Travel (Derogatory)
Yesterday, I took two trains home. On the first train, the Brown Line, all I could think about was that woman that was set on fire on the Blue Line.
I wore jeans, comfortable and not particularly stylish walking shoes, and an ugly but convenient black coat. It was the only coat I owned suited for the current in between the seasons weather.
There were 500 dollars cash in my pocket I had won at the casino three days prior. I thought I might be able to use it to get some Christmas gift shopping done the following day. I also thought that night would make for an appropriate one to get mugged for the first time.
After arriving home late in the evening, I poured one of those shitty canned Guinness beers into a glass and completed some work I told colleagues was finished hours ago. My dog sat near me and watched over the yard for trespassing possums.
Three days prior at the casino, I left with my friend Hunter to visit another friend, Bobby Harris, who was home from Texas for Thanksgiving and whom I hadn't seen in several years. Amongst our group, Hunter and I were the only two to leave the casino with more money than we entered with.
This significantly lifted our moods. Hunter did especially well at the roulette table.
While driving toward Bobby, Hunter expressed his excitement for an upcoming trip to California beginning a rant complaining about the repetitive nature of Hinge dates -- particularly the women he meets that frequently identify "traveling" as their central hobby.
He went on to theorize single people our age were converging into some kind of social media ideal, in which "traveling" and "going out for dinner" are culturally important hobbies. He found the whole scene to be rather vapid and seemed to be running out of hope for finding any kind of real connection.
Here I realized the luck in my life decisions to find all of this entirely unrelatable.
Hunter asked me about Mexico City with the pretense I had already visited. I had not. Then he grumbled about how Europe must've been a far more interesting place to visit 20 years ago. I kept to myself, but I couldn't help think people 20 years ago probably said the very same thing.
On his California trip, Hunter was excited to attempt the California Double, a mission which consists of surfing in the ocean and skiing in the mountains all in a single day. Only a few regions in the world offer geographic diversity that's dense enough to make such a thing possible.
At the next destination, I caught up with Bobby. Bobby works in the oil and gas industry and had moved to New Mexico after college. He now lives in midland Texas. There, he met a woman who found a job in Singapore and nearly followed her there. Her family was wealthy, also in oil and gas, and had lived in the US, Qatar, and South Asia.
Good judgement by the world to bring two people like that together. I wish them well. It all sounds very exciting.
I have seen the videos of Spaniards protesting tourism and the data on the housing market consequences of Airbnb but I still find travel all too compelling. I'm going to South America soon. Twice next year. One day when I find the time, I'd like to take a train to Quebec or the Pacific Northwest. Or spend a summer riding a bike around all of Lake Michigan and Lake Superior.