Travel Rant

Have you ever been on vacation anywhere but Iowa? Congrats, you've done more than me. That's not a fair statement of my life. I've done quite a bit. But vacationing to Iowa is probably the most extreme traveling I've ever done. In a short list below, I will list every state I've been to:

Wyoming
Colorado
Nebraska
Iowa
South Dakota
New Mexico
Utah
Pennsylvania (I was like 8 or something and I hardly remember it)

Now, while all of these are great places, if you look at a map, they're all in the same spot, mid-west-ish. And with the exception of Nebraska and Iowa, all of them have the same general features: mountains, desert plains, forests, etc. I've been landlocked my whole life. I've never seen an ocean, I've never been out of the country, I've never been beneath 3,000 ft. elevation.

Outside of a small desire to leave the country at least once (so that maybe I can stop winning Never Have I Ever for once), I've never really cared that much about going other places until a funny thing happened. A lot of my friends and I graduated, and all of a sudden they (the friends, mostly women) all started traveling/planning trips. They started making plans to drop anywhere from hundreds to thousands of dollars to go to Hawaii, Europe, California, Australia, China, pretty much anywhere you can imagine. Some have gone and come back, others are still traveling, and some haven't left yet. And then here's me. The guy who doesn't do that. And it frustrates me. It makes me feel like I'm missing out on valuable life experiences. And maybe I am, maybe I'm not. Upon viewing my travel-picture-clogged Facebook feed last night, I came upon a very legitimate reason why I feel I've always been constrained in travel.

Now, the first reason I don't go and travel to Europe right now is because I'm poor. I have no money to go anywhere really. My most crazy travel plans in my price range are to go an hour away to get donuts. Wild stuff, man!

The second reason I discovered (getting back to the main epiphany I had last night) is a bit complex, so let's see how well I can describe it:

***DISCLAIMER: Women, if you find yourself angered by anything I say, remember: I'm a guy. Have mercy on my perspective of things.***

Basically, as a man, I am expected (and I myself expect) to support a family someday. That requires money. As I am now, I know I can't. But it doesn't really matter now. I'm a single freshman in college, I'm not having a family anytime soon. However, as I said before, I happen to suffer from a common symptom of most college students, that is being poor. And in the back of my mind, while I hold jobs and make money, I know that I need to save money so when that day comes when I get married and whatnot, I can afford to be in that state. This is what keeps me from dropping several hundred dollars on a trip, because I'll need that money to get by and support a family.

Now, women (the ones doing most of the traveling, in my case) aren't necessarily under the same pressure to support a family monetarily. They can, it just doesn't seem to be the way things work. So, money isn't a huge saving point, as the only things money is useful for now are gas, insurance, food, and clothes (and more, I'm sure, I'm just being general). With that perspective, now more options open up and travel is affordable.

I'm not saying I'll never get to go anywhere. Maybe I'll get to travel someday. But for right now, I guess I'm going to stick around my home state for a while longer.

Happy traveling,

                             -Sam