Do Not Feel Free To Butter My Toast

I remember JL once buttered my bread.  We were at the dinner table and he simply took knife to butter to toast and then handed it to me. I thought this was very strange. How would he know how much butter I wanted on my toast?  More to the point, how would he know I do not, in fact, like butter on my toast? We’d only known each other a month or so at the time, a point made all the more apparent by the fact he did not know these tiny details about me.  And yet he still did it.  As though the easiness we’d developed somehow overflowed onto the dinning table. It did not.

 Traveling is like that piece of toast. Some like it buttered and others do not. JL had no idea whether I liked butter on my toast or not. It may have taken months or years to get to that level of familiarity.  They say you don’t really know a person until you travel with them. I wondered if that was what it would take for JL to know all those tiny details of my life.  Is that what it will take for anyone to know me fully?

 Like the amount of butter you prefer on your bread, traveling is personal.  I’ve never thought of it that way until I started thinking about having someone join me on my long trips.  Would they keep up? Would they question the methods to my madness? Would they know me differently after having traveled with me? Would they still want to know me when we returned?

 What I like about traveling so much is the chance to simply be me; to not have anyone to impress or worry about, to not have to keep up appearances or schedules.  Traveling is the chance to be the me I am when no one is looking. Abroad no one I know is looking. They are halfway around the world. Friends and family may be reading about my travels on my blog and keeping up with my goings on, but they do not know the every day traveling me.  I’m pretty sure that’s a good thing.

 You see, anybody who knows I travel, might know where I’ve been and why I go. They may know a little about what I’ve done and seen, but the daily, routine of things is unknown to anyone, except perhaps those I meet along the way.  I like it this way.  It’s a guilty pleasure; a secret that I didn’t know I was hiding, one not hard to keep because there’s no one around to run into to discover my dirty laundry.

 Oh, it’s not that dirty, but I imagine it’s much different than most people who know me would imagine. I travel on a budget, usually a very tight budget.  This allows me to go and stay for longer. I get by on 1-2 meals a day, often eating half of one and saving the other half for later.  Normally a foodie, on the road I get by with whatever is cheapest, usually the plato del dia.  I bring snacks from home and often subsist on those alone for days.  Friends marvel at the fact that I go on ‘vacation’ and actually lose weight. I tell them it’s the budget diet, works every time.

 I stay in the cheapest accommodations I can tolerate, and I can tolerate a lot.  Shared bathrooms, snoring bunk mates and concrete rooms with no windows are not unusual. I don’t do laundry, rather I bring enough under clothing to make it through and am fine wearing a bikini as such as well.  If I do need to wash something, the sink and whatever bath soap I’ve brought will do.

 I take long overnight busses because it is cheaper than renting a room.  I hitch rides with strangers heading where I’ve just discovered I want to go.  I walk miles to beaches and restaurants to save money on taxis. I enjoy the view.

 I talk to strangers.  Everyone you meet traveling is a stranger. I really like the idea of that; a world full of strangers for me to meet. I take the opportunity to practice my Spanish. I offer a different representation of the American traveler. I share meals with families who notice me dining alone.  I spent whole days on a beach with only a book and a journal. I might go days without speaking to anyone.

 I try to imagine all of this with someone else tagging along with me.  Would they do it without complaining? Would they find it as exciting as I do?  Would they try to change the way I’ve done things for years? Would I let them?  The way I travel is never something I’ve had to explain. It is simply something I have developed through the years that works well for me. I’ve never had to think about someone else being with me.

 How much butter you prefer or don’t prefer on your toast is personal. The way I travel is personal.  It’s not something I try to hide. It is simply something hidden because no one is around to see it.  It’s like the way I dance in Zumba when I know no one I know is watching me; a little freer, a little crazier, a little more me.  Would having a partner with me change everything?