Florida Florida Florida!

As social as I feel I have become (and I admit there are limits to that), I remain a homebody. Every excursion out of the house must surmount my natural reluctance to go anywhere. That happens much more now, and the consequences of it not happening reinforce my ever-increasing desire to get out. Even so, an outing across town is one thing; traveling out of town is something else entirely. I generally avoid going anyplace that will keep me from getting back to my own bed in the same day.

The one place I do go with any regularity is within a day's drive, luckily enough. I've become a fond devotee of Greyhound, and so long as I can do things that way, I have no real qualms. It's seedy, sometimes unreliable and never entirely safe, but it's cheap and does not strip away my sense of liberty. It may take seven hours to get somewhere on the highway instead of one, but the only one who can rob you of your dignity in the process is yourself (and many people do avail themselves of that option, which is fun to watch). God, how I do love to travel that way!

As I write this, I anticipate a cross-country flight to take place in less than twenty-four hours. When you read this, it may have happened already. Probably I will have gotten through it, and in the grand scheme of things, without suffering any serious unpleasantness. I can't know that now. I do know that I will have on hand that digital life preserver the laptop, and that I will be joined for most of the way by my father, who is an experienced flyer (and who is frequently wont to express at length the same attitude as I about the subject). With those things, I just may get through it.

The business to be transacted at my destination is not really in question. A dear relative is to be married, and I look forward to that event, to seeing many other seldom-seen relatives, and to setting foot again in beloved Florida. I really cannot bear too much time passing in between visits to that warm, humid and almost painfully alive place. Regrettably, I'm aware of no plans to pass through my father's hometown, but there will likely be at the very least a near-miss (something that had better only happen on the ground and not in the air). Should anything terribly notable happen, I assure you that you will be the first to hear of it.