Barnstorming on an Invisible Segway

Travel is another big part of the lack of adventurous grown-ups in my early life. Someone a decade and a half younger was telling me the other day that she thought we had a lot in common and that she envied my travels because she hadn't gotten to do much yet. That got me thinking about the traveling I've done, and how comparatively late in my life it was.

My immediate family didn't travel much. I probably got out of state before I was a year old, but only because the next state is maybe 20 min. max from my parents' house. I did not get out of the mid-Atlantic states until I was 13 (my uncle took me to Nag's Head, NC); did not get on a plane until the week I turned 21; did not cross the Mississippi until I took my first full-time job on the other side of it at 22. Did not get to Canada and Mexico until somewhere in my midtwenties, got to my first noncontiguous country on my honeymoon at 26, first got to Europe at 30.

We did go on lots of educational trips in our own city, at least - and there's pkenty to see there. We just never traveled anywhere else. In comparison, my husband traveled in a car from the Pacific NW all the way to Florida when he was 7 or less.