Fellow Travelers

I met a couple in the airport waiting for my much delayed flight from Seattle to D.C. The wife, Mattie, went off to see if the airline people were calling her (they weren't, but with the last name of Smith, you probably end up going to see if it was you calling a lot more than people named, say, Musachakathalazan.) So, I chatted a bit with the husband, Ben. It was clear that he does a lot of traveling and hiking and such, as he had that kind of clothes on, that kind of backpack, and was reading an outdoor adventure magazine. We ended up talking about how people really need to take the time to travel if that's what they like while they are younger. He was telling me that his father, who hiked from tip to tip of New Zealand when he was 70, had said that the worst part about getting older is not that you can't do the traveling, but that your desire to travel goes down.

As we talked about some places we'd each been, it was clear we had the same appreciation for the outdoors and adventure. I've seldom met anyone who was enthusiastic about travel stuff as Ben, and his enthusiasm was infectious. As I headed for my airplane, I was actually sorry to say goodbye to him. I told him we would meet again. In the walkway to get on the plane, I thought about that and of course, it's terribly unlikely I'll just randomly meet the same guy somewhere. I stopped, wrote my email address on a scrap of paper, and went back out to the waiting area. I gave him my email address and told him that this would make it at least a little more likely. I'm really hoping I'll hear from him.