I love being home so why would I consider taking a trip?

I have always been a homebody and I’m approaching an age when it’s increasingly easier to stay home. I love playing with the dogs, we live in a quiet neighborhood, and we have internet. What more could I ask for?

My first job out of college had me traveling every week, never at home for over a year. I thought it’d be fun, and I’d see stuff and meet people, but it was a drag. Airports. Hotels. Late dinners. No exercise.

I wriggled out of that job but the next one ended up almost as bad, driving to a customer site 100 miles away. I could either stay at a hotel in Lapeer, Michigan, or drive back to Belleville, getting home too late to do anything but eat and sleep.

Thus I have a dread of travel. And this week, I’m traveling. For fun.

I just don’t want it to be like that trip we made to England.

It’s rude of me to complain about a trip “abroad,” but it was a series of challenges that I, a homebody, was ill-equipped to handle.

I booked the trip with a travel agent, using the last of my savings. It turned out that the specific agent had been sacked because she hadn’t actually booked any of dozens of arranged trips. When I called about getting our tickets (this was 1990, so paper tickets!) someone else took the call, explained the problem and that we had no reservations.

Luckily, I’d paid with a check (more paper!) and we worked out the travel with the agency. Phew, I thought. At least we got the problem with this trip over early.

Being a silly person from Ohio, I didn’t understand train travel in England, and how much simpler things would have been without learning to drive a car with the steering wheel on the wrong side while also keeping the car on the wrong side of the road. Two wrongs don’t make a right, but as I learned trying to get the car on the highway, three lefts do make a right!

Once we were on the M-something or other, the car broke down and we had to wait for hours to get a repair and get going again. Driving was a lousy choice to begin with.

Whenever I watch The Bourne Identity, and I see Jason Bourne outsmarting the police, the secret police, and the traffic police—like when he drives up a flight of stairs to elude his pursuers—I think, “That’s who I want driving me around Europe.”

We’d arranged lodging with a network of Bed and Breakfast inns. Again, it was all done on paper, and we were issued coupons. We had to call to reserve a room each day. I suppose it’s better than arriving at night and asking someone where the local youth hostel is, but it was stressful for this homebody. Two of the lodgings were fine. Two were bonkers, like they didn’t want our business.

We had to cut our trip a day short because of a family emergency back in Ohio, which triggered a panic attack trying to figure out the arrangements. We rushed home only for my wife to come down with food poisoning as soon as we arrived.

Obviously, being a homebody, I focus on what has gone wrong in the past and what can go wrong in the future. I’m missing the point that these mishaps are the adventure, and it all has to be taken with a grain of salt. Plenty of people don’t ever get the chance, and here I am bellyaching about a trip to Europe. Well, England. Close enough.

Back to me and my trip this week: it’ll be fun once I’m there. We’re seeing family, seeing a show, and it’ll be warm. The dogs will be well cared-for in our absence.

Think kindly of me this week, as I’ve composed this newsletter before we left. Hopefully, now that you’re reading it, I’m at my travel destination, with obstacles overcome.

Meanwhile, at My Writing Desk…

I’m still between stories but working on other aspects of creative projects. When you start “writing,” no one tells you about all the other bullshit you have to do to try to make it. That’s what I’ve been working on this week: the bullshit.