Month: August 2003

• You punctuate every other sentence with a rousing “Arr!” or another swig of grog;
• Those new pantaloons you’ve been sporting lately sometimes chafe around the top of your peg leg;
• Having run out of naughty words, you’ve switched to teaching sea shanties to the parrot perched atop your shoulder;
• You can say the phrases “pirate’s booty”, “shiver me timbers”, or “avast, ye mateys” with a straight face;
• You tried paying your taxes last year entirely in Spanish doubloons;
• You’re starting to worry that maybe you’ve walked one too many planks or buckled one too many swashes;
• You think you’re actually learning to like having scurvy.

1. What’s the last place you traveled to, outside your own home state/country? I’m not sure I consider Pennsylvania my home state, though I’ve been a year-round resident for more than four years now. The more I think about it, the more I realize I don’t want to settle here permanently. But, that aside, the last place I traveled to from Pennsylvania was a brief trip to New York around the 4th of July weekend. I’m planning another weekend trip for the Labor Day weekend (I miss my parents, but mostly want to see their new puppy again). Then a trip with my parents to see my sister in Baltimore at the end of November. Other than that, I’ve got nothing planned and have been nowhere else in quite some time. A number of fellow cappers have tried to convince me I should join their get-together in San Antonio next month, but the flight and hotel wouldn’t be cheap, and it’s still unclear if more than two or three people I’ve never met — might like to, but have still never met — will be attending. It would be nice to travel somewhere, though.

2. What’s the most bizarre/unusual thing that’s ever happened to you while traveling? I don’t know that it was all that bizarre or unusual, but it was definitely annoyingly memorable. I had spent a weekend at home in New York and was traveling back to Pennsylvania by bus — which amounted to three tickets: one from the New York Port Authority to Philadelphia, one from Philadelphia to Harrisburg, and one from Harrisburg to State College. I arrived in Philadelphia without a problem (a slight delay because of a bomb scare notwithstanding), and sat around patiently waiting for my next bus. Which, somehow, I missed. (Foolishly, I had assumed its arrival or departure would be announced.) Confirming I’d missed the bus with the woman behind the ticket counter, I asked: if I got the next bus to Harrisburg, would there be a later bus to State College I could take? She told me no. (She was wrong, as I discovered later.) So I bought a ticket back to New York, and the next morning I went through the whole process again, this time making sure I was on that bus to Harrisburg. The only upside to all of it was that I got a lot of reading done.

3. If you could take off to anywhere, money and time being no object, where would you go? Well, that’s just the thing: money and time are objects, and that shows no sign of changing any time soon. But, if I could travel anywhere — and my parents have mentioned the possibility of me using their frequent flyer miles — it would be nice to see friends I haven’t seen in awhile (or ever) and to explore different places to which I might like to move. Although, if money were really no object, I’d be very keen to visit Australia. (Even if Farscape isn’t there anymore…)

4. Do you prefer traveling by plane, train or car? I don’t find travel itself all that exciting. A long car trip gets boring, I tend to get airsick (especially during landings), and the only trains I’ve ever ridden have been between Long Island and New York City. I’m much more interested in being somewhere new than with getting there.