Everywhere at once and Nowhere at all

Perhaps the greatest joy of not knowing where you'll end up is the mental state in which anywhere is possible, though you have yet to leave home. For the past few weeks I have fantasized experiences in countries as diverse as Finland and Egypt, or Luxembourg and Moldova. In my mind, I travel to each place, experience the wonders I choose to give it, and then quickly travel through a dream cloud to the next country. But all great dreams eventually end - and a decision regarding this years' destination must be made.

Last year my father and I went to Portugal. We flew to London Heathrow on Virgin Atlantic, took a bus to Gatwick, and asked the EasyJet desk where they were flying that day with two extra seats. We chose Faro, a small city on the southern coast of the Iberian Peninsula, and spent three days wandering the Algarve region of Portugal by rented Fiat.

We created a set of rules to guide that decision to go to Portugal, and those rules still apply to this trip. If at all possible, all four rules will be adhered to, but the lowest number rule trumps each below it if it comes to violating any of them.

Our rules for our spontaneous adventure are:

1. We must travel to a place that neither of us have ever been before.
2. We must travel to a country that neither of us have ever been before.
3. The place must be interesting -- it seems this wouldn't be difficult, but if our only choices were a small backwater town in Belarus or Paris... Well, we'd go to Belarus, of course!
4. We should not speak the official language of the destination if possible.

But I digress.

I wish we could just go everywhere, but we only have a week. And while we must make a decision where to go, we can do that tomorrow, when we get to London.

We left my home in Westport around 4:15, and sat in horrible traffic for 1.5 hours, the aftermath of a bus accident that killed over a dozen Chinese tourists headed back to Chinatown from Mohegan Sun earlier tonight. We actually passed under the bridge with the bus on it...

Our flight was at 7:30. We arrived at JFK International Airport at 6:30. Supposed to get there 2 hours before for int'l flights...

We shot through ticketing, cut the line at security (being 10 minutes from the gates closing for the plane, 40 minutes pre-takeoff), and ran to Gate B28. We arrived with 4 minutes to spare.

We found the plane to be half full, which meant we could forego our row 53 seats for rows 40 and 41-- yea, my dad and I each got 4 seats to ourselves.

Virgin treats its passengers well, with TVs in every seat-back and a pillow and blanket provided. I had four of each.

As I write this we are about to take off, and I find myself looking forward, not to the moment of truth at the EasyJet desk tomorrow, but to the in-flight movies I will get to choose from and from the full spread of seats I will convert into a bed shortly after takeoff.