Socks. Check! Clean underwear. Check! Toothbrush. Check! Covid vaccination card. Check!

I am looking over my king size bed, which at this moment is completely covered by a wide assortment of travel items, ranging from my telescoping hiking stick to extra eyeglasses. I spot health-related items, toiletries, a bright red headband, gym shorts, one custom suit and dress shirt. Sacks and bags of varying sizes. I have many more items, but, fortunately, I have a written list I can consult.

My newly purchased packing cubes – lime green, zippered, mesh rectangular containers of different sizes–have arrived. I tore the package open like a kid on Christmas morning. I can hardly wait to start playing with them. One clever feature I’ve noticed is a display window big enough for a standard size index card. You use the card to record the contents that you’ve packed inside the case and there you go, easy to find stuff in your suitcase.

My initial impulse is to, “Let the packing begin,” but then I think better of it as I spot Lola the pup ambling over to me alongside the bed. She is excitedly wagging her tail, which I interpret as a signal that she is intending very soon to jump on the bed to wreak puppy havoc with my stuff. Before I can pack, I will need to shoo her from the bedroom.

***

I am invited to a wedding in Palm Springs. The groom is the older son of Sherry and Tom, who are two of my closest friends, and I have known him and his brother since they were little guys. Come tomorrow, I’ll be meeting another close friend, Eric, who is a high school pal and my former business partner. Unlike myself, Eric will be flying direct to Palm Springs. Eric has been friends with Sherry even longer than me. Eric, Sherry and I are charter members of the imaginary Frazier Thomas Band, but Tom came along a bit later.

It didn’t take much research for me to determine that Palm Springs is a very pricey destination for a wedding. By the time I have this figured out, Eric’s wife, Julie, already has decided the event is going to be too rich for her blood and so politely demurs. She’ll be staying home. I declined the wedding invitation “for guest” owing primarily to the fact Robyn won’t know anybody else in attendance, including Sherry and Tom, the groom, or Eric.  Robyn also doesn’t know my first wife, who I’m sure plans to attend the event with her current husband. Plus, as I say, Palm Springs is a pricey wedding destination. Eric and I will split one pricey hotel room.

However, since I’ll already be on the West Coast, I decide I might as well continue westward all the way to Hawaii. Hawaii! Visions of palm trees, lush vegetation, dramatic volcanic green mountains, white sands, and white capped waves are flooding my brain. In my mind’s eye, I am the winning contestant on the Price Is Right, and the deep-voiced announcer is telling me what I’ve just won.

Indeed, gazing up into what seems like a permanently gray colored sky, trying hard not to slip or fall on the nearly invisible icy patches dotting the sidewalk, treading lightly to sidestep the accumulated heaps of dirty snow and standing cold water that block many pedestrian crossings, I’m already starting to feel like a lucky prize winner just imagining how good it will feel to shed my heavy clothing for at least a short while.
 
***

And I enjoy planning trips. When things go smoothly, smart and careful trip planning can be a very satisfying experience. Robyn says she has been impressed observing my planning skills. Time will tell, I suppose, but we’re off to a good start given that my Hawaiian travel plan includes traveling to Hawaii with Robyn as my companion.

***

I love to travel. Since Lee died, I have taken a few weekend getaways, a couple of quick jaunts, occasional overnighters, spontaneous and irreverent escapes, one Vegas junket, and various day excursions. However, my upcoming trip is feeling like the first real vacation I am taking without her.

For many years, Lee listened to me patiently while I outlined my grandiose travel plans, always based on solid research. I like undertaking a challenging but practical research project. My travel research also provided fodder for pleasant daydreams on cold days of traveling to exotic places. My travel plans typically were focused on foreign destinations, selected by me as much for being relatively inexpensive as compared with destinations here inside the United States, as for their good weather, mountain scenery, beaches, forests and diverse cultures and languages. I am sure Lee found some of my travelogues to be too pedagogic, or droning, even tedious, but, if so, she always managed to humor me. Yet, as Lee’s own happy notion of retirement started to come into sharper focus for her, I could sense her genuine and growing enthusiasm for adventuring together into the wider world.

Unfortunately, Lee got cancer. Lee’s cancer progressed despite treatment, eventually causing her to retire earlier than even she had planned. The cancer changed. It metastasized. Lee never got better. And we never got to travel together to any of the wonderful places we had been dreaming about during all the years together.

***

If I think about the many places Lee and I still managed to visit, including our travels together long before we ever got married, I can now see that the very activity of travel helped reveal to us how compatible and comfortable we functioned as a couple. Travel indirectly provided the impetus, first, for our decision to live together, and later, our commitment to marry for life. Thinking back in time, I realize it’s already been several years since I last traveled on holiday with a good woman.

***

My current plan is to meet up with Robyn in L.A. on Sunday, after first attending the post-wedding luncheon Sherry and Tom are hosting in Palm Springs for their well-heeled guests. Several months back, when Robyn and I first initiated a travel plan, we couldn’t understand why the only available hotel room within reasonable distance of the airport appeared to be an independently-owned flea bag of a motel, which shall forever remain nameless.

Now, I wouldn’t go so far as to say the place looked downright seedy, but at best it might have been minimally sufficient for one night. From a few grainy photos, the place looked okay if, say, your tastes run to film noir decor. I could imagine unlocking the door latch, and leaving our room with a plastic bucket to fetch ice from the loud dispenser located at the far end of a dark and dingy hallway, or else a machine hidden behind an unattended reception desk in a shabby lobby with two or three worn chairs. I can see a  single light bulb flickering as I nervously wait for the lobby elevator door with my ice bucket. A small time grifter in league with a rough gambler and his lady of the night suddenly emerges from the shadows behind me, gives a sidelong glance my way, slows down, but then slowly saunters by. 

Only much later did we realize that Sunday is going to be Super Bowl Sunday in L.A. This is the explanation for the scarcity of good hotel accommodations.

As I recall, it was the poet Robert Burns, who pointed out that the best laid plans of mice and men often go awry. We hardly had completed making our time-sensitive and complicated multi-destination flight arrangements when American Airlines promptly canceled our return flight home, forcing us to scramble for additional overnight accommodations in L.A. on the back end of the trip, causing other dominos to fall elsewhere. Despite these glitches, our overall travel plan remains solid.

In fact, just this past week Sherry confirmed to me that, because she and Tom have decided to stay in Palm Springs through the weekend, Robyn and I can spend Sunday evening in their townhouse in lovely Marinae Del Rey, a short distance from the Pacific Ocean. Almost needless to say, I have canceled our reservation at the Sin City Motel. I view Sherry’s 11th hour offer as a harbinger of pending good fortune. And by this I don’t simply mean that I will soon be enjoying sunny, warm weather, gorgeous scenery, tropical flora, and pounding surf, but, more importantly, the opportunity at long last to spend quality time with another good woman.

***

While I get out of Dodge, I will be taking a hiatus from my writing duties here. This is going to be my last post for at least the next few weeks, however, I plan to return with new stories. In my absence, I hear Soaring Spirits might decide to reprint a couple pieces. Meanwhile, as we say here in the islands, “a hui hou kakou.”