I have bad timing

I sitting around pondering life while I recover from surgery and I had a thought - I have bad timing.  I'm going to England and Scotland in September and at one time I had a couple friends there, I think now I may still have 1 or 2.  Well I know I have one, but the rest of them might have moved on.  I haven't gotten overseas much in the past few years so that is my excuse as good or bad as it is.

But as I think about my "big" trip - probably late 2011 or early 2012 and the places on my short list I'm wondering how I should pick my destination.  Ideally, I will be gone at least 3 weeks.

The African Safari
SE Asia
Australia
New Zealand

I don't have any friends working an African Safari so my theory doesn't hold for that.  I don't have any friends in SE Asia, but I do think the area is going to change more quickly then the last 2 places on my list.  Oz and NZ - I know some people in both, though don't have any close friends.  I'm sure I could meet up for a dinner or drinks or something there with the people I know.  And well Contiki has an 18 day tour of NZ that sounds nice.  And well, I'm sure I'll make some new friends from down under on my next Contiki tour.  Maybe it will work out well to hit NZ or Oz first - SE Asia might start installing more "western" toilets by the time I make it there.  Ahhh, dreams.  But I do think I should give a little more consideration to where I know people when I plan this next trip, meeting up with locals/friends might make the place come to life.

Pennsylvania feels like home

Last Sunday and Monday I was out in Pennsylvania visiting a friend and the Hershey Spa (more on that another day), I miss Pennsylvania.  I went to college out there for 4 and a half years and for years after I was visiting friends there frequently.  Times change and 11 and a half years later I don't get out there too much, but this time I really felt a sense of missing it.

I was driving down a "typical" (and I use that term loosely) PA road and my heart just started to break.  The road was two lanes (one in each direction) and surrounded by grass, which wasn't too green since there hasn't been much rain lately.  I bet last year the grass was bright green.  In some areas there was corn lining the roads.  This is all very Souteastern PA to me.  As I drove down this road I thought, I could live here. 

I attended the Penn State Berks campus for 2 years and on two sides of the campus was corn fields.  With friends living all over Southeastern PA, or "outside Philly" as they all say - I wonder how so many people can live outside Philly but live nowhere near each other, but that's another story - I drove a lot of these two lane roads lined with grass and maybe a house in the distance.  Long Island is nothing like this, it has houses with little patches of grass in front and strip malls everywhere.
Two lane roads lined with grass, farms and maybe trees are primary roads, sure there are some wider roads where there is shopping and restaurants, and there are highways.  But the majority of roads seem to be these 2 lane roads. 

I don't find them to be as common in the Scranton area or the Pittsburg area, two other areas of PA I haven spent a good amount of time in.  It's like Southeaster PA is stuck in a rural time warp inspite of the urban sprall from Philly.  I miss that, you're close to Philly but it feels more countryish then suburban. 

Then there are my friends who live here, the place is so great that one of my friends from high school even moved there.  And as much as I love and miss my friends, times have changed since our days in college.  Most of my friends are married, many have kids adn houses.  While we're not as much "fun," it's nice to know when you wake up with a hangover you'll be in a bed instead of on the floor.  The memories I had on my drive home on Monday were great, I had a good laugh at those times together. 

I'll keep the memories to myself, it's not as funny if you weren't there.  Instead, think of your own memories of the fun times, the weird times and the goofy things you did somewhere and the people you were with.  In the meantime I'll keep wondering where the perfect place to live is.  Maybe it's PA, or maybe it's somewhere I haven't been yet.

Taking a trip with friends

I've traveled several times with different friends and it can be stressful. Figuring out how each person likes to travel and each persons interests and blending them is a challenge. I think all my trips have gone well, no had has said they wont travel with me again... I'm sure I'm not a perfect travel partner, and to be fair my friends aren't always either. Just because your friends doesn't mean that your good travel partners. A big part of making a good trip for all parties is reasonable expectations and planning together.

Last year I went to Disney World with Terye, before the trip I probably tortured her with emails about planning. First, I was figuring out a list of restaurants that we wanted to eat at, I was sending a little synopsis of pretty much every restaurant with review information. We were able to narrow that down to a reasonable list and I went ahead and made a variety of different reservations for us for breakfast, lunch and dinner. Then we worked on a list of attractions we did and didn't want to do, but the most important was a list of our MUST DO attractions. This was the list that would allow us to leave Disney knowing that we didn't miss anything that we really wanted to do. This allowed us to make sure that while we might not get to do everything we wanted, we wouldn't leave with any real regrets. Terye and I did have one issue, it's called mornings. Terye is not a morning person, she did ok the first couple days, but towards the end... Lets just say that I had to inform her that she wasn't allowed to put the TV on in bed when I had already taken my shower. I'm sure she had some issues with me - like me nagging her to get out of bed. In the future we decided that we should go somewhere where getting out of bed in the morning is not necessary for your enjoyment - I'm thinking Las Vegas or New Orleans.

Planning my trip with Tara to Hawaii has also required a lot of planning. I started with the list of what must have been 1,000 excursions and started to break them down a bit and learn what Tara was interested in that I was also interested in. I couldn't convince her that zip-lineing would be fun, but she's agreed to take the helicopter tour. As the more experienced traveler I've tried to send her information about what to expect when flying and on the cruise. It's good for things to be a surprise, but not all surprises are good. We still need to discuss the dining options on the ship as I hear it can sometimes be hard to get into some of the restaurants.

Here are some things to keep in mind when choosing travel companions and planning a trip. What are the eating habits of the person you want to travel with? If someone is the make every meal at home type and you like to eat out a lot, then you'll want to discuss that. My sister's friend traveled with a family who wanted to make dinner every night, but they wanted to go out every night - not a good combination. If the other person is a beach person and you hate the sand - another thing to discuss. Also, what types of activities do you want to do, art musuem, history museuems, major landmarks, photography. All these things are reasons people travel, and just because someone has different interests then you doesn't mean that you can't travel together, but it means that you need to discuss these things and find out if you can each compromise so that each person can get what they want out of the trip. If you want to travel together and have some different interests then consider setting aside time to split uop. Waiting until your on your vacation to have these conversations may lead to the end of your friendship. A friend of mine traveled with a friend once and their friendship barely survived, later on he traveled with a girlfriend of his and that was how he knew they could live together.