This blog has absolutely nothing to do with the fact that I will be turning 60 in May of this new year.
Yes, I'm lying.
I've been a journalist in some form or another (newspaper, radio, television, non-fiction books, and on the web) for almost forty years. I was a blogger when these formats were still quaintly known as 'weblogs'. That makes me ancient, even on the Internet.
I am also a recovering aviophobe. I no longer have to get plastered on vodka before the plane leaves the ground. Age, in this instance, is a good thing for it definitely has something to do with my fear of flying vanishing in the jet stream. These days, there is a lot worse to worry about.
No longer being an airborne basket case means my husband Rodney doesn't mind inviting me along on his business trips. We've been married over 30 years, but my tagging along has only been a recent phenomenon, one I have eagerly embraced. In fact, it was on one of our recent journeys together that I came up with the idea for this blog.
We were enjoying a drink at our hotel in Udaipur, India. Yes, that is a picture of the hotel we stayed in. Incredible, I know. Traveling with Rodney (who took the picture) definitely has its privileges.
The hotel was mostly empty as the world economy has hit the tourist industry in India hard. Nevertheless, we met, as happens so often to Canadians, two fellow countrymen. They were life partners--from Ottawa--who were on an extended tour of India and points beyond. After exchanging horror stories of the diabolical bureaucracy involved in obtaining a travel visa for India, we learned that one of the men had a brain tumour last year. Luckily, it was not fatal but soon after his recovery they prepared to leave Canada for their planned journey. Their friends were aghast. They went ahead anyway for they had heard too many horror stories of a different kind: people who put off experiences they dreamed about (for this is not just about travel) until it was too late.
Their story inspired me to not wait any longer in starting this blog about my own life's journeys both literally and figuratively. It's amazing what one can excavate from memory at thirty-five thousand feet, especially sober. Now, to record it all for posterity.
Enjoy.
Yes, I'm lying.
I've been a journalist in some form or another (newspaper, radio, television, non-fiction books, and on the web) for almost forty years. I was a blogger when these formats were still quaintly known as 'weblogs'. That makes me ancient, even on the Internet.
I am also a recovering aviophobe. I no longer have to get plastered on vodka before the plane leaves the ground. Age, in this instance, is a good thing for it definitely has something to do with my fear of flying vanishing in the jet stream. These days, there is a lot worse to worry about.
No longer being an airborne basket case means my husband Rodney doesn't mind inviting me along on his business trips. We've been married over 30 years, but my tagging along has only been a recent phenomenon, one I have eagerly embraced. In fact, it was on one of our recent journeys together that I came up with the idea for this blog.
We were enjoying a drink at our hotel in Udaipur, India. Yes, that is a picture of the hotel we stayed in. Incredible, I know. Traveling with Rodney (who took the picture) definitely has its privileges.
The hotel was mostly empty as the world economy has hit the tourist industry in India hard. Nevertheless, we met, as happens so often to Canadians, two fellow countrymen. They were life partners--from Ottawa--who were on an extended tour of India and points beyond. After exchanging horror stories of the diabolical bureaucracy involved in obtaining a travel visa for India, we learned that one of the men had a brain tumour last year. Luckily, it was not fatal but soon after his recovery they prepared to leave Canada for their planned journey. Their friends were aghast. They went ahead anyway for they had heard too many horror stories of a different kind: people who put off experiences they dreamed about (for this is not just about travel) until it was too late.
Their story inspired me to not wait any longer in starting this blog about my own life's journeys both literally and figuratively. It's amazing what one can excavate from memory at thirty-five thousand feet, especially sober. Now, to record it all for posterity.
Enjoy.
I will therefore live vicariously through you as I have teens and a 9 year old, meaning that I'm grounded for most of the time. Respect for conquering your air phobia - I'm still terrible and I can't even drink because I get sick with the turbulence which has nasty consequences.
ReplyDeleteLooking forward to this blog.
Thanks for commenting! My first one :-) Part of 'conquering' my air phobia also involved the age of my kids. They are adults now in their 20s and don't need their mom too much. Never thought I would sit back and enjoy a take-off but if I know I'm going somewhere cool, I don't seem to mind. Still don't like turbulence though....but who does? Anyway, thanks for posting!
ReplyDeleteI remember well Robin first traveling with her small children, and being very careful to explain to them that there was 'children's juice' and 'mommy's juice', so they wouldn't be knocking back the straight vodka on the tarmac. The reason I have waited impatiently for Robin to get to sharing with us her incredible history as the desperate traveler is that I have never known anyone with worse travel karma than Robin. Just a bit of historical context so you'll realize our author is not a fruitcake, a lush, a lunatic or a sob sister....no, Robin is a strong, experienced, intelligent, articulate, worldly woman. Who is overcome and engulfed by incredible and inexplicable events the minute she leaves her door. Every time. These events are almost always completely, side-splittingly hilarious and if they had happened to anyone else, you'd swear they were fiction. Not so with Robin...each tale, more amazing than the last, is completely 100% true. So, up, up and away with one of the world's great storytellers, as she takes us on her fantastic journeys around this crazy planet.
ReplyDeleteThanks Mare! Rodney would agree with you 100 % as he wishes he could bottle my perverse travel karma and sell it! On our recent trip to India it was especially on display...Beginning with our flight out of Vancouver to Toronto where mine was the only monitor on the plane that didn't work (honest :-), to the snoring, fat, 'little' person sitting beside me between Delhi and Munich (can't make this up), to the pile up of buses at Charles de Gaulle airport on the way home that delayed our boarding by an hour (while we sat, suffocating in the bus prompting me to announce to the crowd: "Hey, is it because we're all Canadians here that everyone is being so damn polite?")..Rodney wanted the pilot to announce that any screw up would be thanks to my being on board! Will try to remember half of the strange and weird stuff that has happened to me but it may be an impossible task!
ReplyDeleteRobin - I am glad I am not the only one! My husband always jokes that I offended the gods of travel and restaurants at some point in my life. I now work on the basis that 'if it can go wrong it will go wrong'.
ReplyDelete