Around the world in my head for now

Something you hope to do in your life is today's meme topic. How am I supposed to narrow it down to just one?

I hope to travel to as many places as I can go. I want to see the world. So far I've lived a poorly traveled existence. At 34, I've been very few places.

I've had two visits to Washington DC as a child, once with my mom and sister to visit my aunt and once with the safety patrols in 5th grade. Summers were spent with my family in the mountains of North Carolina when I was growing up and those vacations often included day trips to places in Tennessee and Georgia.

It was my sophomore year of college that I bought my first plane ticket and flew with Jenny (I've mentioned her before... keep up!) to visit our friend, Liz, in Boston. On that trip I took the bus to New Jersey to visit another friend for a couple of days. We took the train into New York City and I got to lay on a bench in the plaza in front of the twin towers and look up at their magnificence. That's definitely something I'm glad I did. We were too poor to pay to go to the Observatory at the top, I can't remember how much it cost, but we were poor college students so our observing had to be done from the ground.

That same year another good friend of ours was married in Georgia so we drove up from college in Gainesville to attend her wedding. We had her bachelorette party in Athens two nights before her wedding which was genius of us because she was so sick the next day she probably would have vomited on her groom.

The next year was the year I sold vacuum cleaners door to door. We had a convention in New Orleans so I hopped in my soon-to-be boyfriend's car and crossed into the Central time zone for the first time. Almost west of the Mississippi, but not quite. That was when I learned that, though the law had recently changed and raised the drinking age from 18 to 21 in Louisiana, all you really had to do was show the door guy at any bar and he'd let you in anyway. Evidently they just had to look like they cared. (I would have been 21 in a month, anyhow.)

That was a fun night. I spent the evening drinking these green drinks called Hand Grenades that had little floating plastic grenades floating in them. I collected a ton of them. If it hadn't been for soon-to-be boyfriend, I probably would have jumped on the back of a Harley with this random guy who asked if I wanted to ride. That wouldn't have been stupid or anything. We left New Orleans the next morning and I remember the drive back being truly wretched.

In the late 90s I worked for a company that was headquartered in Atlanta so I got to fly there and back a lot. At the time, B2 lived in Atlanta so it was convenient that I got to see her. The malls in Atlanta are super-fantastic, y'all. I could very happily live in that city.

In 2001 I purchased a plane ticket to fly to visit a Jenny in Portland during her brief stay there. I was so excited because we were going to drive down to visit the Redwood Forest. I have always been enamored with pictures of those gigantic trees. My trip was canceled due to the September 11 attacks, though, so I'm still waiting to see those trees.

In 2005 my dad surprised all of us with a trip to the Bahamas on the Disney Cruise. It was my first time on a cruise and my first time out of the country. Since that trip we've visited the Bahamas twice more, once by plane and again on the cruise. The plane is nice, but that boat is definitely the way to go!

In 2009 I flew to Pittsburgh for Jenny's baby shower and to see the house that she and her husband renovated in Braddock. Jenny took some time to drive me into Pittsburgh and show me some stuff. It truly is a beautiful city, too. And the Heinz bottles! I have to love a city that produces such adorable little condiments.

That is the extent of my travels, though, and that makes me sad. I don't think I see great travels in my near future as it's just difficult to have young kids and animals and travel the world. But give me about 10 years and I'm all over the globe. I want to go everywhere and see everything.