![]() ![]() At one point, a bunch of my nomad friends and I who had traveled together in Chiang Mai, and Berlin, and Buenos Aires started calling non-nomads, ‘muggles’. If someone had something more interesting to ask beyond those five questions, then we could have a conversation. My youthfully arrogant idea after a few years in the road was to make a laminated card with the answers to the five most typical questions people would ask: Where are you from (Chicago), how long have you been on the road (in total, 4 years as a nomad, over ten before that as an expat), where are you coming from, what’s the next stop, what’s your favorite country (Mexico, Cambodia, Portugal)? And the bonus: you travel full time? Are you a trust fund baby? (Nope, just resourceful and a happy minimalist) ‘Real’ travelers get sick of answering those questions. I used to flit in and out of America like it was just any other country and not where I was born and raised.īut I don’t. I want to say, where are you headed? Where are you coming from? I used to be you. He’s acting calmly, but he’s got a flight to catch, and soon.Īs we inch closer to the scanners, he’s not huffing and puffing about how long it’s taking, but he’s attentive, estimating the timing as to whether he’ll make his next flight. He’s not out of breath, but he rushed here. Beads of it run down his shaven sideburns and he keeps tugging his shirt and shorts, airing himself off. He’s a full time traveler, marking his most meaningful stops in beautiful body art.Īs I continue to take him in without staring, I realize he is drenched with sweat. He never uses his US license, but is always brandishing his passport at every hostel, hotel, land border, airport and immigration office. That’s why he’s using his passport as identification. He’s wearing a t-shirt and short, fitted shorts. Where’s his coat? See, he’s coming from somewhere warm, and off to somewhere warm. I know this, because at that moment, it hits me: he is wearing a t-shirt and shorts. He’s definitely still in the thick of it. His proximity to me, his confidence, our being in the airport together for just one moment - it brings a part of my nomadness back to life. Just two travelers, he and I, waiting to go through security. ![]() A few days later, an airport staff member is wheeling me through the airport in Cusco, and I’m headed back to live my native country, an act I had been avoiding since I graduated college. The day after the trek finished, I broke my ankle on a funky step in my hostel and two days later I broke up with my girlfriend of 8 years. You can’t do that with a broken ankle, though, can you. I was supposed to stop in Arequipa before heading off to go sandboarding down the dunes of Huacachina, Peru. This adventure was the last stop of my fifteen years living abroad, though it wasn’t supposed to be. I then left the pack at a local hostel, for a fee, so I could just bring my day pack on the five-day Salkantay trek to Machu Picchu. The last time I wore it deboarding a bus from Lake Titicaca to the grand city of Cusco, Peru. It’s actually on a shelf in my basement, the zipper is hard to open, still caked with the grime and dust of whatever happens under a long haul bus. ![]() It’s been a decade since I hung up my 50L Osprey backpack. And while my calves no longer have any defining muscle and I do not have a single tattoo, this man is feeling more like a colleague than a stranger to me. A travel mark from the other end of the earth. I don’t know if it’s from China or Korea or Japan, but I know it’s a mark of a traveler.ĭown his other calf I see a detailed tattoo of a Mexican Calavera (skull). It strikes me, because his skin is white, he is white and I can tell that he wasn’t raised in Asia. A tattoo above the back of his knee, of a red bowl with chopsticks. Scanning up, first it’s the size of his muscular calves. This is the first time I see, in front of me stands a giant tree trunk of a man, showing his US passport to security, even though we are in a domestic terminal. This jolts me out of my exhausted post-conference trance. I laugh, and eagerly show him mine, always proud to be anything but normal. Are you PreCheck? No? You’re normal? This way please. Like an auctioneer, he’s rapping: Are you PreCheck? You are PreCheck? Yes? That way. The airport staff member is checking our mobile boarding passes for the little green check mark. I am an introvert, but I play an extrovert at conferences. I am wearily walking toward the TSA pre-check line, weary from adrenaline depletion and ready to head home. ![]()
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