For many years I received a bum rap. I was told and it was well known among my friends that I didn’t travel well. In fact, I would often hear one of my friends tell another, “Robb doesn’t travel well” under their breath as we were standing at the airport or awaiting for our bus.
Well, I have discovered this is simply not true. I found out I do travel well. I always thought I did. I’ve managed to go on a “big boy” trip on my own many times. For a time, I even junketed once a month to San Francisco to see a girlfriend there. And each time, I traveled perfectly well.
I think the bum rap came in my last relationship cycle, the one known as the “pretend marriage” by my friends. I’m not quite sure when it started to happen, but I did indeed lose my joy of traveling. And that was a very sad thing.
I am the first to admit that I loathe logistics. I don’t enjoy figuring out how to get from Point ‘A’ to Point ‘B’ when a group is involved. There are just too many loose ends and too many people to manage. But I can do it. As I will later share, I proved this point last October.
So I will willingly let someone else handle the boring part of the trip. They handle logistics, I handle the fun. I would even say, “You get us there and I’ll take it from there.” I was good at handling the fun. I have an eye for mischief. I can spot a fun local’s hangout blocks away. Once there, I can loosen up the locals and before you know it, the drinks are flowing and I quickly find out all the good places to eat and the little known beaches. I can do fun.
But I think other people thought they were better at it than I at fun. So we’d end up in a place that only they thought was fun; the rest of us were bored out of our minds. I, of course, knowing that there was true fun out there, would get ansy. Then I’d get contrary. Then bitchy. And finally I would lose it.
It wasn’t that I no longer traveled well. It was that the fun was being sucked out of going somewhere right before my eyes. If I didn’t want to have fun, I could have just stayed home.
So, I no longer wanted to go anywhere. That’s when people started to think I didn’t travel well. What they didn’t know is what I already knew. Inevitably, we’d go someplace. I’d cast about for the fun things to do, see, etc., and someone else would dictate a different reality. If I refused to go along with their “plan,” I could look forward to a fight later that day, evening, week, month, and/or year about my lack of being a team player and making them look bad.
I admit I have “shiny object syndrome.” I can be walking down the street doing one thing and veer off to something that looks more exciting. Often it is, sometimes it’s not. But I believe it’s the journey and not the destination that makes life exciting.
Case in point. In 1992 we were invited to Sail Boston to perform. As we were walking down the street, Bobby Smyth and I spotted the Bull and Finch… the basis of Cheers. We peeled away from the group and headed into the bar. Within moments we were singing in “Cheers.” The owner then invited us up to his private suite to sing to his mother. The rest of the group finally noticed we were missing and found us therr. Our little side trip got everyone a very memorable evening in a world-renowned bar, partying with the owner on his dime.
Fast forward to last October. I had somehow talked a casino in Oregon to hire us to do a performance there. They were putting us up, all expenses paid, plus handling all the travel, the car, etc. As usual, I called up my friends and said, “let’s put on a show.”
Since I was in charge this time, I got all the airline tickets, coordinated the hotel the night before in Orlando, got us to the plane, to Oregon, horribly lost on the way to wine country and we had five fun filled days without a single stress out.
I know that if things had worked differently in my life, I would have been chewed out for missing the exit that would take us through wine country. Not once, not twice, but three times. Instead, we all laughed hysterically at the additional sightseeing we were all doing as my iPhone tried to reroute us to a ramp which was non-existent. Well, it did exist, but only going south, not north as we were going.
Of course, I wouldn’t have been allowed to go to wine country because that might have been fun for the majority of us. Heck, we even stumbled on the Spruce Goose. But that’s another story. Somehow, we managed to have a blast. In the ensuing days we went north to Tillamook, west to the beaches of Lincoln City where I vacationed as a child and south to Depoe Bay and beyond. All the time, I was blissful, happy and not only handling all the side trips, but putting on a huge-ass three act play for the casino.
So, twistoes and twistettes, it’s been proven that I travel well. I repeated my “he travels well” ability as we headed to Key West a few weeks ago. I did it again at John’s Pass. Somehow I managed to not only travel well, but make all the arrangements, too. I am now doing it for another trip to the great Northwest, back to the homeland in the fall. Imagine that.
If we have travels together in the future, fear not. I will be a delight to travel with. I can even provide testimonials. As for that period when I didn’t, I can only attribute it to a phase I was going through. One that looking back, didn’t seem to really phase me at all.
Out on the Treasure Coast, throwing darts at the map on the wall so I can see where the next adventure lies,
– Robb