From the Manager – On Travel

I’ll apologize in advance that this blog may be a bit more rant-like than most of my blogs, but this is what’s predominantly in my head at the moment after an unplanned for trip.

Unlike many of my friends, travel is not something I’m very big on. Sure, I’m interested in seeing new places once in a while, but for the most part, I’m perfectly happy to stay home (or at least in the general vicinity thereof), at least now that I’ve found home. Growing up, I absolutely wanted to travel, all the time, because I wanted out of where I grew up. Now, I’m settled in, happy where I am, and very content to avoid the pain that comes with other climates.

Travel is…challenging for me. I don’t like my routines messed with, and travel guarantees that. Oddly, it’s something the medications I’m on (none of which have anything to do with that and all of which are about allergies, asthma, or cholesterol) are apparently helpful for. I traveled back to where I grew up this past weekend on a short notice trip and it’s the most diligent I’ve been about taking meds at the various times of day I take them, even swinging back by my hotel to take the before dinner meds I regularly forget at home, because it was familiar and calming to do.

Additionally, I’m a big guy – on a good spine day I’m a bit over 6’4” and currently around 250 lbs. I haven’t found the car I’m comfortable in for long periods of time, I’m straight up wider at the shoulders than any seat on a plane I can afford (which wouldn’t be a big deal if the seats had any kind of space on the sides of them), and I have the spine and knee issues that are relatively common to my height (some of them a little earlier than they usually set in). The simple fact is, even though people my size aren’t exactly rare, the world isn’t designed for us. And it’s hard to blame the world for that for the most part. It’s not really designed for folks at the opposite extreme either – human bodies vary too much to make many things that can accommodate all of us. 

On a plane, the best I can do is try to get an aisle seat or window seat – the aisle seat gives me extra space in one direction and the window seat (if I get lucky with it) lets me settle my shoulder into the area of the window and lean my head against the wall of the plane, where I’ll nap if I can manage that – of course, most airlines at this point charge extra for the window seats because they work to get every cent possible they can out of you, while shrinking your seats so they can add more to charge more people. And even with either of those options, on a full plane I’m fighting off claustrophobic attacks because there’s too many people with nowhere to go.

In a car, I can at least travel in parts and hit rest stops and the like to stretch, though I’m not exactly patient and would rather drive straight through. But a car isn’t going to get me to Ireland or Japan, two places I’d actually like to visit (though I have size-related concerns about visiting Japan and weather-related concerns about Ireland, but at least I’ve got a cane and knee braces for Ireland). 

In a lack of a decent way of ending this because my brain has decided to freeze at that last paragraph, I’ll just throw this out there – What do y’all think of traveling? What kind of challenges do you run into (if any) and how do you handle them? What places would you love to go if there were no associated challenges?