All you can drink

Sara responds to my post below. Particularly, the part about suggesting the resort in the Caribbean or Mexico. She says that all inclusive resorts are bad for so so many reasons.

I agree. I've never been to an all-inclusive resort, nor even to a country that relies upon them like the Caribbean or Mexico and I have no desire to. Even from a purely selfish personal travel standpoint, the only thing that lies lower on my desires for travel than the all-inclusive is the *shudder* Cruise Ship. Travel that allows you to participate in a country rather than be excluded from it is both a better experience and better for the country itself.

There's also no question that travel changes things: some good, some bad. A great contrast are the cities of Cape Town and Johannesburg. There are lots of tourists technically in both cities but their patterns of behaviour are quite different. For Joburg, people land at the airport and are immediately wisked away to some very swanky resorts near or in Kruger Park. Cape Town, on the other hand, is a city that people actually visit for its own sake. For Cape Town, this has meant that the downtown core is vibrant and diverse--all the things that make a city pleasant for both tourists and locals. Downtown Joburg, on the other hand, is a desolate wasteland with people literally selling peanuts outside of deserted office buildings. Tourism isn't the only reason for the difference, but it certainly must have an effect. On the negative side, the tourists have appeared to have drawn masses of children away from their homes to form gangs to capitalize on easy prey both by begging and stealing. This real example of a false economy appears to be having a really negative effect on the potential for improvement in the overall situation in the future. The contrast with Joburg is striking: there just aren't gangs of kids there. There are many poor people and it can be quite dangerous, but kids tend to stay with their families, allowing at least for the possibility of family support, getting an education, and breaking the cycle of poverty. Tourism is not a zero-sum activity and there are lots of costs and benefits on both sides of the equation.

I suggested europe, mexico, and D.C. only because Andrew did. I'm always cautious about recommending Europe because frankly if you go when you're 65, you can have just as a fulfilling experience there. There's very little age sensitive there. (Well, okay, maybe Ibiza are such are) But then again, it can be just as fun for a younger person. I think that young should focus on more challenging experiences, that will get harder (but to be fair, not at all impossible) for the older.

Also, Sara's right...you (and we) aren't really that old. In fact, we *are* young. While I think we have passed one major plateau on the descent into decrepitude, there's still a long way to go before that point, maybe 50, 60 years from now. My real point is that now is the better time, and it will only likely get harder.

One quibble though with Lonely Planet. The path of the Lonely planet is too well known by now and too well tred and can constitute a type of long amorphous inclusive resort filled with tourists and people catering to them. It's nice to step off that treadmill and find, not necessarily out of the way places, but less trodden. The more diffuse the patterns of travelling are, the less overall negative effect they will have and the more widespread the benefits.

On an unrelated note, MRI's are kind of fun, but much noiser than I expected. I thought I could feel the protons in my body lining up magnetically, but I suspect that may just be psychological.

And they said that the lines for the MRI were long

I get back from my little jaunt to snowy and cold Arizona (unfortunately true in my case) and find that many things have changed here. Well, by many things, I'm remarking on Andrew's recent run of excellent posts. I think we can safely say that it is not North America that is responsible for the lack of posting!

As for the deeper point--Should Andrew travel?--the facetious answer is "Yes, my god, yes."

There is, of course, a longer answer. All of the comments in the follow-up post by Sara, Stacey and others about travel not being the be and end all, travel is not a solution in itself, and the potential (though often oversold) experience of culture shock are true to a certain extent. One can be bored anywhere one sets one's mind to and, in fact, much of the act of "travelling" is composed of boring bits of waiting, frustration, and filling time aimlessly. Travelling for work, particularly, can be overwhelmingly isolating and lonely and the major revelations involve discovering minutae of mid-priced hotels.

Another point that didn't appear to have been brought up yet is that you've already missed the boat on certain types of travel experiences that aren't available to those who are approaching their 27th year. For simple starters, we simply don't party like it's 1999 anymore. Those experiences of reckless ridiculousness have lost some of their lustre for me, and I assume, for you as well. My trip to Europe as a teenager was relevatory somewhat because it was a privileged glimpse of a more "adult" life, where my time was my own, and alcohol was freely available. Now, it's been there, done that. A bar in Toronto or Ottawa isn't really quantitatively different from a bar anywhere else in the world. Secondly, being older, we simply won't put up with some of the things that we enjoyed/tolerated in our younger days. Hostel living, for example, can be dirty, smelly, overcrowded, and distinctly lacks personal space. It also, maybe surprisingly, takes much more effort to search out and stay in those type of places than it does to check into the nearest holiday inn. Finally, there is a clock and it is ticking. Many countries, I'm thinking of Australia but there are others, have age restrictions on certain visa types. Having an EU passport overcomes some of those problems, but many programs that are available for younger people just aren't available for us old folk anymore, or at least not for much longer. Demands on time, responsibilities at home, and desires to "get on with your life" make the cost/benefit scale shift...and it will only get more so with the passing of time. The likelihood of feeling able to spend a year or six months away is growing dimmer quickly and would probably require very particular planning...and a good job.

I'm also not going to oversell the benefits of travel. As with most things, it is what you make it out to be.

But Andrew, in all seriousness, just go. The fact is, is that a couple weeks of travel doesn't have to be that big a deal. There are costs of money and time involved of course, but for you, it's obviously totally worth it. You've set yourself a couple of attainable goals and with some sacrifices you could probably do all of your international travelling on your list this year. Washington DC: long weekend $700. Trip to Mexico or resort in Caribbean: one week, $1500. Trip to Europe: Two to three weeks, $3000. I'd do Europe first, precisely because it is the biggest decision (with the most reward). Go this May, get people to give you birthday gifts that would help you make it there. If that's too soon, I'll probably end up in Prague next March for work/school related activities if you want a goal to shoot for and a friendly face at the airport. It's just a matter of changing the question from "whether you should go or not?", to "how do I get there?"

I'm having the same conversation with Dolly. Besides a long weekend in Boston, and a week at a resort in Mexico, she hasn't been out of the country. She, however, really wants to go to Europe, in particular, Lithuania where her family is from and whose language she is more or less comfortable in. I keep trying to send her off as soon as possible. Don't worry about money, I say, charge the whole thing to a credit card--it'll be worth it. While that is pretty terrible financial advice, the fact is is that there are always going to be complicating situations, always "better" things to spend money on, and always a fuzzy future which promises untruthfully a "better" time to go. If you want to make it happen, it's possible.

Anyway, I just returned from a week in the aforementioned Arizona. The conference itself was excellent and busy going solid from 8 am to 11 pm for three days. I met many interesting people, whom I only knew as names on papers. And, I had really pretty posters to present with lots of attractive graphs and colour. All good. Plus, I went out drinking with some of the younger crowd and one of my professors to a bar called "Sugar Daddy" and rode back to the hotel in a stretch limo, painted in psychodelic colours, that was officially (and I've got the business cards to prove it) known as the "Pimpmobile."

After the conference, I rented a car and drove up into Northern Arizona. I've never done that type of trip with the freedom of a car by myself and it was very nice, even the driving part. Unfortunately, the weather was lousy--on the day that I was planning on hiking down into the Grand Canyon, it snowed about a foot. I met some people who were brave enough to go that day anyway. They said that the first ten feet of the view was lovely. I wisely decided to go skiing that day instead, which kicked ass. I haven't skied in years and years, but I felt great, the mountain was better than average (elevation 12000 feet), and because it's arizona, I guess, almost completely empty. I hadn't planned on skiing, of course, and I was lacking such minor things as gloves and a coat not made of cashmere. But I made a pit stop at the Walmart bought a cheap nylon tracksuit for waterproofness and because they were out of the proper winter-kind, gardening gloves (which were a surprisingly effective substitute). I also got to see Lucinda Williams in concert that night because she happened to be in Flagstaff. The next day, I drove down to Sedona, and that was the type of beautiful that I hadn't expected. Breath-taking. I just wish that I had brought my camera. The drive itself was magnificient, and I went on a couple of stellar hikes in the canyons there. It is a magical place.

Unfortunately, on my last hike on the last day, I climbed up to the top of cliff to get a better view, on my way down, I put my weight on my knee funny and it popped. I couldn't straighten it nor could I put all my weight on it. However, since I was three miles away from my car, in the middle of the wilderness, by myself, with only a few hours before dark, I had to walk out. I used some sticks as crutches and dragged myself out of there. It took me three hours to go three miles, but I made it no problem and because it was my left knee driving wasn't affected. It turns out that I had torn the menicus in my knee and aggravated it with all the walking. I'm walking more or less okay now, but it's still a problem and the doctor thinks that there's a chance it might need (very minor) surgery. I have an MRI booked for tomorrow night to figure that out.

After seeing Barbarian Invasions last week, and from the conventional wisdom of the Canadian health care system, I'd assumed that the MRI would take months to set up, especially for an obviously non critical case like me. But there it is--booked on Thursday, appointment within a week. The staff at the clinic said that's been pretty standard for a while. I'm impressed. Yay Canadian Health Care System!

The Barbarian Invasions is, by the way, a truly excellent film that solidly deserved its oscar. It's a little picture, in a way, a small slice of life, but with great writing and acting and really moving. However, its view on the Canadian Health Care System is way over-the-top, but that doesn't detract too much overall.