Wanderlust, lack of

I've been meaning to put up this post for a month, but you know, I had more important things to do. Like getting a free trial of Netflix and watching a movie every single day. Anyway.

At the end of April, I went to Austin for a conference. I had some funding that had to be spent on a hotel, so I actually booked the Rodeway Inn online. Then I read the reviews. "The bathroom floor was dirty, it blackened your feet and was sticky." "I killed 7 roaches. Enough said." "I will never stay in this hotel again, even if it were the last hotel with vacancy. No not even then, I would stay in my car." I mean, the Google maps listing comes up as "Dirty, disgusting, and smelly."

So, I canceled my reservation and switched to the Super 8 for approximately $5 more.

The whole thing disturbed me, though. I mean, I happily stayed at the crappiest hostels in all of Europe just a few years ago. I got bedbugs in Italy. I slept in a handicapped bathroom in Krakow. I'm not the kind of person that really needs a five-star hotel (though I do prefer them with beds, and without bedbugs.)

What changed? I think it's safe to say that our standards only go up, not down, throughout life. The McDonald's burger becomes a steak, the roommate disappears, the bike becomes a car, and the Rodeway becomes a Red Roof Inn.

Money is part of it, of course- if we have more money, we don't need to stay at the 20-bed-per-room youth hostel. But I really think there's more to it than that. I remember going backpacking with my dad for the first time when I was 8, and he said that I didn't need a good sleeping pad because I was a kid. I'm sure I did sleep better on that piece of foam than he did on the Thermarest. We're less uncomfortable when we're young- all those back problems and lactose intolerance issues don't really crop up until we at least graduate college.

I also think we become better at predicting the future. The truth about travel is that it's often uncomfortable, inconvenient, and expensive. As long as we can keep our optimism intact, though, we can at least undertake the travel in the first place: Maybe the room will be really nice. Maybe the train will get there on time. Maybe the airport won't strip-search me and then put my luggage through a meat grinder. Maybe my awesome photo of the Capitol building will be worth the walk.

The internet cuts through that optimism by providing the most critical reviews. You can't trust them- they may have been written by the 5-star hotel people. On the other hand, I'm sure I would not have been impressed by the Rodeway Inn. But I probably would have been happier with it based on a 1-paragraph Lonely Planet blurb than with the capacity to do internet statistics on what percentage of the guests found foreign hairs in their rooms.

So, I think we do actually experience discomfort more strongly as adults- when I was 20, I didn't need pitch blackness and a firm bed to get a good night's sleep. And, we're also better at predicting how inconvenient things will actually be. A third factor is being responsible for other people: I'm more willing to risk a crappy lodging for myself than, say, if I was bringing my hypothetical children along.

When the trip is over, though, we don't really remember the inconvenience- we remember the highlights. So yeah, duh, of course travel is really worth it.

The "modern world" has given us such low levels of inconvenience in our daily lives (free two-way shipping, ergonomic workspaces, elevators, central air and heating, curbside takeout) that we're not really used to inconvenience anymore. Or walking. The nice thing about the human psyche is that it does adjust to different levels of convenience, so that a youth hostel bunk can be either a relaxing retreat (after a day of walking in the rain) or a noisy, dirty, last resort (after a night at the Hilton.)

So, the moral of the story is: go see the world before you turn 25, so you can happily do it in squalor. Alternatively, if you're over 25, do it anyway! It just might cost you more for a lower level of comfort.

And, to conclude, here is a picture of Eric playing in his rock band.