begin the beguine

My favorite Ducks posed an excellent question in my last update. As I started to write the reply I felt that it warranted it's own blog post, so here it is.

I've lived long enough to try out and experience all kinds of beginnings and think I've gotten a hang of most of them by now. For living like this, I decided guidelines will probably work better than a goal or plan. After reading the Ducks question I gave it some thought and came to the conclusion that three things would dictate where and what I'd be doing in my travels. Well technically it's four, but the three of them fall under the purview of my personal enjoyment. They are the current season, geographic location, and cost of fuel to travel to the next location. However since I'm somewhat new to this I am leaving myself open to the occasional long haul trip for whatever reason. It might be a chance to see something I just read about, an emergency, or even attend the occasional secretive beagle world domination meeting. My girl told me I'm one of the chosen ones who will be spared when the Beagle Overlords finally take over. So yeah, as I was saying. If I was returning to a place already explored my plans would be a little more rigid to save time for other things. I tend to base each situation, or beginning in this case, on it's own merits.

While writing this I had a few flashbacks that are kind of related and decided to share. My parents are and have always been your typical tour guide/bus kind of tourists. Growing up, my sister and I were forced into schedules to see and do things whenever on a family vacation. They always felt more like work than fun and/or relaxation time and we absolutely hated it. The worst part was that they always picked the most boring and safest of things to do. Not for fear of anything happening to us, they're just into that kind of stuff. The one memory which stands out in my mind and infuriates me to this day was our trip to the Grand Canyon. We traveled all that way and only spent ten minutes looking over the side at it. We didn't hike or even take a donkey ride down into it. Ten freaking minutes, and then we left. We didn't even spend the night in the park, and instead spent it in a motel outside the park. Leave it to my father to find the one and only Chinese restaurant for miles near it. This meant we didn't get to eat anything new or different. I began opting out of family vacations once I was old enough to do so. These past experiences laid the foundation for how and why I chose a more adventurous path when exploring new things in life.

Thanks Mom & Dad.