Life is a long trip to Australia: to die. Go ahead, grab your squeaky platypus slippers and get ready to hug a koala, cuz the cap’n’s ready to go: it’s cruch time. Yeah, I’m not sure how the Aussie PR team is gonna spin this, but I think it’ll take more than Crocodile Dundee to make us comfortable with the trip.
“Now that’s a knife.”
“Uhm, I’m not sure that’s the message we’re trying to send Paul, and could you pull up your pants?”
Still, He stand’s by his catchphrase, as I stand by my concept. It came as a shower epiphany.; it must be true. It came to me right after, “Dude, you’ve got hairy toes.” And yes, I was talking to myself; this was not a Dundee/Blogger Brokeback moment.
So yeah, after painting that little mural in your airport, let’s get back to my point: life is like a box of airplanes: all the tasty stuff is inside the candy shell. No wait, it’s like moving from one airport to another—yeah, you can pin your hokey pokey to that, cuz, that’s what it’s all about.
See, the people we spend time with, they’re our traveling companions. I mean, we’re all going to the same place; we might as well spend the time with someone. Some we’ll like, some are just gross and smell like old garlic. Yeah, sorry I made spaghetti last night. Still, we all have one thing in common:
“Where ya goin?”
“Australia.”
“Me too!”
The thing is, although we’re all going to Australia, we make different departures and arrivals; we have different flight plans. Some of us will stop in Huston; others will layover in Omaha and wonder why we’re in hell. Only the destination remains the same—well, that and the fact that we’ll all end up stuck in Los Angeles at least once. Sooner or later, everything comes back to LA. A cat molests a hairpiece in London, and LA will show you six degrees of separation. Everybody’s selfish. Everybody stops in LA.
Cheer up, maybe you’ll form a bond and share the journey. Some of us even earn our wings getting married, while others are just happy racking up frequent flier miles. Some passengers get busy creating new passengers.
“Are we there yet?”
Yeah, not the question any of us really want to hear on this trip.
There is one other constant. We’ll all have baggage to claim. Oh, it may just be a carryon and a laptop, but trust me; there’ll always be baggage. If we’re lucky we won’t get stuck with any one else’s luggage, and luckier still we won’t get our luggage tossed by security.
“Time for the cavity search.”
“But you’re not my dentist!”
So forewarned with all this knowledge, what do we do? Do we book the red eye and fly straight through? Do we hit every stop along the way taking a bite of every culture?
That’s the thing. The journey is ours, how we spend it, is how we work our itinerary. Me, I flew the friendly skies for ten years with MyEx. We had a great time for part of that, and I wouldn’t trade in those tickets for the world.
Some of the journey is turbulent and sometimes we find ourselves flying back through destinations we thought we’d never revisit. We endure snotty stewardesses, bland food, and cramped seats. Sometimes we go first class though, and without those moments in coach, we’d never appreciate the upgrade.
Right now I’m on a pirate leg of my trip. Yeah, it’s straight and solid like, and I like it. She’s got me pegged. Yeah, sorry, some flights you get great movies, other flights you get Heaven’s Gate. You lucky passengers get me. I’m the guy in front of you who can’t decide if he likes his seat reclined or upright.
“I picked a bad time to stop sniffing glue.”
Still despite it all, I love the whole trip. The fact is, I’m in no hurry to get to Australia. And I may not know everybody on the plane, but I know I can count on the guy in 6-A, his flying companion, and a few other people seated around the plane should things get rough. They also know they can count on me.
I love meeting people and sharing travel stories cuz we’re all on this trip together. We can’t change our destinations, but we can make it a better trip for others, and yes my hokey pokey brethren and sisteren, I really do believe that that’s what it’s all about.
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