The Jitters

There’s always pre-trip jitters. I’m not sure if this will ever go away. At the bike shop several of my co-workers have used services such as someone to haul their stuff from hotel to hotel—in one instance the husband and in another someone recommended by the guide service. They have also used guide services who plan EVERYTHING. Of course, my approach has been way different.

How do poor people travel?

1) I hopped on this deal when it was first introduced on Facebook. I thought it was a scam. $600 RT tixs to Zurich, that’s tax included. I added like $30 trip cancellation protection (because COVID is not going away)
2) I do all the arrangements and itinerary planning myself—thus, all the headaches.
3) I stay at Warmshowers or hostels. Friends are also along the way.
4) Food is from grocery stores, bakeries.
5) As much as I can, I pre-book—thus, the NEED to attend to and stay on itinerary in order to make a train, etc. Here, though, I can also train to the train if I’m caught short.

Yet is the unnamed, the mystery that pre-occupies me, the things that can go wrong that I haven’t yet thought of. Such as

1) weather—always variable, cannot be controlled
2) communication/how exactly to arrange certain meet-ups
3) that awful feeling of being blindsided by gaps in language, cultural expectations, of being a tourist, a stranger in a strange land—which

Isn’t this the reason one travels, in order to discover?

I have to return to that original idea. That I ride, driven by curiosity to peer around the bend in the river, the twist in the trail, that unexpected encounter. It’s just in this interim that I must swat away the mosquitoes of self-doubt. The jitters.