2020: A Year Of Travel

Before 2020, I spent over a decade traveling to many places across the globe – via plane (even in first class!), train (Acela, Amtrak, Eurostar . . .), subway (NY subway, London Tube . . .), boats (oh, that cruise on the Italian lakes in Summer 2019), and countless Ubers, Lyfts, black cabs, taxis, and car services.

But this year, my travels were of a more prosaic kind.  We traveled more than most people, but our conveyances were vastly different.  They consisted of multiple moving vans and carload after carload of household items that we packed, and repacked, and unpacked in our personal cars.  2020 for my family was a year of moving to and from different states, buying and selling different properties, and reducing our more complicated lives in three states to living in just one.  As I type this, we’ve signed the contract to sell our last home, and we are grateful to be in one house at last after years of traveling and commuting across the country and across the world.

Instead of going to Paris this year, we hosted garage sales and posted stuff on Craig’s List and Next Door.  Rather than going to Napa Valley, we ate at home and with a lot of pizza delivery while we opened boxes.  And while we managed to get in one trip to New York before COVID shut the country down, we played The Met Edition of Monopoly -- https://store.metmuseum.org/met-monopoly-80053167 -- for the rest of the year.

And along the way, we found the things that reminded us of our travels: a Tardis ornament for the Christmas tree that we bought in Scotland; a handblown bottle from Jamestown, Virginia; a misplaced bottle of Pinot Noir from New Zealand (who knew we had one more!); a camera of undeveloped film from a trip to Zimbabwe; a magnet from Key West; and a coffee table book featuring pictures of Kuwait.  There are still boxes to be unpacked, travel remnants still to be discovered, and for that we are thankful that moving brought us back to those memories.  In 2021, we hope to be on the road again, and not in a truck rental, but we will continue to love in our home what reminds us of the world beyond our front door.

-Laura Flippin | Wheels Up