My dream vacation

She'd kill me if she read this. But I was just sitting here, tonight, making excuses not to go to bed when I thought about what my dream vacation would be before I die.

I've always loved the idea of traveling to Europe and visiting all the original sites of emerging Western civilization. I'd love to travel to Mexico again, maybe see the friends I made when I taught English in Cancun. I'd love to visit each of the continents, and I've always had a dream of retracing Mark Twain's voyage aboard the Quaker City through Europe and the Middle East, which was the basis for his hilarious observations of his American counterparts in Innocents Abroad.

But the truth is that my dream vacation would be to take the 20 hour road trip that Brandi and I took from Wichita to Washington D.C. when we were 22 and 23, and spend a good long time walking and talking our way around the sites of Washington D.C. Especially the Holocaust Museum and that grungy little building that housed Theo Brown's beautiful little National Days of Dialogue and maybe visit that little apartment we stayed in that summer with Wendy and Iftaekar.

I know. It's a dream I'm not supposed to have. Brandi's married, today. I'm not supposed to think like that.

But that's my dream vacation. Just because I would love to be able to revisit that time and place with someone who knows why its so special to me.

I was sitting here listening to Dar Williams, and remembering this awesome little outdoor concert we went to in Washington, D.C. to see Dar, and seeing Wendy raise her hands and sway in the wind to Iowa in a moment of peace for all of us.

And I thought, "I'd love to go back there. And talk about that time with Brandi, sometime."

Love,
Ben