Planning a trip is half the fun. I am not an overly zealous planner, but I do enjoy knowing where I am staying and how I am getting somewhere. I am currently in the process of preparing to travel throughout the world next fall and I am running into some difficulties that I have not experienced before.

Visas: Americans are lucky in terms of visas. We can go virtually anywhere in the world and wave the flag as we walk through customs while the poor citizens of everywhere else stand in line to be strip searched and interrogated. There are a few countries I am heading to next fall that require a visa: India, China, and Brazil. The price for a two week visa in those countries, nearly 500 dollars.

Baggage: What do I do with all the stuff I buy? I am going on a four month long trip and the airlines are all switching to a 1 checked bad limit on domestic flights. I have, for now, solved this problem by deciding to take two empty bags with me and only enough clothes to get by until I can make it to China (three weeks after the Olympics). If everything goes as planned I will be dressed from head to toe in Beijing 2008 gear for the better part of 2008. I assume I will get a good deal but who knows.

Vaccinations: I truly do not want to die. With this in mind, I have decided to get vaccinated against nearly every disease possible. In the last week I have had Yellow fever, malaria, Hepatitis A, Polio, whooping cough, tetanus, typhoid fever and what ever else the doctor decided to inject me with while I was not looking. My arm hurts.

There are lots of difficulties that come along with travel. If it were easy everyone would do it. The truth of it is, going anywhere that you are not accustomed with is hard and maybe not even fun. Seeing new people and culture is why you go, not to have fun. In retrospect every trip was a good time, yet, in the situation feelings of being an outsider and confusion are the only things you feel. The planning is difficult, and I am sure the trip will take me outside my comfort zone, yet, it is just that experience I am seeking.

Going somewhere is kind of like mowing the yard when you are a kid. You don’t always want to do it, but you do. You can never get the mower started and it seems like half of the time is spent getting ready to mow. Mowing is hard, hot, and there are bugs. When its all over though there is a glass of lemonade at the end and a nap to be taken.

Truckers are an interesting bread of people. There is no set persona for being a truckers but in my experience you can usually pick out a few characteristics that define them all. After I graduated from high school I had the opportunity to ride with my friend Justin and his cousin (the truck driver) to Maine and back. I had nothing going on so I accepted the invitation and we were on the road.

First of all it is worth mentioning that a semi is built for two people to ride; having three means someone is constantly laying in the bed behind the cab. I discovered that was going to be my post on the trip. Not many people can truthfully say they slept on a drive from Wisconsin to Maine, I’m sadly one of the few who can.

While I did sleep a good amount of the trip, I was able to inundate myself within the trucker community for some pieces of the trip. I remember getting home and my mom asking me what truckers were really like, I specifically remember responding “Not as messed up as Joyride or Road House and not as fun as Convoy or Smokey and the Bandit”. To this day that is as good as I can come up with.

I remember on one specific instance running into a group of truckers who were debating inside a truck stop café in Ohio. The topic was politics and I was pleased, being a politically savvy person myself. We sat down at the counter and ordered coffee when I began to listen in to what was being said. Expecting the discussion to be focused on a recent topic, I was surprised to here them debating the Presidential election…in 2000. One gentleman commented that “Gore would have just let the faggots run wild,” where another man defended the former Vice President of the United States when he remarked that “Bush is letting them go at it anyway”. A strong defense on Gore’s behalf. When the discussion turned to war one man began to comment that the United States had been attacked by “commie Muslims” a faction of the Islamic religion I did not know existed. Another spoke up and said “whether you believe in the War or not, Iraq had to pay for what they’d done”.

I don’t believe all truckers are dumb. The one driving my truck seemed to have gotten us from point A to point B with little difficulty. What scares me about the whole situation is that at the end of the trip I came to the conclusion that I trusted this faction of the population to deliver my bananas and auto parts….I just don’t want them to vote.

Every time I am abroad I end up explaining the difference between America and Americans to some anti-American drunk at a pub. I enjoy doing so, yet, before this trip I really had no clue what I was talking about.

Growing up in Wisconsin is an interesting experience. Often children emerge from their upbringing with a strong work ethic, a sense of honesty, pride, and if lucky, an unaccented voice. Another byproduct of a typical Wisconsin upbringing seems to be family vacations. Unlike the vacations of others in the country, it appears as if nearly every Wisconsin family embarks on two pilgrimages: Disney World and the Black Hills.
The two places couldn’t be farther apart in location or substance; yet, like the millions of Muslims who embark on hajj to Mecca every year, the Wisconsin family loads up the car annually to visit a staple of their culture while rolling down the interstate in the tire marks of our forefathers.
Growing up it seemed that everyone I knew had embarked on one of these journeys, if not both. I knew my time would come but at the age of 12 I was beginning to wonder if my Illinois heritage would take over the Wisconsin urge to travel to the most worthless of places. My fears were unfounded and in the summer between my 6th and 7th grade years my family decided to visit the Black Hills of the Dakotas. People often ask what is in the Black Hills and the answer is simply…nothing. Nothing at all. This coming from a person who is in love with nature and serenity; the rocks, water, and sand often provide more joy to me in travel then do the people I meet or the commercialized places I visit. Still, there is nothing. In case you haven’t made the excursion yourself a typical trip would go something like this:

Day 1: Leave
Day 2 and 3: Drive through Minnesota (stop at Mall of America if lucky)
Day 4 and 5: Visit Mount Rushmore and Wall Drug
Day 6 and 7: End up lost in Montana
Day 7- on: Try to get home

There is no lesson to be learned or messaged to be gained from this post, there is simply nothing to do. I remember vividly sitting in the car for hours on end listening to the radio (until reception ran out in South Dakota). Mount Rushmore looks exactly as you might imagine it and unless you have a resounding urge to buy an overpriced t-shirt or shot glass with the landmark on it, there is really no reason to go.

After our two weeks of fun and excitement in the West, my family never did go to Disney World. Of course I was depressed but other stuff came along and I went other places. Finally last year, at the age of 20, I had the chance to visit my lost childhood dream of castles and fairy tales. I went down to Florida with some friends and we decided to go to Disney for a day. Not really interested anymore in the place, I spent an hour or so walking around the parking lot and what I saw didn’t surprise me at all. Wisconsin, Minnesota, Iowa, Michigan, Indiana: all Midwest plates and every car was full of luggage and coolers. Nothing had changed.

Maybe the families of the Midwest feel a need to educate their children on the many people and cultures of our country. Or possibly people actually want to visit Disney World and the Hills of the west. I don’t know. Yet, I believe that a long time ago in Wisconsin a man stood up and said (probably sometime in December) “I’m cold, were going to Florida as soon as the snow melts”. A man on the other side of the street probably said something similar but decided to visit the west instead. Keeping up with the Jones, the next year everyone went to one of the two locations until someone went to both, then of course everyone had to. I believe the rest is history.

Let us make it the call of our generation to change vacation destinations. To where? Who knows. Anywhere but the Hills or Disney will do.

I love meeting new people. Sure, there are lots of people around the world who are mean, unfriendly, or the worst, stupid; but I love new people. Humans, in general, have a unique ability to gauge each other for likable and unlikeable characteristics within minutes of meeting, and it is that ability that has made me some great friends and kept me out of some bad situations. I was in Maine two years ago camping with four of my friends who were more interested in drinking. I, of course, was not opposed to the occasional drink so we stopped into a bar on the first night we were there and sat down for a beer. I, being 19 at the time, was slightly worried but my hesitance was unfounded and we were served promptly. I started talking to this kid who looked, acted, and talked similar to me, another trait of human behavior. I was telling him why we were there and what our plans were when he suggested that he come along with us because he knew the country well. At this point, I could find nothing wrong with this person: he seemed smart, educated, and fun. I was fine with it and so was everyone else, so we were off.

We were planning to be out for around 8 days but had no definite plans. We packed the food, sleeping bags and any other items we could fit in our packs and we were off. My new friend, Jake, packed very light. I saw this as a sign that he knew what he was doing and knew just exactly what to take, I was wrong. On a camping trip that I had been preparing for nearly a year, I, at the last minute decided to bring along someone who was supposed to be knowledgeable of the area. This is a list of things that Jake “forgot” to bring:

Clothes
Water Bottle
Food
Bug Spray
Socks
Extra Shoes
Sunscreen
Toilet Paper

In fact, Jake saw himself to be such a great woodsman that he was going to forage for food. I knew it was a dumb idea, but I stopped caring and let him go. Jake returned to camp a few hours later with hundreds of red berries that he called “strawberries”. I, not being stupid, knew that these were not strawberries but again, I didn’t care, and let him eat them.

The 7 mile hike back to the car would have been fine if it were not 3 AM. The drive to the hospital took only 2 hours, mostly, because Jake didn’t know exactly where it was. Sparing a great deal of detail, Jake had eaten some sort of poisonous berry and had developed 5 ulcers (burned holes) in his stomach.

Meeting new people is a great experience but don’t always trust them. Someone may act like you, look like you, and nearly be you, but that could still be a poisonous berry eating, ill prepared survivalist, crazy nut.