Life on the Non Road --- Days 14/86 & 87

Walks: Hood  (ciwt likes it)

Distances: 3.5 miles

And then there's that trip to London.  Maybe she mentioned, in January she bought her (refundable) ticket ticket there for ten days at the beginning of May.  Somehow this year, May is much earlier than usual or something and Ciwt is beginning to consider canceling or postponing.  

Those of you who have followed CIWT over the years may remember that she is one of the maybe 100 other people in America who doesn't love to travel.  If you go on the internet and read about people who don't like to travel, all you encounter is bands of posters who consider that horrifying, shameful, pathetic, close minded and more - all negative.  

For Ciwt though travel is anxiety producing from beginning to end.  Oh, except for the thinking of the trip and booking her plans part which is exhilerating and seeing friends and art when she gets there.  Those things aside, there are leaving her cats, the airplane rides both ways, and the many unexpected situations, basically the vast diminishment of personal control.  For instance there was her friend who went on a river cruise with her husband, but at some point the river ran dry.  So they had to reinvent their trip right in the middle of it.  And actually they ended up running into Ciwt's brother in Vienna where he and his wife had been diverted from a completely different trip because of international miscommunication about arrival dates.

Travel lovers probably roll easily with these unforeseen events, maybe pat themselves on the back for their resourcefulness and thoroughly enjoy the substitute place.  Not Ciwt. First of all, she generally travels alone, and she has no interest in being stranded in the middle of a foreign river and having to slap together some solution for getting back to her cats - in a foreign language with foreign currency.  She can do these things, but internally she is not rolling with them and congratulating herself for what a terrific traveler she is - while also grooving on being in this foreign place.  She's just thinking "How soon before this is over.?"

Such is the life on the road for we small band of non-travelers.  So, perhaps her readers can understand why she is reconsidering that London trip.  And maybe they are also thinking "How pathetic, shameful, closeminded, etc. of Ciwt."