Saturday, August 28, 2010

I Didn't Just Dream That Up

I travel a lot and I usually do it alone. And because I'm alone when I travel I have no one to share the memories with (good or bad) and reminisce about that one time I waited in the airport for forever because my friends didn't get the message I was coming or that other time when I barely made it on my flight and then got in business class or the time when I fell on top of a bunch of Dutch people in the Amsterdam double-decker train and smashed them all and then couldn't get up because my bag was on top of me and I laughed so hard I cried.

After a while my travel stories seem more like a dream than reality. The memories float off into that no-man's land where reality intermingles with forgetfulness and becomes an insubstantial haze that can't quite be explained to anyone much less be fully remembered myself. And part of me begins to wonder if I'm just in a hospital bed somewhere hopelessly lost forever in a deep coma and my brain is conjuring up a nice, little, somewhat over-eventful life to help pass the time.

The last time I traveled I made a video to prove to myself now and forever that I didn't just dream up my trip to Japan and Korea. IT REALLY HAPPENED. I was there. I sat in that plane. I landed and walked through the airport. I rode the trains and the buses. I breathed the air and at the food. No hopeless coma for me. This is real.

And here it is, just for you, to prove that I really do go places when I disappear for weeks at a time.

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