Jonny Numb

I don’t mind air travel – maybe because I’ve driven to places like South Carolina, Illinois, Pittsburgh, Montreal, and across the Death Race 2000-style highways that feed through Philadelphia and New Jersey, and once you’ve achieved the Zen of Repetition that accompanies such harrowing journeys, it takes a lot to faze one’s travel sensibilities.

So the vessel isn’t what worries me. If anything, what I hate most is having to get up and climb over a couple people (“excuse me, excuse me”) to walk down the aisle to take a piss.

(Jon, maybe you should mention you’re heading to the UK on October 12 for a ten-day guided tour of England, Scotland, and Wales. Okay!)

My S.O. has been to Scotland before; I’ve never been to the UK.

So this will be a brand-new experience for me – something we’ve talked about for years, but finally acted upon in early 2024. (Our last real vacation was to Iceland in 2018.)

We both like guided tours. Transportation, lodging, and some meals are included. Even more so, we appreciate not having to create structure during the planning phase of a vacation (or on the spot once at our destination).

Some carefree couples may be comfortable getting a plane ticket, renting a car, and doing a self-guided thing. That’s not us.

With less than 48 hours before our flight leaves, I have (for the most part) shed a lot of the pre-trip anxiety that permeated my pores for the better part of a year. My therapist tells me I have to tell myself “better stories,” and she’s not wrong – she’s been on the receiving end of my hypothetical tales of woe, which I won’t bore you with here.

I feel a sense of relief about our next-door neighbors who’ll be taking care of our cats, which was one of my biggest concerns. (They’re “cat people” too, which helps.)

Now is more a matter of making sure we meet the spatial requirements (number of bags; measurements of bags; weight of bags – all that mathematical stuff that drives me nutty to this day) and don’t forget anything important while we strategize what to pack.

So there’s also a sense of relief that the timeliness of the trip has flipped the lever in my mind over to Vacation Mode at last. It has changed my perception from one of worry to just let go, man – it’ll be what it’ll be; try to enjoy yourself.

And I’ll admit I’m now distracted in the same way my preteen mind grew excited during the last week of school, when they’d pack the student body into the auditorium, show us a recent movie (the dialog speed always slightly off), and then send us home after a well-earned half-day.

I want to thank the UK folks I reached out to on Twitter and Facebook for suggestions of things to check out – you know who you are! Not sure we’ll have the opportunity to see anything outside of our itinerary, but I’ve at the very least noted them for future journeys.

And it looks like I’ll be meeting up with a longtime Twitter/podcasting pal during our stay. For those in the know, here’s a hint:

On a superficial level, I’m most looking forward to visiting Fopp Covent Garden and HMV (love that physical media!), and the Shakespaw Cat Café in London (we have reservations for the latter, but timed entry doesn’t guarantee admission). Someday, maybe we’ll have the chance to visit George, the Internet-famous Stourbridge Station cat.

So…if you wonder why I mysteriously disappear from social media – from here – from life in general – it’s because we’re taking a single shared cell phone and a digital camera (on loan from my S.O.’s niece) and focusing on the objective of getting away to the fullest.

Still gonna miss Kima and Willow, though.