Stumbling the Walk

Travel: It’s All About Getting Lucky

By Chris La Tray, 12-04-08

I just finished reading Smile When You’re Lying: Confessions of a Rogue Travel Writer by Chuck Thompson. Besides the subtitle containing my favorite word these days (“rogue”, of course), it is an entertaining enough read. The chapter titled “What Lazy Writers, Lonely Planet, and Your Favorite Travel Magazine Don’t Want You to Know” alone is worth picking the book up.

This isn’t a review of the book. There are a couple excerpts I thought to share just because they brought to mind strong images from my own travel experiences. Here’s the first:

Among the great joys of travel is catching a break and dropping into a situation you might otherwise never be able to afford. Circumstance puts an unexpected first-class ticket in your hand. A friend of a friend just happens to need someone to look after his Mediterranean estate the very week you were planning a tour of Greek youth hostels. As a gift at the end of a job editing a travel guide, a publisher once presented me with a three-night stay at the famed Danieli Hotel overlooking the Grand Canal in Venice.

For me, getting lucky on a trip means getting to go somewhere cool that I wouldn’t otherwise be able to visit. Like Walden Pond when I was out in Boston, for example, or ending up within a 30 minute drive of Yosemite National Park and finishing my project a day early, allowing me to take a vacation day and go exploring. But for luxurious accommodations, I’m usually stuck in chain hotels. A few years ago, though, when the yearly software conference I attend was last in Las Vegas, I got lucky and ended up in a fancy suite in the Venetian whose outward facing wall was a huge window about five floors up overlooking the pool. That was pretty friggin’ awesome, if I can say so without sounding too lecherous. As it turned out, someone needed to stay an extra day to wrap up some contacts we’d made during the conference, and since I was already planning to stay through the weekend, I gleefully volunteered. Julia was coming up from Tucson to join me, so we got to have this luxury den gratis for 24 hours before retreating to the Super 8 a couple blocks off the strip. We proceeded to spend hours and hours that evening sweating like Solid Gold dancers, straining multiple muscles while forcing our bodies into awkward positions . . . playing skeeball horseracing in the kiddie arcade downstairs of the Excalibur.

Here is another excerpt from Thompson’s book:

In the event that luck doesn’t favor us, most travelers are willing, on occasion, to pony up egregious sums to feel, even if just for a sweet, fleeting moment, the intoxicating freedom from financial constraints only the very rich can appreciate. Limousine services, for example, pander to the splurge instinct intrinsic in these illusions of momentary affluence. Most of us suffer financially at some point for binges of extravagance, but, on the whole, the mirage is worthwhile.

Pretty much any trip for me that isn’t paid for by work is pushing my ability to afford it. There are always the huge distances to be covered, dogs to be kenneled, and various other expenses tugging at my wallet just to make it all happen, but I do it anyway. The only real plunge into extravagance that I can really remember, though, was last March when Julia and I went to Moab. It was over Memorial Day, and we had stupidly figured we would easily find a place to camp. Bad idea. The first night we spent down there we luckily found a room in a La Quinta Inn motel. The next day, figuring people would be clearing out at the end of the weekend, we didn’t hold onto that sucker. Returning from a day of hiking and getting exhausted, we once again found every camping site within about 30 miles booked. Scouting out the town, every hotel and motel was booked as well; we were literally playing leapfrog with other cars going in and out of the hotel lots looking for that last vacant room. We pulled into the Gonzo Inn; they had one room left, which happened to be their most expensive suite. Tired, sore, and hungry, I didn’t hesitate and booked it, even as a couple cars I recognized screeched up behind my rental sitting outside the lobby.

As luxurious rooms go, it wasn’t anything spectacular. It was nice enough, but nothing that a rich person would find particularly memorable; most would probably sniff at it. But to us it was like winning the lottery. Yeah, the room cost about what our entire budget for the trip was, but I didn’t care. It took a couple lean weeks at home to pay for it, but goddamn was it worth it. 

I’d do it again. And probably will.

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