Sunday, April 10, 2005

Leaving...on a jet plane...again

Tomorrow morning at 7:35 a.m., I'll board a plane for Houston. I'm travelling there for a one-day workshop for all the CSM people who do what I do (which equates to one person in each of our eight cities). It will be my second trip I'll have made since getting back from the Midwest in January, and a week after I get back on Wednesday, I'll be flying again...this time to Seattle for vacation.

When I took my first flight, to England as a high school junior in 1997, everything about it enthralled me. Since I wasn't afraid of flying and don't get motion sickness, I loved every minute of it. People-watching in the airport, seeing the ground below from so high up, trying not to say the wrong things to the security people (this was back when they still asked you if you packed your own bag, and the like). I was a wide-eyed kid from rural Michigan, and I soaked up every minute of it.

The following year I flew to Mexico...then it was Honduras...then Vienna...then, shortly after graduating from college, I was flying several times a year. Here is a brief outline:
2002: Chicago-Houston (RT), Chicago-San Francisco (RT)
2003: Chicago-SF, SF-Houston, Houston-Chicago, Grand Rapids-Minneapolis, Minneapolis-SF, SF-Chicago
2004: Chicago-SF, SF-Nashville (RT), SF-West Virginia (RT), SF-Cameroon (RT), SF-Chicago
2005: Chicago-SF, SF-Los Angeles (RT)

All this travelling gets a little ridiculous after a while! (Note that I understand many others fly much more than me!) Sometimes, I feel like it's a sign of prestige, because I'm a "business traveller" with an important job or something. But really, I'm sick of it. Though it's often the quickest and cheapest way to get from Point A to Point B, it's a hassle and has gotten to be boring. Granted, the people-watching aspect is still somewhat exciting, and following along from the air with my atlas still holds a special place in my wandering heart, but I'll take a train trip over the airport/airline/airplane inconveniences any day!

The thing that keeps me going is the people that I know I'll see when I get to the destination, whether I'm on the way to or from somewhere. I love our CSM staff (I'm so excited to see so many of them tomorrow!), and of course vacations are always something to look forward to, whether it's friends or family. If there was only a way to see them without all this flying!

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