Road Food

This weekend my LDF and I hit the road to visit her family for Easter weekend.  It wasn't too long a trip as these things go, but by the time we were traveling, we realized we would need a snack to see us through lunchtime.  We stopped and got biscuits at a drive-through.  For some reason there was a noisome odor lingering near the biscuit place, but I think it was mere coincidence because the biscuits were delicious.  We could tell they were going to be good when we saw the grease stains on the brown paper bag.  The best road food is the kind of stuff that you would never eat on a daily basis, but it's perfect for traveling.  Maybe it's an ancestral urge in our cells to stock up fat reserves for the journey ahead.  Maybe traveling makes us long somewhere deep down for home and stability, and eating comfort food is a way to achieve that.  Maybe going to foreign surroundings pulls us away from a sense of our mortality, and the feeling of our arteries clogging is a reassuring reminder.  Maybe the heavy food is ballast that literally helps ground us during the uncertainty of physical transition.

Or maybe it's just downright tasty.

Packing a Suitcase

Packing a suitcase can be very satisfying when you know just what you want to take and everything fits in neatly.  Unfortunately, that's almost never the case.  I tend to get myself all worked up when packing for a trip because I'm always starting later than I should have, usually when I've got three other things I'd rather be doing, or things that I need to get done ASAP.  Agitated as I am, I then grow even more indecisive than usual, agonizing over which shirts to bring or how many extra pairs of socks constitute reasonable backup, and how many are unnecessary weight.  I usually find that I've forgotten to wash a garment that would be the perfect thing to bring, or have forgotten to buy something I'll need, like dental floss.  Typically I'll try for a while to pack, lay out piles of stuff, then take a break to play guitar, eat ice cream, watch TV, or go bother my housemates.  Then it's back to packing.  Eventually it always gets done, but by that time I'm utterly exhausted and unable to properly get excited about the traveling I'm about to do.  It's really too bad, but all the frustration and anxiety goes away the next day as soon as I'm on the road, boarding the plane, or lifting anchor for new adventures!

Postcards

I didn't send any postcards today, but I thought of how great it feels to receive them, and to send them to friends and family when you're traveling.  I was reminded how important it is to stay in touch, and how hard it is to do that consistently with people I don't see all the time.  I also love the kitsch of postcards.  Because there's not much room on the back to write, the picture you choose for the front becomes an integral part of your message.  You can be sassy, sincere, goofy, informative, or pretty much any way you please.  It's totally great to get an email from someone you haven't talked to in a long time, but there's something extra special about getting a physical postcard in the mail.