Where to Next?

Life has a way of happening in waves and right now we are in a travel planning wave. Note that I said travel planning, not travel. We are actually having a pretty light travel year due to modest planning and unforeseen changes which have caused us to cancel on two trips. That has left us with one foreign trip in September, one foreign trip in early 2027 and then a whole bunch of conversations which may or may not lead to anything else getting planned on the horizon. Like most people, we have an array of people with whom we plan travel, and they all have their specific thoughts, needs and preferences. I remember having worked with a guy once who insisted that he would only ever travel alone. He was a single guy with no family and he used to say that he preferred traveling alone because it was too complicated to factor in the thoughts, needs and preferences of another person. It was hard to fathom someone wanting to travel alone for pleasure. To me it seemed lonely, but he claimed that he actually enjoyed himself more when he was alone because he was free to do exactly as he pleased with no compromises. Life, as they say, is about compromise, but it sure as hell makes group travel more difficult. That much I can agree with my old colleague about. Excluding immediate family members (these days we tend to go to see them or they come to see us), we have about ten couples, three from this neighborhood and seven spread out from here to kingdom come including four that are connected to us through active motorcycling activities. It’s hard to say how and why these became our traveling friends, but that’s the way life just happens to work. These companionships tend to run hot and cold, which is to say that there are times when everyone seems to want to hit the road and there are times when no one wants to go anywhere. Sometimes we have more travel ideas than we can process and sometimes no one has a clue what to consider next. And of course, these are not perfectly symmetrical situations in that everyone has their own array of possible travel companions and only a few of these overlap…and all of those also run hot and cold…and rarely on the same cycle. You see why I call this a travel planning wave? It’s almost enough to help you understand that old colleague of mine and why he eschews companionship in travel in favor of following the seemingly antisocial path of solo travel.

The last three years we have done our big trips mostly with the local neighborhood gang, which expanded from one initial couple to the current three couples. But it’s not been purely additive, because as we have expanded that list, the arrangements have become increasingly non-exclusive. What used to feel like an obligation to plan out a next trip with these neighbors has, by a very civil mutual but unproclaimed consent, become a general understanding that we will plan what we each want to plan, but communicate those plans to one another such that there is a degree of optionality to join if we so choose. So, what was a joint planning exercise is now more of a join or don’t join program. Everyone has different degrees of dedication to preference. They range from “no way will I go there” to “not my first choice, but I would go along.” Of the twenty people involved with the travel decision process in our circle, the range of flexibility is quite broad. Some have geographic priorities. Some have cost priorities. Some have timing priorities (times of the year). Some have advance planning priorities. Some have accompaniment priorities. Some prefer to travel in a four to six person configuration at most, but others feel that the more the merrier. I know that Kim and I have priorities as well, but generally, we lean more towards the accomodative approach because we think travel is less about what you see and more about who you do it with and how the experience unfolds.

Mode of travel is a common topic of discussion in all corners of our circle (note the geometric irony). The big issue, as discussed previously, is whether cruising is desirable or to be avoided. You can triangulate to that answer easily enough if you know the couple’s age…the older the more cruise-prone. For our money, we are liking cruising more and more mostly for ease of packing and unpacking. I’m an advance planner by nature because I feel that with the increase in travel (presumably based heavily on the demographics of our very own retirement cohort), its just too easy to get boxed out of the arrangements or accommodations we prefer. Others in our circle find that the just-in-time approach works better and is more cost-effective…particularly with cruises, which always have a fill-the-boat-at all-costs business strategy. Some like lots of walking and exercise and others like a more genteel pace. We have shifted to a midpoint on that spectrum as we have increased our levels of exercise this year. We will not be climbing mountains, but there are no deck chairs with our names on them either.

Geopolitical security has become a factor which can be characterized as both secular and cyclical. The world is becoming a more dangerous place, but different regions go hot and cold in a way that the State Department Risk Rating system only partially captures. Where one used to be able to count on the U.S. Government to protect and extract all wayward Americans, that’s not so much the case any more…ask a million Americans stuck in the Gulf when the bombs started to fall on Tehran. I have come to think of the world in concentric hot zones that need to be avoided. The obvious ones are those that currently center around Iran and Ukraine and how big you draw your circle is a matter of personal risk aversion. For instance, does Turkey (ala Erdogan) fall into the Iran danger zone? What about Cyprus (with Muslim and Russian money)? How about Ephesus or Rhodes (both of which we have scheduled for early next year)? And Ukraine…we were in Prague last year, but Krakow might be too close for comfort. But its the less obvious circles that I spend time thinking about. There are lots of people still traveling to China, but I keep telling Kim that I don’t want to be anywhere near the place when the Taiwan shit hits the fan.

I learned in my Emerging Markets business dealings that risk takes on three forms for the traveler; political, criminal and biological. It may or may not matter which bug bites you once bitten, but its no less useful to consider all three of these forms of risk when planning one’s trips. I personally pay lots of attention to all of those and other factors like altitude (a personal bugaboo) and big wild animals (lions and tigers and bears) as well as the big nasty bugs (the real ones) that hang out in high humidity.

All this over-thinking leaves very few places left to travel to…or perhaps too many to consider…I can’t decide which. I know I’m done with most of Africa (save, perhaps a revisit to Morocco), most of South America (though Mexico and some of Central America could entice me). Asia and Australia have had enough of me to suit my taste. I’m curious about Middle Asia and the Silk Road, but that will never happen. So, I feel left with the Continental U.S. and Western Europe for my dwindling travel agenda. At this moment, top of that list is a Norwegian fjord trip that might bump its way up to the Arctic Circle and perhaps Iceland to catch a glimpse of the fabled Aurora Borealis (which both Kim and I have seen from an over-the-pole flight). We also want to go see Glacier National Park. That’s as close as we get to a bucket list at this point. Now its all about who asks and where the world and we are in relationship to one another…so we keep asking…where to next?