I’m just home from traveling to Cambridge, Massachusetts, which was a WONDERFUL trip. And that got me thinking about how traveling has changed for me over the years. I remembered when a friend wrote me the following email about travel plans:

My husband has this habit of trying to sew up ALL loose ends in life before going on vacation. He goes into hyper-responsible mode. His anxiety about traveling results in him cleaning the freezer, going to the Salvation Army with old clothes, you name it. It completely sucks out one of my favorite things pre-vacation, which is anticipating reckless abandon. Last night as I was lying in bed he asked me what electronics I could get ready to recycle before we leave on Thursday. I mean REALLY? Are you kidding me?

This made me smile, and it made me think about traveling with men.

The Instamatic Years

My first husband was an uber-planner. We started taking trips together in the mid-seventies, back when our travels were a violation of the Mann Act. Our planning methods seem quaint and archaic to me now. He would stop in at the AAA office and get little plastic-bound triptych maps, very detailed flip-books with all routes traced out for you. He traced our actual route with a red pen.

In a small notebook, we recorded all gas purchases (amount, price per gallon, total charges) and odometer readings for eventual gas mileage reckoning. He was happy to be the planner, and I was happy to learn how the hell to read a map, estimate distances with the rule, figure out how to backtrack when he’d charged off on a wrong turn.

Wrong turns happened because he was an aggressive driver, passing and jockeying and speeding along to get past every single vehicle he possibly could, and then I’d announce I wanted to stop, and then we’d get back on the road and he’d find all those cars and get ahead of them again. This annoying, aggressive driving style seemed to contradict the cheerful ease with which he would stop at any and every wayside, overlook, local museum, you name it, he’d stop and look at it. We’d snap photos with our Instamatic and get back in the Duster and keep going.

We traveled a great deal and on the cheap, staying at Motel 6 when we could afford it, camping or sleeping in the car when we couldn’t. We grew up and outgrew each other, but the boxes of Instamatic photos remain. In the hazy, soft tones of those old square photos, I see a chronicle of my strange and rootless teenage years, my only security the young man with the wild hair at my side.

Family travel

My second husband and I jumped feet-first into parenthood within months of getting married, so we didn’t do much traveling the first years of our marriage. It took six years for us to get up the nerve and the money to start traveling, and I’d missed it. It was also quite a different undertaking, traveling with a man AND children.

For this, I had three jobs. The first job was every speck of the planning, reserving, deciding, purchasing. The second job was all the packing for myself and three kids. To do this, I kind of took a note from my first husband’s obsession with gas mileage. I would make comprehensive lists of each day’s activities and decide on outfits for each, making sure that each (somewhat matchy) group of three outfits had shoes and hair doodads to match. Outlining a novel has nothing on this.

My third job was all the child-wrangling. For the actual plane/train/automobile part of it, that meant packing special trip backpacks with books, art supplies, games, toys and snacks. All that was done to convince myself that they would be entertained on the plane, that it was actually possible to divert your children adequately so that they didn’t whine, kick, bicker,complain, cry, knock over the coffee of the person beside them, throw their dolls over the back of the seat to land in the lunch of the person behind them, wet their pants and generally make the trip into a living hell (they really weren’t that bad) (most of the time). Managing that hell was my job, as was taking care of all three kids for every minute we were at the actual vacation destination.

My second husband also had three jobs, as far as traveling. His first job was to pack his own stuff the morning of our departure, generally using as many suitcases for himself as I had used for myself and the girls combined. His second job was to haughtily and continuously complain about every single decision I had made concerning airlines, flight times, hotel reservations, and clothing worn by anyone but himself. And his third job was to take lots of breaks. Breaks for conversation with other adults, shopping, Scotch in the hotel bar, cigars by the pool, and whatever else he needed to do in order to take care of himself and make sure he had a good time, because he found traveling so stressful.

After divorcing my second husband, I discovered the joys of traveling alone.

Solo

Going solo was completely effortless, like entering a no-gravity zone. I packed light, knowing that if I forgot something, I could buy it somewhere. I drifted weightless as a cloud into airports, on and off planes, out to cabs or shuttles. If I missed a connection, I bought a cup of coffee and read a book. If I forgot to bring something, I bought it. I went to whatever restaurants I chose, and the tabs were tiny. I dawdled in museums. I slept in, stayed out late. I had forgotten that it was possible to relax on vacation, but like riding a bike, it all came back to me. Buying one theater ticket instead of four, bypassing the American Girl store entirely, spending the afternoon in bed if I was too tired to sight-see. What a luxury it was. Eventually, I actually missed my girls. That might have been the greatest luxury of all.

I also learned how to travel with my daughters. Not long after the divorce, I took the girls to Disneyland, and we had a blast. Then, they got older and could pack for themselves. If one of them didn’t bring the right thing, she could borrow it from a sister. The girls usually slept all the way wherever we were going–something magical that happens in the teen years–and they exercised autonomy and free will as far as activities once we arrived at the destination (which tended to be a lake, so, they could just go to the dock and do whatever it is teenagers do at the lake) (I didn’t need to know really) (no one ever drowned so it was fine).

And I could, as a last resort, level one of my stony gazes at whichever of my children was complaining about boredom or a sibling or the lack of a can opener and say, “You know, this is my vacation too.”

Travel with me

As I age, I find that sitting jammed into a plane seat for six hours is pure torture. The occasional offer of a glass of ginger ale and a bag of “savory snack mix” does nothing to alleviate the pain of enforced, cramped immobility, and any man who travels with me must endure my shifting, stretching, groaning.

I’m aware that I’m a sissy.

I prefer to travel in a car. Stopping at clean motels with soft beds. Listening to music I like. Enjoying the peace of the road. Conversation should be minimal and pleasant. And I will not stay in motel rooms that are creepy or gross. Don’t ask me to define “creepy and gross.” I know them when I see them. I will draw myself up with the horrified snobbery of the Dowager Countess if expected to stay in a room that is either. And the BED, what about the BED, what if the BED is HARD. A HARD BED is my worst nightmare.

And once we find a room that is to my liking, I will insist on keeping it ultra-tidy for the duration of our stay. I will talk in my sleep. I will snore. And in the morning, I will get up waaaaay too early.

I am aware that I’m impossible.

The test of travel

I believe that traveling together is a test, a crucible.

Some years ago, I went out with a man who lived up in Washington. He rode a Gold Wing, and he was incredibly funny in an entirely inappropriate way. Every weekend, we found somewhere to go. These trips flowed like long shots in movies,  smooth and unbroken and entertaining. We saw each other for an entire summer of jaunts, and the ease with which we traveled together disguised the fact that we had almost nothing in common. We were both funny and tall, and that was the sum of what you could call compatibility. In case you think I exaggerate, he ripped the sleeves off his shirts, chain-smoked, enjoyed Larry the Cable Guy, and collected coffee mugs from all the events he attended for his sobriety program.

But the travel was fantastic.

I’ve had relationships cement themselves into serious, and I’ve had relationships completely fall apart on trips. The close quarters, the sheer duration of contact. It’s a killer. It’s not just men who are under examination during travel. I’m being tested, and failing.

A friend of mine took a girlfriend somewhere exotic, like Bora Bora, where they slept in open tiki huts on the beach. In HAMMOCKS. I don’t actually remember where they went, just the horrifying details, like communal meals, questionable bathroom accommodations, no WALLS, what the holy hell? He was so excited about a trip that sounded absolutely awful to me, and I kept ribbing him about it. They had a blast. He came home shouting his love for this woman to the stars. And they got married. And they are still married. Years and years later.

Whatever future travel test I have to pass, I only hope it does not involve sleeping in a hut.