By the time you read this I will have dragged my weary bones, trailing luggage and pill bottles on a trip. This will involve trains, planes and automobiles, bright lights and big cities. Ordinarily, such a journey would be expected to provoke feelings of excitement and anticipation. But the decline of the West and of myself have reached the point that the predominate feeling is dread.
Will the back and knees ruin the whole expensive endeavor for me and my fellow travelers, turning the voyage into a debacle on the order of the early explorers of Africa or those racing to reach the North and South Poles? Could happen. And if it does happen, will my companions behave like Eskimos do with infirm elders and set me adrift on an ice floe? Or, in this case, ditch me on a traffic island in the middle of a frantic foreign boulevard?
And even if the parts work well enough to let me stand upright long enough to look at a painting in a museum or a statue in a park or to sit without back spasms long enough to eat a fancy meal, what about the jihadis?
They hijack planes, stab people on trains, blow up bistros and discos and musical venues, incinerate travelers in airport and train stations and even demolish inanimate ancient artifacts. In short, lions and tigers and bears, oh my!
What’s an aging, but still curious, wreck to do? Keep calm and carry on is one technique. Travelling only by car and only from one Podunk to another or to uninhabited regions where no one but Zika-carrying mosquitos and coyotes care to go is another. Bur trading metaphoric lions, tigers and bears for real ones hardly seems like an advance.
The only real travel question these days is, should I stay or should I go? Heart says go. Head and joints say, are you nuts? The aging Cervantes actually solved this problem. As an adventurous, foolish youth he sailed off to war, often a quixotic thing to do. In his case, it didn’t end well.
He was with the Spanish fleet at the Battle of Lepanto, but was captured afterwards by Ottoman pirates and held captive in Algiers for five long years until ransomed by his parents. In middle age, he was a Madrid tax collector until thrown in prison for another three years for accounting irregularities. This suggests imaginative writers should have someone less imaginative do the bookkeeping.
No surprise that in his later years Cervantes sat quietly by his home fires and scribbled. One of the things he scribbled was this: “Journey all over the universe in a map, without the expense and fatigue of traveling, without suffering the inconveniences of heat, cold, hunger and thirst.”
As the kids might say, “You got that right, Miguel.” And now with Google Maps there’s even less excuse for risky travel follies. But off I will go.
If we don’t meet again, Happy Trails to you. But don’t count on it. Pack your Imodium and stick some extra cash in your sock for when the ATM refuses to recognize your card. Or stay in Podunk where you belong. And don’t say I didn’t warn you.