travel

Mark is traveling this week. He does business travel once in a while - under duress - and gets to go to such wonderful places as Detroit and Phoenix (in July!) I get to stay home with the cats and binge on cookies. A few comments come to mind about traveling...

Hotels provide shampoo and other 'condiments' so we seldom bother taking that heavy, potentially leaky stuff along ourselves, and count on using what is available. The last time we were in a hotel they provided 'herbal' shampoo that was made with a rosemary scent. We smelled like Italian breadsticks all day. Next time we go there (for the wedding - a warning to any of you who are attending!) we will bring our own. Made us just a little nervous walking around in the woods that morning...

Mark generally prefers to collect his own clothes etc. to take on a trip but I do his actual packing for him. He is the only person I've even seen whose shirt-folding technique results in a sphere instead of something flat and wrinkle-free for a suitcase. I'm not really sure how it happens, but the end result isn't pretty.

We have taken our cats with us on various of our roadtrips - mostly because we don't have anyone to take care of them at home while we are gone. Our little Frik has more miles on him than most people do. He has been from Oregon to California, to Tucson (several times) to Kentucky, Washington, back out to South Dakota and down to Tucson again. He hates it. He might hate getting left at home alone worse, but it's hard to know. Cats are notoriously bad decision-makers, a good reason in itself to not take them along. In spite of repeated admonitions to him to 'stay with Mama' when we travel he once wandered out of a hotel room into the hallway, and nonchalantly headed for the elevator. Like he owned the place and knew just where he was going. Yikes! It still elicits nightmares for both of us. What floor might he have gotten off on? And how long would it have been before he found the kitchen? (Likely not long. That's our boy.)

When Todd was little we took the ferry from Wrangell to visit Juneau a few times. It was always exciting to go to the 'big city' where they had things like 'alligators' where you stepped through a door that opened from the middle out to the edges and pushed a button, making the door close again, and when it opened you were somewhere else. On one of those trips we had taken some Ovaltine (powered chocolate milk mix, if you don't know) along in a sippy cup with a lid so that we could add it to some restaurant milk - just a little added insurance that something would be 'right and usual' on the trip - and somehow we managed to leave the cup on the table instead of getting it back home with us. Todd told everyone he met for many months afterwards that "I lost my orange cup in Juneau." I still use the phrase as an indicator that a trip didn't go all that well. Others don't seem to 'get it' when I say it any better than they did when Todd reported the fact all those years ago.

So as Mark heads off to Detroit today I am thinking about orange cups and hoping that he manages to bring his home.