The Blond Ambition Tour … Continues.

I’ve been trying to figure out when it all started, to pinpoint it. First I thought I should maybe “blame it” on my travel-writer friend, Monica. There was no denying the intrigue (and yes, enviousness!) experienced each time she jetted off to say, Fiji, expenses-paid, to review a resort or research an article for her travel-magazine employer. People lived this kind of life?

Was that when it started? Was it before? I was stumped.

Eureka! It all came back to me yesterday, finally, while scanning my coffee table. YES, that’s right, it all changed that day my eyes landed on this magazine cover while aimlessly suffering through the line at what I call “scary Ralphs” here in North Hollywood.

(Gasp) Look. At. THAT. Waterfall. (Breathless)

I couldn’t believe such a place… existed. My brain channeled Liz Lemon from the show 30 Rock, declaring, “I want to go to there.” My hand, with a mind of its own, lifted the magazine from the display, placed it on the conveyer belt between the ramen, the salsa, the sad collection of survival-food, and made the yes-expensive! purchase [$10.99? Who pays $10.99 for a magazine!?!] that changed my priorities. I still have that magazine copy (more on that later).

But check out the date – February, 2011? Hell, I wasn’t even 40 yet! That day, right there, was the start of my sickness, my addiction, my compulsion… to all things travel and road trips. And the joy of planning them, looking forward to them… had become my cocaine.

My partner, Eddie, is a bookstore devotee – Barnes & Noble, our treasured Vroman’s, lliad Bookshop, Friends of the Library flash sales, you name it. No internet searches for him – he’s an in-person browser – a man who slowly grazes like a goat to savor each physical book, its cover, its smell and feel. About an hour in he’ll start to wonder, “Hmm, where’s Joe?” And invariably he’ll find me, magnetically trapped in the Travel section, on the floor, books on Norway, Costa Rica and Croatia strewn about, my face deep in an old National Geographic Traveler article on some unexplored corner of Montana or Idaho – audaciously in the way of browsers and paying customers.

Come to our cozy living room and notice the travel mags and Rick Steves books piled high. Scan our library and find early Bill Bryson, A Year In The World by Frances Mayes, All Over the Map by Laura Fraser, The Geography of Bliss by Eric Weiner and my new favorite, John Steinbeck’s non-fiction Travels with Charley: In Search of America.

And MAPS! We love old maps. So. Much. Inspiration. 

Go with us on a trip to Tucson, and you’re guaranteed to see me by the pool, relaxing yes, but simultaneously scouring a map, scouting out our next journey. For I come alive. I feel dialed-in.

But it wasn’t always this way. 

Picture it: the early 2000s. I’m dressed in a cool ‘60’s suit, hanging out with the other extras – correction, “background players” – on the set of the movie Catch Me If You Can, waiting to be placed again in our airplane-interior starting marks for a scene with Tom Hanks and Leonardo DiCaprio. Cool? Yes. The height of showbiz glamour? Not exactly. I’m in my mid-20s, chatting up another extra, a guy in his mid-30s, who explains how he’s designated the income from that day to be for his travel fund – and that he always is planning his next big trip. “It’s so, so important,” he kept saying to me. “Nothing better.”

And my snotty little brain’s reaction? I felt sorry for him. “How sad,” I thought. “This poor little soul obviously will never be a successful actor or have a true career like I will! Just look at all the money he’s wasting on these trips. That’s money he could be using on new headshots, on an acting coach, a workshop, pursuing an agent! He’s obviously not committed or focused on making it.”

Yes, I too am digging my eyes out of my cranial area, where they’re permanently STUCK thanks to forced-eye-rolling! I’d like to slap the old me.

I suppose wisdom does come with age. 

But wait, (let me wail,) it’s not my fault! My family never exposed me to that global-travel-expands-the-mind philosophy. In college I didn’t know people who planned to backpack through Europe at age 22. I didn’t step on a plane for the first time until age 20. 

Or maybe I did know those people, but was instead always hyper-focused on the next show!, getting the lead in the play!, the play!!, the play!!!! like some kind of obsessed Anna Kendrick meets Eve Harrington. 

It’s about priorities. And perhaps making up for lost time. But I no longer consider travel a luxury for the wealthy, but a requirement for my sanity, a true-north calling for my soul. 

Friends joke about it. My pal Jim blithely exclaims, “So where is this leg of the Blond Ambition Tour taking you??” Lookers-on wonder if there’s maybe a money tree in my backyard, or point to my Instagram pics and think, “Where does he find the time? How does he have the money?” Some might say I’m running away from something, dissatisfied with real life. 

Point taken. But life is short. A favorite aunt of mine worked herself to the bone, retiring finally at 70, planning to take her first cruise. Then cancer derailed it all. She left us in 2014, a few months later, never living “the good life” of retirement.  

I don’t work a corporate job. There are zero two-week paid vacations in my history. Instead, little spurts of travel activity need to be dropped into my year, for I most certainly won’t be making money while traveling or on vacation. That’s why we keep it affordable, not needing luxury or pampering, just the FUN.

So yes, it all started with seeing that Multnomah Falls magazine cover. And now, “I’ve been to there,” in Oregon, standing in the mist, breathing in the color green. It took a good five years to happen, but goals were set, decisions were made. 

While Travel & Leisure portrayed an excessive, indulgent, luxurious travel lifestyle, I found that Sunset Magazine featured destinations seeming wonderfully possible, accessible – at least, it did during those years. I still have a collection of probably 25 dog-eared, well-worn copies of Sunset on my shelf, each one saved because of some little nugget, circled in pen, yet to be completed, and to provide inspiration, perhaps years later. Hence my fixation on places west of the Rockies (and sometimes Colorado).

An antiquated system? You bet. But it’s led me to a major-life-moment ride on the Durango-Silverton Narrow Gauge Railroad seven years after first reading about it. It’s placed me in front of stunning McArthur-Burney Falls a good 12 years after it was on my list. It’s introduced me to obscure national parks like Black Canyon of the Gunnison and Great Sand Dunes in Colorado, and little gem communities like Nevada City, in California gold rush country or Avila Beach in the central coast. And most importantly, it introduced me to the mindset that travel doesn’t have to be major overseas treks.

Author Tim Ferriss, in his book The 4-Hour Workweek, stresses the importance of taking mini-retirements or mini-long-term vacations in life, instead of waiting for a tomorrow that may never come. After the health scare I lived through in 2020/2021, I resonate with this, monthly. I don’t know how many years I have left on this earth – do ANY of us? I don’t know when my aging parents will need much more in-person, dedicated care. And I don’t know which Northern California landmark may soon be no more after a new wildfire… which monument may one day be closed to oil drilling.

Sure, Covid put a pause on some worldwide travel enthusiasm – (don’t worry, Croatia, Scotland, Spain, Greece, Belize, French Polynesia, they’re all high on the list) – but I’m content with domestic journeys, even one-day excursions.  

What’s on your list? What’s on there that you truly believe you’ll do? (IF it’s a priority for you, it may not be – you may have other fish to fry, like a house downpayment… or a kid’s education).

So, what’s still on my list, you ask? It’s a long one. 

The Channel Islands (right off the coast of Ventura, CA). Mt. Shasta in Northern California. Seeing the Redwood coast. Crater Lake in southern Oregon. Waterfalls in Idaho. Dinosaur National Monument on the Colorado/Utah border. Banff and Lake Louise in Canada. Alaska! Driving the Florida Keys! Driving the Oregon coastline. Montana, period. Havasupai Reservation, the North Rim of the Grand Canyon, Glacier National Park, the greenery in Washington state, coastal North Carolina, coastal Maine…

Could I be further along in my career? No doubt. But life is much more enjoyable with balance. 

I hope you’ll share the journey with me as this travel junkie posts adventures from the quest — adventures… from the Guay life.