My youngest daughter wants something none of the other kids ever do, to be surprised. If I tell her that we are going to go on a date, her first request is always the same, “don’t tell me where we are going, I want it to be a surprise.” We will spend the next hour playing a preprogrammed game where she ‘wonders’ where we might be going….”but don’t tell me!” As we climb into the car and start to drive, she starts looking for clues. I can see the little motor running behind her eyes as she notices that the street we are heading down has a Mexican place we all…well we just drove past that. It must be somewhere different. She delights in mystery and anticipation. Not so many years ago, we all did.
Whether we wanted to or not.
I still have a little PTSD from my childhood as my parents would frantically drive down a road they’d never traveled with nothing more than a recommendation we stay somewhere on this street, and definitely don’t stay on a different one. Without the internet, my mom’s ability to notice if the word “no” was lit just above the neon proclamation of vacancy became our only indicator of hope and an incredible annoyance to my father as he was working to avoid crashing the car while trying to overcome her incompetence. Without a travel website and countless reviews about weird smells and mattresses that are only slightly better than a bale of straw, our entire decision was made based upon the fact that a room was available, the street out front didn’t appear to be filled with murderous crack heads, and the guy at the front desk seemed trustworthy…and just told us they have “nice rooms.” Every moment of the trip was just like this. Our decision on where to eat was based on random advice from a very overweight man in the hotel hot tub. His only “resume” was the fact that he displaced a lot of water when climbed in and sat just two feet away from my mom. Besides the one big thing, that was the draw to this city in the first place, every step from here out was filled with wonder and mystery. As my dad would wrestle with a parking culture that made no sense to him, we would finally find a spot to stop and head into the City. At this moment, we have no clue if we just donated our car to group of street thugs, if the train museum on the brochure in the hotel lobby is even open, and if my overconfident dad will be able to remember where he parked the car. With nothing more than mystery in front of us, we set out on an adventure. Every experience was new and unexpected.
Funny thing about the old way of traveling is that you also did not have a guarantee it was going to be a good one. No smart phones means you don’t know that an horrific storm is on it’s way and all the outside stuff will be ripped to shreds in thirty minutes, you don’t know that the “gem” of a restaurant your uncle Ted recommend based on his travels was actually a front for the Italian mob that the Feds closed down last week due to a double homicide, you don’t know that the picture you saw in a book is twenty years old and the place you just walked four miles to see is a dilapidated reminder of someone else’s failed dream. And, because you don’t know any of this stuff, you find yourself sitting outside a gas station next to a dumpster that, based upon the smell, must contain a decaying human body. Dad is inside talking with a man that just learned English about fun stuff to do with a family of five on a budget and your mom appear to be crying because she didn’t want to see the birthplace of Neil Diamond anyways. What flowed out of the failed attempts was often the stuff we still talk about today. When it is decided that “today is beach day” and nothing, even the apparent tropical storm that has caused a run on plywood, is going to stop us from attempting to grill our hotdogs in forty mile wind gusts…because we don’t have a backup plan and this hellhole of a beach is two hours away from the place we were originally going to go…but Dad got a tip from some jilted fool at the ice cream place that this is where the locals go. And, according to my mom’s under-her-breath rumblings, the locals are all inbred serial killers who will probably follow us back to our hotel and… well you get the point, Dad’s place isn’t quite as nice as Mom’s place.
The internet has ruined all of this. Now when we go on a trip, we spend several weeks researching all the options. Before we get to our hotel, we’ve seen the inside of our room, reserved a parking space, and know exactly how to get there. Online reviews help steer us clear of all the restaurants that will help us force us to loose a few pounds while we “enjoy” more of the hotel room. We don’t spend any time sitting outside of a place wondering if they are actually going to open, because we know all of that before we drive there. We don’t get lost anymore, and interactions with inner-city convenience stores have all but ceased, because we just don’t need their advice like we used to. All the unsolicited advice given to us by the….very European…people at the side of the hotel pool can now be verified.
While I plan to continue to take full advantage of all the modern technology that Al Gore so graciously gave to society, I also feel like we would be benefitted from a surprise now and then. A few years ago, my wife and I traveled to Bend Oregon with nothing more than our mountain bikes and time. We did a little research on our phones, but we also tried to just enjoy a place we didn’t know. I think it was on the third day of our trip that we bought a new board game and sat in an old pub we happened upon and learned to play it. Several hours passed while we enjoyed this eclectic old bar, the locals that came and went, and nothing officially planned for the rest of the day. While we were there a random man recommended that go and hike Smith Rock. So, the next morning, on the recommendation of a complete stranger we pointed our car towards another city and drove to one of the coolest hikes I’ve ever done.
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