Actually, it occurs to me that I’ve traveled a lot for the last few years as well, and that I just didn’t talk about it.
I’m not a big traveler; really, I’m not. When I think about a “big traveler” I think about my grandmother who had an RV with her boyfriend and went to Florida to see the space shuttle launches, and who traveled all across Europe and most of Asia, and even bits of Africa. I think about my siblings who are always taking camping and biking trips, who both went on organised relief trips and immersion programs with their high schools and colleges, who between them have been to England and Cuba and Peru and Senegal and Burundi.
My family goes to places for the fun of it, for the adventure. I used to go to places for two reasons: family obligations and conventions. Until 2012, I’d been to Montreal twice (that’s not true, I’d been to Montreal a lot more then that, but for the sake of this discussion, I’m defining travel as “I spent at least one night there”), to Quebec City twice, to Toronto once, to Orlando (Disney World) once, and to Melbourne, Australia. That is 7 trips in 27 years of being alive, and with all of them, except for the Australia trip and one of the Montreal trip, I was with my family for part or for all the of the trip. I don’t like to explore, to do the tourist stuff for the sake of doing the tourist stuff. But I also don’t like traveling to do nothing. The idea of spending hundreds of dollars to lie on a beach seems ridiculous to me: if I’m going to do nothing, I’m going to do it at home, for free. So I didn’t travel much.
But then, I something changed. I discovered musical theater again, and that gave me one more reason to travel. Since then, I have been to Toronto three times, to New York three times, to Chicago, to Pittsburgh, and to London. That’s nine trips in three and a half years, six within the last eighteen months, most of them by myself. My mother came with me to London and to Chicago, and those were the two trips I took for conventions (though I did manage to convince her to see a West End show with me). Many of other trips were quick, overnight affairs, and they all followed the same pattern: get to city, get to hotel, check in, eat dinner, go see show, go back to hotel, sleep, get up, check out, come back. If I have some more time, I might take some extra time to walk around town, maybe go to a park or a museum. Over those nine trips, I have seen 12 shows.
I still say that I’m not a big traveler. Travelers, especially big travelers, travel for the fun of it, and I do not. I travel for some very specific reasons, and the shorter and more efficient the trip, the better. Still, I have to admit that I did travel a lot during the hiatus.
Aurelia Osborne 