THE EXPLORER IN ME

"What intrigues me the most are those things in the distance, on the horizon. That is where I want to go; what I want to see next."

As I write this I am on a Westbound flight from Charlotte, North Carolina, to Dallas. There I'll make a connection to my eventual destination of Santa Ana -- more commonly known as John Wayne Orange County Airport.

Me in Japan, ca 1965

Join Wayne is my second preferred airport in the LA metropolitan area, at a time when my definition of "preferred" has a different meaning than it did a decade or so ago. Back then I didn't really give much thought to which airport I was using, just the flights and getting to the destinations involved. If I needed to get from Point A to Point Z I simply selected the flight and made my way to whichever airfield the arrangements required.

Atop Mt Haleakala

In many cases this default airport was LAX. And to give the giant monster its due: there is an excitement and energy level in flying from LAX that doesn't really exist at the smaller fields. But it's not just size -- I don't get the same "vibe" from equally large facilities such as DFW or PHX. But I do from others like MSP or JFK. 

(My favorite airport, Long Beach, was at the time still involved in a decade-long local legal morass on noise reduction -- which seriously hampered any airline from doing much, basically killing it as an option for me...thankfully that's no longer the case.)

The Mendenhall Glacier

The ruins at Tulum

I'm certain it's a personal perception, and once again I have to look to my childhood for influence and guidance. I truly believe so many of my ingrained more visceral responses to travel come from my early years. I've alluded more than a few times to the influence movies and television had on my perception of the world. James Bond; Casablanca (despite being filmed in a studio); Lawrence of Arabia; It Takes a Thief; The Saint; I, Spy and other globetrotting tv programs and films gave me my first true look at the world beyond my front door, and I learned an excitement that came from realizing that I, too, could visit all those exotic places. 

(It didn't hurt that my parents were fans of those sorts of programs. Their influence was more profound than television, though more subtle in many ways. Dad, who was a career Naval officers, would send us postcards and pictures from around the globe as his various deployments took him from one exotic port to another. Hong Kong still looms large in my imagination precisely because he and my mother met there a few times while we kids sat at home, dreaming of what it must be like. It's still on my NOW list to this day.)

Polar Bears on the tundra

Then came things -- worldwide news events like The Olympics -- which showed me in realtime what the world looks like. And the nightly news, when "nightly news" actually meant News and not Entertainment. The Huntley-Brinkley Report was the family go-to, and their reporters around the world again brought exotic places and unpronounceable names right into our family room. 

Times Square

Today the world seems to have become much smaller. Much more everyday. The popularizing of air travel, and the ubiquity of broadcast programming, means things are becoming a bit more homogenous. Unless you looks specifically for the differences, Des Moines isn't all that different than Charlotte, except for the plants. 

Alleys in Croatia

(On this particular trip I stayed in a very nice Marriott, and had dinner at a very nice regional chain restaurant -- both of which were not terribly different from places I stayed at and dined at in places like Seattle or Albuquerque. Quite nice, but nothing that screamed "you're in the South!", even though the restaurant billed itself that way...)

But exploring the world still holds a mystique if you know where to go and where to look. 

The Great Barrier Reef

Travel expands the mind, or so the saying goes. I have yet to meet very many open-minded travelers who are not citizens of the world and who understand that what exists outside their front door is only an infinitesimally small part of the whole. 

As I sit here at 35,000 feet I look down at the world below, one which I have only just begun to explore, and wonder at what is down there. What cool stuff lies unexplored and waiting for me? 

That is what I want to find out and what drives me to my next destination.

That and the coffee, that is.

Driving in the Mojave Desert volcanic fields

Hell, Cayman Islands

The Explorer in Me - Where next?