Breaking bad.....

I can break rules now, too.

Well, I've always been a bit of a rule breaker, I think. It's just that now, as an "older" person, I can get away with it a little easier.

You know how it goes.  Younger people think we're non-entities anyway, so no one cares if we snap a few proclamations along the way, mainly because they're not paying attention to us any more.

What fun we can have during all this anonymity, right?

Turn my cell phone off as soon as I enter the library? I don't think so. Surely they mean they don't want to hear phones ringing all up and down the stacks, but my business depends on customers reaching me, even if I happen to make a stop to check out a book. So how about just setting it on vibrate? That's one of the delights of self-employment; I can actually have a life during the day, and my phone doesn't need to be turned off to make everyone happy.

Or "don't cross the solid white line" as I attempt to get from one side of the river to the other on the three-mile long bridge near my home. That would work fine IF drivers had much sense at all, which appears to be not only debatable but impossible. Maybe they're all under the age of 30 and learned to drive playing video games. So, in their minds, everything is a drag race, and no one EVER lets another car merge in to their lane, right? Apparently not.

Therefore, the white line and I are invisible to each other, as I cruise alongside the lane I really want to be in, and then I merge over when it's safe and I can manage it. That's the way the whole thing is supposed to work, if ONLY we assisted each other just a tad. 

I realize that breaking rules that also happen to be laws is a risky undertaking. I can personally attest to that one.

The trooper who pulled me over one day for speeding (on wet pavement to boot) asked me very politely if there was a particular reason I was exceeding the speed limit by about 20 miles per hour. I smiled, he smiled back, and I owned up to the fact that I had broken the law. But that's another mark of aging to perfection.

We know what we're doing while we're doing it. And as I break the rule, I implicity choose the consequences, too.

But life is a lot more fun now, I can tell you that.

If I'd observed all the rules, I'd never have got anywhere.
Marilyn Monroe

Driving into the sunset.....

Traveling takes on a different perspective as we age. Some people sell their homes, buy huge RVs, and hit the road. Some become cruise kings and queens, sailing dozens of times every year. And, let's face it, many people today can't afford to go anywhere.

But for me, the main thing to know is that I don't fly any more. It's not that I'm afraid to fly, which makes my reasoning not quite logical, but it won't be the first (or last) time people look at me with that quizzical, sideways squint that means "This chick is a little crazy, right?"

It's that flying is boring and way too much hassle these days. Heightened security, tiny seats, no food, overpriced drinks, the fact that everyone is cranky....it's all just too much for me at this point in my life. Throw in the chance that you might sit in a closed airplane, on the ground, for hours before you even take off, and I'm just not willing to face it. We have become pawns in the grinding gears of bureaucracy in far too many arenas as it is....I don't need this one, too.

What this means, of course, is that I drive everywhere I need to go. (So far that hasn't meant motoring to California or other such distant locales.....I'll think about that if it happens.) I plot my route on my GPS and on the Internet, try to make sure my atlas is in my car, get my music and books on CD ready, and off I go. I enjoy actually seeing where I'm going and the freedom to stop whenever I want to. Someday I'm going to get in my car and just drive, with no idea where I'm going. Just to see where I end up.

Yes, I know that this means the whole process takes much longer, and therein lies the lack of logic, considering flying is a mere inconvenience to me and not a fear. I have no defense; it's just the way it is.

And to add more illogic to the scenario,  I have to admit that my stamina for travel is less these days. Like today.....I am sitting in a hotel room not more than 10 minutes from the Gulf of Mexico, but I've been too tired to get myself there. I can practically smell the salt in the air, but this bed is soft and comfy, and my room has a balcony that allows me to watch the sunset through the palm trees outside. Maybe I wouldn't have been so tired if I had just flown here, boredom be damned.

My days of "Got to get up and DO something!" are long gone, too. Hotel rooms have become much more comfortable, I think, with pillow top mattresses, a real desk with wireless Internet, sofas and coffee tables, and happy hour in the bar. Sure, I would like to get over to the beach, but I'm pretty comfortable where I am, too. Maybe I can live here.

So many things change as we age, and I've found that traveling is one that has changed the most for me. No more airplanes, hitting the road instead, and the willingness to just sit and enjoy wherever it is I find myself. Doesn't sound too bad, does it?



I feel about airplanes the way I feel about diets. It seems to me that they are wonderful things for other people to go on. 

~Jean Kerr, "Mirror, Mirror, on the Wall," The Snake Has All the Lines, 1958