Random Thoughts from a Restless Mind

Dr. Darrell White's Personal Blog

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Bucket List Trips: Sunday musings…5/26/19

Anyone who has read any of my stuff will remember my angst filled year of turning 50, memorialize in “The Hard Turn at Mile Marker 49”. Last week, for whatever reason, it dawned on me that next January I will turn 60. No, this is not another whiny, self-absorbed description of my angst at that rather non-interesting discovery (of course, pretty much every entry here is, at the very least, somewhat self-absorbed). 2009 was a rather challenging year for me in many respects, but 2019 is actually pretty OK, thank you very much. I’m actually enjoying the vast majority of the minutes of my regular day-to-day life, way too much so to allow the thought of finishing another decade to intrude on the fun.

Beth and I have been talking quite a bit over the last little while about Bucket List travel. Hers, at least insofar as I understand it, is really pretty straightforward and logical; Beth would like to visit North Dakota and Alaska and thereby check off all 50 states in her lifetime of travel, and she would like to visit Scandinavia since that part of Europe is also a hole in her travelogue. We’ve talked about that quite a bit and have at least a rudimentary plan starting to take shape. I, on the other hand, have spent so little time even considering that I might maybe even HAVE a Bucket List of trips that I am literally and figuratively all over the map. Since my darling wife really and truly would like me to find happiness and joy around my 60th, my random and thus far totally unfocused “planning” is once again causing her to stress over my silly birthday.

Again, so not fair.

In my defense there are a couple of structural and logistical issues (I hesitate to call them barriers) that are involved in any discussion of travel around my birthday. To begin with, it’s in January. That would be winter in the northern hemisphere, and we have largely lost our love for wintery activity. We seek to leave our cold, dark and dank hometown each winter in search of blue sky sunny.  Sounds like a layup you might say. All of those classic south of the equator Bucket List destinations like Australia and New Zealand, Costa Rica and Belize are just there for the pickin’. Machu Pichu here we come, right? But I feel about these pretty much the way I feel about almost every other possible draft choice in the Bucket List lottery. They’d all be cool and all, but none of them make my heart skip a beat.

Our little slice of Heaven at Casa Blanco is simply lovely from June 1st until well after Labor Day. Treating myself to staycations of varying lengths has been one of the nicest gifts I’ve been able to give myself (might actually be a Bucket List item checked off). Taking trips away from home in the summer in many ways makes little sense since each day at home is like a tiny vacation during the summer. And yet there are destinations and trips that do interest me quite a bit that make all the sense in the world during the summer and the fall. I’ve never been to Italy or the French countryside. For 35 years or so I have been carrying on a passionate love affair with all things wine. The vineyards and wineries of the American Pacific Northwest have long been on my target list.

Is it still a milestone Bucket List birthday trip if you take it 9 months after your birthday?

My old college buddy John Starr has been on a fun little quest he has labels “Drinks Around the World”, regaling us all on Facebook with pictures of all manner of libations consumed in places both high and low. It looks like he’s having an absolute blast, and I will freely admit to more than a touch of envy when I see each of his Captain’s Log Entries from the field. This morning over our weekly bacon indulgence Beth suggested shorter but much more frequent, smaller trips, perhaps tied to late-published airline fare sales. As I’ve mulled this over (and over, and over…) this morning perhaps this idea (and John’s inspiration) is where my Bucket List actually comes to life.

In my mind I’m a great traveler. Even my choice in watches reflects this romantic notion of myself: I only buy dual or multi-timezone watches. You know, because at any moment I might up and hop on a plane and travel several time zones away and need to know what time it is at home. Silly, I know, but still, it always makes me smile when I look down at the face of a GMT watch and think about that. Maybe that’s the answer. Maybe it’s the act of travel and the freedom to be able to travel that’s actually the Bucket List item I am supposed to be checking off as I turn 60.

Yes, I think that might be it. I suppose it’s such a cliche that it’s almost painful, but my Bucket List may not be about the destinations at all, but about the journeys.

I’ll see you next week…

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