Sometimes I hear a song that makes me jump. The beat of the song
matches the visual beat of the lines in the road when you’re speeding
down a highway. Suddenly, I am overcome with an overwhelming desire to
leap into my car and be off! Away! Away is such a wonderful word. I
use it often. I love to travel. Sometimes I think that the road feels
more like my home than any place does. When I am away from home, I
miss it. When I am at home, I want to be away. But the road is a
comfortable, exhilarating inbetween. I am headed somewhere, but
there’s nothing to miss yet.
matches the visual beat of the lines in the road when you’re speeding
down a highway. Suddenly, I am overcome with an overwhelming desire to
leap into my car and be off! Away! Away is such a wonderful word. I
use it often. I love to travel. Sometimes I think that the road feels
more like my home than any place does. When I am away from home, I
miss it. When I am at home, I want to be away. But the road is a
comfortable, exhilarating inbetween. I am headed somewhere, but
there’s nothing to miss yet.
Yet, for all my talk of loving to travel, my favorite stretch of road is the one in the picture here. It’s the little bit of road that leads to my home. I love to travel and see new things, and homesickness doesn’t defeat me. Why? Because I have a firm sense of place. I know where I belong and I know that I am going back.
There are lots of things to love about Louisville, Ky. It is quirky. One of the most popular city motto’s is “Keep Louisville Weird.” If you walk down Bardstown Road or decide to people watch on Frankfort Avenue, you’ll quickly note that keeping Louisville weird is not something we have to worry about much. The streets are filled with young and old. They all seem to wear their hearts on their sleeve, with clothing and hair that is charming and just a bit frumpy. Louisville has the small town southern charm, with a touch of big city sprinkled in a few places (4th street area). The river city diversity is the icing on the cake. Most waterfront cities crackle with diversity and a sense that they are a launching pad into more opportunity and community. That’s the whole concept and definition of a port town. And Louisville fits it well, as a large immigrant and refugee destination as well as a city with universities and job offerings to draw people from all over the United States. It’s small enough that you’ll almost always bump into someone you know if you go out, but large enough that you can always meet someone new when you go out too. In short, Louisville is wonderful. And the more I travel, the more I realize that. As I prepare for this race around the world, I am growing more and more in love with Louisville. A little more sad about parting with it, but also excited to know what new things I’ll discover about it when I come back changed.
Traveling is meant to grow and stretch us an expand our horizons. And I think the more we understand the foreign the more we also understand the familiar. And the end of almost any good travel story is the part where we throw our map in the back seat because now we know exactly where we’re going. A journey is concluded with return. And “away” is only a nice word when you know you’re eventually going home.
