Wandering Blues

What’s something you would attempt if you were guaranteed not to fail?

As we trudged across the parking lot towards the auditorium, Doug and I exchanged glances; yeah, me neither.

Ahead of us, Pop was only slightly more enthused. At the head of our little group was Mom, who kept turning around excitedly and saying things we couldn’t hear. Her high heels made a clicking sound on the sidewalk as we dragged miserably behind her.

If there was ever a great way to waste a Friday night as a 12yo, it was being dragged to a dumb Travelogue with your parents and brother. When Mom first announced she had tickets to one, I asked what it was. 

“Oh, honey,” she said excitedly. She put something in the oven, set the timer, and turned to where I sat at the kitchen peninsula. “It’s very interesting. People talk about trips they’ve taken. They show pictures and answer questions.”

I was stunned. It was bad enough sitting through slide shows at my relatives’ homes, even though I was in some of them. The staccato click chunk of the slide projector, the polite chuckles, the endless droning of adult voices was stultifying. A whole night? And we were paying for this?

We took our seats, the lights dimmed and the host crossed the stage to the podium.

“Good evening,” he said, steepling his fingers and beaming. “We’re very fortunate tonight to have Dr. and Mrs. Trent Wickham-Overby from Boca Raton. They’ll be discussing their journey that retraces Richard Halliburton’s voyages…some of which are chronicled in his book The Royal Road to Romance.” 

There were murmurs of excitement and people looked at each other. Then a well-dressed man and woman appeared from behind a curtain to polite applause. The host yielded the podium with a sweeping motion.

I looked with disbelief at Doug. Not only did we have to watch some stranger’s stupid home movie… but they had to throw in a corny romance as well? I folded my arms in my itchy Sunday jacket and slumped in my metal folding chair. It was going to be a long night.

Despite myself, I started hearing things that piqued my interest. Halliburton graduated from Princeton in 1921. Apparently, he had a good job lined up… but then he completely pissed off his parents and many others by blowing it all off in search of adventure. Hmm.

It turns out he found it. He crisscrossed Europe wherever the winds blew him. Europe in the 1920s, I gathered, was one big party and hopping from country to country was apparently pretty easy. He crossed the Alps on an elephant like Hannibal. He climbed the Matterhorn. He became a world-famous author, lecturer and world traveler.

The more I heard, the more I liked this Halliburton guy. The Wickham-Overby’s didn’t have cheap slides; they were professionally done, beautiful, and filled the theatre-sized screen. They visited many of the same places he had, albeit over half a century later.

While they didn’t go everywhere and do everything he did, they did enough to keep me on the edge of my seat. They roamed around the Mediterranean retracing the voyage of Ulysses in The Odyssey. They flew across the Sahara in a biplane, rode camels in Egypt, visited the Taj Mahal. 

They ended their trip in Hong Kong, which was also the last stop for Halliburton. He was attempting to sail to San Francisco on a Chinese Junk, but was lost at sea in 1939; his body was never recovered.

On the way home, as Mom, Pop and Doug all chatted about the presentation, I was far away, riding elephants and camels, flying biplanes, racing around Europe in fast, cool cars.

I wanna be like him.

A few years later, I caught the flying bug from Pop. There was nothing better than spending Friday night with him planning a trip, our maps spread out on the kitchen table. He let me do most of the flying, and hurtling down the dinky Boca runway at 80mph on Saturday morning was exhilarating. I’d gently pull back on the yoke, and seeing the ground drop away never got old. Ha! I’m sure old Halliburton would approve.

We flew all over South Florida: Across and to the north of Lake Okeechobee; over to my grandmother’s in Port Charlotte; down to the Florida Keys. The latter was especially cool with the overseas highway, hundreds of uninhabited islands, and clear aqua-colored water spotted with reefs. Sometimes we’d have lunch in Marathon, about halfway to Key West.

Sadly and stupidly, at about age 16, I decided that girls and hanging around with my friends was more interesting than flying. Pop offered to pay to get me licensed but the prospect of seeing Beth Gandler in her bikini seemed far more appealing than flying.

Halliburton, for the moment, was shelved.

But my wanderlust never disappeared; in fact, once I got my driver’s license and a car, it came back even stronger. There was little other than my limited bank account that kept me from simply heading for the horizon with my sleeping bag, Rand McNally atlas and road trip tunes.

Over the years, my wanderlust itch has been thoroughly scratched by memorable, lengthy road trips. My longest (“Farther on”) was with Sue as newlyweds: two months and 10,087 miles in our VW camper. But the problem has always been I’ve been limited to where humankind has built roads.

I remember the unfettered exhilaration of looking down at the Kissimmee River from 6,000 feet, or drifting along the southern tip of Florida over the Everglades and the Ten Thousand Islands. That was freedom. That’s what I want again.

Only more than just Florida.

I’d like to get an amphibious float plane and start in northern Alaska on the first day of summer. I’d slowly make my way south, traveling with the seasons, crossing the equator on the autumnal equinox. I’d end at the southern tip of Chile on December 21st, the first day of summer in South America.

Along the way, I’d check out the vast wilderness of Alaska, Yukon and the Northwest Territories. I’d fly 10,000 feet over Hudson Bay, Newfoundland, Nova Scotia. I’d camp on little lakes hundreds of miles from the nearest town in the wilds of the North Woods. 

I’d traverse the Great Lakes, the Rockies, the vast deserts of the American Southwest. I’d fly over the Grand Canyon at treetop level and suddenly be thousands of feet over the glinting Colorado River far below.

Since float planes can land on runways as well as water, I’d stop as needed at podunk airfields to refuel, rest, meet the locals, maybe stay a few days.

I’d fly off the coast of Baja California and down Central America, stopping to surf in Costa Rica and Nicaragua. I’d soar over the misty jungles of Colombia and Brazil; the arid highlands of Ecuador, Peru, the Andes. I’d look for the hidden gold of Lake Titicaca in Bolivia, check out the unspoiled beauty of Argentina’s Patagonia region. 

Finally, I’d circle Cape Horn a few times and dip my wings; an homage to Captain Ferdinand Magellan, as well as old Halliburton who planted the itch all those years ago. And of course, most of all, to Pop.

Because…despite what Don Henley claimed in The Last Resort…there IS still new frontier.

It’s just a matter of imagining it.

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