Plane tickets: bought! And, why Americans should travel more.

Tonight’s my last night working at Solitude. These past several weeks have been a long, white blur. I come home at midnight, collapse into bed and dream until the beepbeepbeep of the alarm crashes the slumber party, waking me up to do it all over again. I also worked at my editing job this morning, downtown SLC. I stayed a bit later than normal, organizing projects, and by the time I took the train to the other side of town, I’d missed the bus that normally carries my bike and me all the way up the 7 mile hill (a gentle hill, but a hill’s still a hill…still). So, I got an hour of biking exercise and was an hour late for work. This is why tonight’s the last night for me at the Inn at Solitude. I don’t have enough time to do important life things in between jobs. The alternator for my car has been sitting on my desk for about two weeks, waiting for me to have time to order and install its replacement. Too many days I’ve had to dash out of the editing office, leaving projects unfinished, dumping them in the laps of my co-editors so that I can catch the train or bus to get up the mountain to work at the Inn. I really like my editing job. Time to put it a little bit higher on the priority list.

I’ve only three weeks left of any work, anyhow. I pulled the trigger tonight on $1,000 plane tickets to Lima and Bogota to work for Awamaki, the Peruvian non-profit. March 14-May 9. Felt a bit more fluttery about the whole thing than I think I ever have for an international trip. Last night I waffled around on kayak and expedia and LAN websites, making notes about small price differences if I arrive in Medellin instead of Bogota, cruising the traveler’s forums on Lonely Planet Thorntree learning about no-go areas in Colombia, running bus routes in my head for feasibility. Looking at the map, at the surprising distance between Lima and Bogota, I recalled the 28-hour misery marathon riding from Santiago to Arica: a head cold aggravated by constantly changing altitude, legneckbackfeetarm muscles cramping as I twisted myself into a thousand different positions across two bus seats. This time around, I decided, I would splurge on the plane tickets.

Three journalists from Vermont, Chicago, and New York are staying in the hotel tonight, on a all-expense paid ski vacation underwritten by Ski Salt Lake. During the course of our conversation, I mentioned my own writerly aspirations, and gave them the address to my website. In return, they gave me some advice: join Twitter. So I did. Twitter and Facebook in one month – look at me, joining the world of the internet! Ted (or, Traveling Ted TV) is my very first follower! Taking a minute to look at his website in return, I found this simple and convincing list: Five Reasons why more Americans Should Travel Abroad. Reason #4 was my favorite: see that we are lucky to have what we have. Oh, yes. Lucky that we aren’t picking our worldly possessions out of the rubble that’s left of our house. Christchurch has been foremost in my thoughts these last few days. Here’s my addition to the list. #6: more Americans should travel in order to know cities like Chch, in order to understand the images on the news, and to have an impression of the city before the quake to balance the sensationalism and pain being broadcast post-quake.

To end on a good note:  20-36 inches of snow predicted this weekend. Life is, well, it’s pretty good.

Follow me on twitter! @susanmtraveler (I think that’s how you put it…this is new for me)