60ish days to go and the Inevitability of Murphy's Law
A month ago, while hanging out around the house on the weekend with my brother, sister and Mark, I started to blurt out repeatedly, "When in Rome." Mark has a lot of patience and my siblings' have this uncanny ability to easily zone me out. This obnoxious "When in Rome" tick of mine continued on for a couple of hours until finally Mark looked at me.... "What's with saying 'When in Rome!'?" After a brief moment of internal day dreaming, I giggled then shared, "I guess I'm just looking forward to saying that...when we're in Rome."
Trying a new Gelato everyday and us spending afternoons sitting at little tables outside trattorias on hilly picturesque streets where the sun is shining and we don't need to anticipate or worry about another work week but instead, focus our attention on what kind of sites we'd like to see for that day and where we want to eat next. It's all, entirely too appealing. With the vast changes in weather this year, I have a feeling I was a bit confused too, early Spring Fever = an anxious, childish me reciting over and over again, "When in Rome." It doesn't even make sense, does it?
As our trip edges closer to reality, the excitement that's shared between both Mark and I has begun to rise up like a volcano about to erupt. We both tend to be simplistic in our way of celebrating our excitement. A simple smile or queer look between us usually says it all in day to day life. We usually tend to walk quicker or run faster when excited, I think this is why we're so compatible. But this trip, that we've been planning for about a year and put off a few months to save more money has become a silent monster in our lives. I think we both are gonna pee our pants the night before our first flight.
We recently spent our last Friday night happy hour at a place very dear our hearts- It's called Prepps. If you know Prepps, you're bound to have some kind of story(ies) and the memories of this place will forever bring a smile to my face. After 30 plus years, it's now closed. It was our version of Cheers, our place to go where we would visit one of our favorite people, Laura, Marky's older sister whose encapsulates fun and a girl after my own heart. It was the place where it was acceptable to enter the bar and howl at friends and be a part of a wolfpack and get away with it. It was the place where you just felt at home and after a long work week, you'd be comforted in the fact that you were surrounded by good people and camaraderie among friends was the norm. Many a nights I've spent whipping my hair back and forth and having dance off's, celebrating birthdays, engagements, New Year's, new jobs, eating popcorn for dinner, playing rowdy games of darts and sharing theories of aliens on Earth. The song, Find Me Somebody to Love by Queen, the unique smell of the bathrooms, inside jokes, nicknames and the smiles on friends' faces really encompasses Prepps to me. At this last and final happy hour at Prepps, we spent time sharing with our friends our upcoming plans of wearing high tech, pricey underwear that you can wear for weeks on end and not stink. Our friend Kate's response was, "What, are you hiking the Oregon Trail or something? hahahaha" I also got especially animated when describing the black, merino dress I plan to wear a majority of the trip because of its stank free features and how I can wear it out to a club or hike up a mountain in it. Marky and I have full fledge- plunged our way into trying to pack for functionality and packing as little as possible. We have spent countless hours looking for advice online, read a book on Vagabonding, mapped out different routes, and rented several lonely planet and other travel books from the library. This Christmas was pretty sweet- we got ourselves a Nikon camera and we got some key items for our trip.
My Dad used to say, "You can bring a horse to water, but you can't put a dress on a mean truck driver." Few people know this version of the phrase because my Dad made it up along with other odd sayings. It's slightly corny, totally random and contributes to my odd sense of humor. What is my point of bringing up my Dad's saying? Well, I think it's really that when it comes to planning a trip where Murphy's Law is bound to come into play along the way, you can purchase your Ex-Officio, non-stink, heat resistant, breathable undies but whose to say it's ok to wear undies for weeks on end just because you plan to backpack around the world? Just because you think you're ahead of the game by getting these travel savvy undies, it doesn't mean it's going to work out the way you want it to. You might end up forgetting those undies in a hostel in Barcelona or your theory of wearing them all the time might prove you wrong and you might morph those undies into the stinkiest pair of undies ever! You might start to notice that people back away slowly from you when you walk into a room. That's a sign...get a few more pairs (whisper voice) So, in essence, it's probably an added bonus to have a sense of humor when you try to plan and your plans fall by the way side. C'est la vie.
So, when we're in Rome, and its 95 degrees and Mark and I have our Ex-Officio undies on, I wonder if we will be able to spread their wear-ability all the way down to the Amalfi Coast. It's not the Oregon Trail but we are packing as little as possible and doing our research. I hope we are able to find a friend like Kate aka Nate along the way to bring some sense to our ways. If we don't find a Prepps somewhere, that's OK, this trip isn't about comfort, its about discovery and the unknown.
