Thursday, October 1
As I sit at my computer with a blank screen (in the olden
days it would have been a piece of paper in my Royal typewriter) I ponder where
to start with the new beginning of this blog.
As Lyla and I traveled this summer we had more experiences
than it was possible to blog about – instead I have notebooks, digital
recordings, scraps of paper and LOTS of photographs that I now have to sort
through and put in some order.
Perhaps some mention of the thought process for a solo
journey should be touched upon.
This was not by any means the first time I have traveled
alone (sans human-company, that is). When I graduated from Ohio University in
1973 the first thing I did was to give myself the gift of a one-month solo
horseback trip. With two horses, a dog and my guitar for company I covered
about 350 or so miles of Ohio countryside (for the first week, though, I did
convince my 12-year-old son to join me). On the 10th anniversary of
that trip I repeated the horseback journey, this time for 10 days, with the
same two horses (unfortunately, by then the dog was long dead). In 1998 and
1999 I traipsed the countryside with two horses and a friend and her horse for
a week each summer as we practiced for a planned longer horseback journey that was
to take place in 2000 (the partnership for the trip dissolved so I ended up
riding and hiking for three days in 2000 with my daughter and grandson).
In 1981 I traveled alone for a month (by car) from Ohio
through the Midwest as far as the Four Corners, swinging back by a southern
route through Texas and Oklahoma.
During the early 1970s (my college, therefore poorest years)
I hitchhiked so much one of my college professors dubbed me “superthumb” after
observing me catch a ride in under a minute. Some of those trips included
hitchhiking to and through New York City (once to Westport, Connecticut to
interview Paul Newman); from Florida to Ohio when I was ditched by a friend;
and to Arkansas to stay with an Amish family for a few days (I was planning on
accompanying them on a journey across the U.S.—they were to drive a horse and
wagon and I would ride sidesaddle on a horse since I would be required to wear
a dress).
In 1974 I convinced a Mississippi riverboat company to allow
me to ride a towboat for a month to produce a story. I certainly wasn’t alone,
but I was the only woman besides the cook aboard. I managed to convince the
crew I was a serious journalist and not riding with them to meet guys (eventually
I was allowed to work alongside them, painting and cleaning and
even—once—allowed to steer the towboat with many chemical barges strung out in
front of us).
How did this adventurous side of me originate? Probably because
my parents (who I secretly called gypsies) traveled about and moved many times
during my early years. By the time I was five we had lived in multiple
locations including Columbus and Cleveland Ohio, Tampa, Florida and Yermo,
California. I remember long cross-country drives through mountains where Dad
would have to stop our 1940s-era car and add water to the radiator. When we moved
from Columbus to Yermo in 1946 our vehicle must have looked much like those of
the migrants—everything we owned was packed in or on it, with Mom, Dad and two
young kids squeezed inside. That was way before seatbelts. My brother Glen and
I fought over who got to lie on the shelf of the back window! Mom stuffed the
floor on either side of the “hump” (where the transmission passed through the
backseat) with bedding or other soft items and that was our bed. When we made
our way back to Columbus to live in 1949 we stopped for several months in
Phoenix, Arizona. Dad bought a school bus, ripped out the seats and built bins
for vegetables. Early each morning he would go to a fresh foods vendor and pick
up fruits and vegetables, then run a neighborhood route with them, much as
milkmen and breadmen did in that era. The bus was very handy to use for the
return trip to Columbus. Mom and Dad simply packed all their stuff, including,
by now, four kids, into the vegetable bins. In his usual mode of exaggeration,
my husband Don still says I grew up in a vegetable bin.
At age 68 I made my first venture overseas and traveled
alone, although I met family on the other side of the ocean. Without knowing
more than a smattering of words of Japanese I changed planes in Tokyo to arrive
in Nagoya without incident. After several days exploring the country with my grandson
and his wife I went to Kyoto by bullet train, spent a night in a ryokan alone
and the next day negotiated my way by foot and train to see the Kyoto Imperial
Palace, and then eventually to find the right spot in which to meet my
grandson.
So with some background in various kinds of travel, I began
planning my trip west and felt confident that I would have no trouble traveling
alone. But my husband had another idea. He thought it would be best to travel
with my six-year-old mixed-breed German Shepherd dog. I loved the idea, but had
misgivings on several fronts. Although I had successfully worked with Lyla on
basic commands I knew she had issues with being near other dogs (except her
packmate, Emma, who came to the farm as an eight-week-old pup). I also knew we
would be traveling through some very hot weather and that there would be many
places she would not be allowed to enter (restaurants, museums, some park
areas). It took months to work through the thought process, the training and
the preparation for traveling with a dog. I believe it added at least 50
percent more preparation time and money than if I had not traveled with her.
But the dimension she brought to the trip could not be bought with any amount
of money. As I continue with the blog I will go into some of the details
traveling with a dog requires.
