Getting away from work was less painful than I thought. I was able to make a soft landing with the current project I'm working on. Ideally it will just stay on pause until I get back, and I can come back in two weeks and pick up exactly where I left off. I will write notes to myself, this evening, for what I should do on the Monday of my return. I will open them like secret instructions.
I have lived my life that way---looking for the secret instructions to one thing or another. One of my favorite things about traveling in the past was simply the logistics challenge of getting from point A to point B. Do this, then this, this. Since 1990 I have "scripted" my travels that way. Getting from home to aiport. How and when. Through the terminal, etc. Upon arrival, do this, and...here the fun begins. Take this bus heading to this direction.
In the old days it was very hard to choreograph the logistics of a trip like that, especially for foreign countries. How did one find out the information? One relied on Guidebooks, discovered in physical form at bookstores. There was a great one next to the UT campus for that.After the world wide web came along and make it a lott easier. The first great trip I took with web research beforehand was in May 1996, when I used the occassion of my sister's wedding outside Boston to make a land voyage up through the Canadian Maritimes, and then loop through Quebec and down to New York City, where I was going to stay with a friend in Manhattan.
I was blown away tht I could fesearch the ferry schedules in Nova Scotia, and the VIA Canada rail timetables.
Of course during every great trip, one departs utterly from the logistical plan and goes rogue. One enters a space of graceful freelancing. I leave room in my schedule for these soft times, when one should travel without time constraints, at least for a couple days, and make decisions on the fly, and see where it takes you.
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