--{ on traveling companions }------
Whenever I am in a new place, I ask myself (because, these days, I am often traveling alone), would I enjoy this more if I were with someone?
Then I go through my list of friends, and (especially) through my list of exes. Then I think that, in general, the answer is no, though I am hopeful about having a great time traveling with someone someday.
(A big caveat here that will not sound like enough of a caveat, no matter how hard I try -- I don't mean this as a value judgment about any one of my friends/exes, just as a discussion of our (in)compatibility with respect to this tiny tiny issue of traveling. Or, to put it more stereotypically -- it's not you, it's me.)
Of people I actually *have* travelled with, both J and F stressed me out. Me, what I like to do is either (1) have no plan at all, or (2) have a very meticulously made plan that I have no qualms about deviating from. Them, they liked having moderately developed plans that they stuck to. Stress. (See? It's not a value judgment thing, just an incompatibility.) They were both fun on a place-by-place basis. It was going from place to place, and choosing what place to go to, that mostly stressed me out.
G, I'd imagine, would be fun at first, but then it would devolve into what our interactions usually devolve into -- full time mockery. We have extremely dissimilar tastes (Gina leans towards the mainstream, I lean towards the campy and pastel), and while full time mockery is fun, five or six days of it, all day and all night, might not be such a good thing. And maybe not when traveling. But I'd give it a shot. It is fun hanging out with G.
People I'm also thinking might be fun to travel with -- A or D or J2. But I've got little to go on. A gets points for immediately jumping on the Svalbard bandwagon, and for having other points of compatibility (more in terms of philosophy of hanging out than in terms of interest -- we went to a restaurant once and both simultaneously decided it'd be better to leave our table, go to the bar, and watch the news. This would bother most people.). D, I dunno, again the compatibility thing (though more in terms of interests -- I bet we'd go to the same sites). J2 gets points for having heard of Svalbard (and for being generally compatible in terms of interests), but loses points for putting Svalbard off till his forties (although he had a pretty good explanation for why he would do so.)
Day trips were fun with A2 and G2. G2, however, stressed me out with her driving, mostly because she was often stressed out (or angry at other drivers). A2 gets that way, too. I'd imagine that would bother me.
I (as in the letter I, not the pronoun I) might be fun, but I (pronoun I) might be too sedentary for her, and she might be too active for me. I (pronoun) would have to spend months working out if I (pronoun) had a vacation planned with her. But I (pronoun) wouldn't mind trying. She seems like she'd have a good, nonstressful attitude towards traveling.
A3 and B and W and E and gang -- I'd just imagine we would want to see different things. When we relay our trips to each other, we always end up describing very different places. So I'd imagine we'd fight over what to see, or we'd just go our separate ways. Plus B, I expect, is the sort that likes to stick to plans.
Okay, that's all I can think of for now.
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