Vacation Day 5: Thoughts On Travel

I had a bit of a road trip to the Battlefords, about 135 kilometers northwest of here: to visit my folks yesterday afternoon. I arrived home today, to an alert of a tornado warning for this area. Thankfully, it remained just a warning, which ended mid-afternoon without incident.

As I left my parents' place this morning, I did my Dad a favour, and took a parcel of his of some stuff that he needed to return to a local business here in Saskatoon. My Mom called them earlier to notify them that I was bringing it to them. When I arrived back to my city, I parked my car at home and took the package to downtown on my bike to avoid the lunch hour traffic and parking fees. When I got to the business, I entered wearing my bike helmet and backpack. I then pulled out the package, stating that I brought it to them for my Dad from North Battleford. The receptionist looked at me with astonishment, and then asked me if I actually came all the way from the Battlefords on my bike. For an instant, I didn't know whether to be shocked at her stupidity for making such an assumption, or to be flattered that she thought I really was that physically fit, and had such a superpower of being able to pedal that much distance, within two hours, on a bike.

Getting away for the day was OK, but I really need to be away from here longer, at a totally different environment than what is already familiar to me. But then, that fundamental question strikes me: that being "Why, do I need to travel? I don't know if I have a concise answer for that question, but I found some very poignant commentary surrounding that question in an entry from Tim Ferriss' blog, which makes a lot of sense.

I find it no small coincidence that the English word travel , i.e. 'going from place to place', stems from the same Latin root word that means 'to work' or 'toil', as used in the case of French and Spanish (travail and trabajo, respectively).  Travel can be toil, especially if you have the wrong company. In the past, when forced to travel in groups, I got tired quickly of people who will try to drag me around to places that disinterest me, yet are too bloody lazy, ignorant or stupid to know how to compose a simple four word phrase in another language to order a drink, or give directions to a cabbie . . . that somehow always turned out to be my job. They got to satisfy their agenda, while I was stuck at that spot, deprived of making my own experience worthwhile. I make it a point to travel alone now, however, that still doesn't help things much. In my mind, for me as a single traveler, most travel agencies and tourist services even make it worse by:

• many rates are based on double occupancy, that can get more expensive for single occupants.
• packages are sold for resorts and tourist traps
• tourists are herded into groups and often isolated from the rest of the population
• tour groups are often put through "itinerary overload", hauled around on a bus to see a thousand points of interest in 16 hours

There are even more points of contention to mention, but these ones here alone most strongly dissuade me from touring anywhere. You are discriminated against for being single/independant, price gouged, deprived from interfacing with people who actually live at your destination, following a closed course and little freedom to explore on your own, and led around to follow a schedule that could be more intense than what you left behind at work, and no real way left to just chill out.

I'm certainly not pooh-poohing the whole idea of traveling. The thought of having an unstamped passport makes me quite sad. I make an effort to learn languages with hopes to one day use them practically, and that's for the sake of allowing me to veer off the beaten path. I know that constantly re-visiting what I already know isn't improving me. Book learning is OK, but no substitute for hands on experience.

This recent bike misunderstanding I mentioned had prompted me to think and realize that there are a hell of a lot of countries out there that are smaller than the size of this province, or even smaller than the distance between here and my folks' place in length or breadth; and that it would be perfectly achievable to cycle across or around them in a few days or weeks for doing some low cost/less traffic hassle sightseeing. Such places I thought of off the top of my head were*:

• Ireland (Northern Ireland and Eire)
• Scotland
• Southern Scandinavia, Sweden/Norway
• Denmark
• Luxembourg
• The Netherlands
• Belgium
• Fiji
• Bali
• Tasmania (Australia)
• Bermuda
• Bahamas
• Tuscany (Italy)
• North Island (New Zealand)
• Samoa
• Belize
• Cyprus
• Estonia
• Switzerland
• Singapore
• Costa Rica
• Israel
• Taiwan
• Sint Maartin (St. Martin Island)
• Portugal
• Panama
• Malta
• Catalonia (Spain)
• Britanny & Normandy (France)
• Dutch Antilles (Aruba & Bonaire; I've already been in Curacao)

*-
Too much altitude and tropical heat would limit my movement, in such places with those conditions. In such environs, I'd be limiting myself to visiting places along the coastal roads. I edited this by adding more countries and regions based on the on the formula of (135 km)² x pi to give me an area range of about 58000 sq. km or less to pedal around in. Data from the World Bank statistics and Wikipedia.