Clever Magazine, Vol IV, #7 " Thoughts on Traveling " (www.clevermag.com)

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Response to Terrorism

When it Comes to Travel:
Keep on Truckin’

by Jim Marquez

Where to next time?

Jim Marquez, 32, and single, is an L.A.-based freelance writer who has backpacked across continental Europe, Great Britain, and Ireland extensively and looks forward to the day when he can achieve that writer's cliché dream of actually living by the River Seine in Paris and writing as a way a life. He has been published in local L.A. rags and nationally in FEAR, SOMA, GALLERY, GADFLY, and now CLEVERMAG.COM.

Travel in this time and uncertain era…My God, it’s only been five months but doesn’t it seem like years have passed since the attacks? So much has taken place, for our country, and for me--finally getting the consistent ball rolling publishing wise, securing a new teaching gig at the local junior college no less--and the war itself, the new security measures, and even those seem to change every other week. People have become afraid to travel, others have defiantly spit in fear’s collective face, while still others haven’t left their homes.

Reactions, feelings, and thoughts vary when dealing with such monstrosities for we haven’t come close to cross-associating this event with anything else in our recent history. Time, I guess, is really the only cure, for it does heal. It’s a cliché, but haven’t you ever noticed that to be especially true?

Living here in LA, surviving the occasional earthquake, it’s said that the longer you go without an aftershock the more likely it is there won’t be one. So, with that screwy logic…

I was as bowled over as anyone when I saw that second plane slam into the tower, but that shock quickly turned into open, blatant defiance of my own. I chose to immediately not to let those bastards dictate where I would go, and what I’d do once I got there. I am not afraid to go to the mall, to work, to the movies. I was in Las Vegas for my birthday back in November. I camped out overnight along the parade route for the Rose Parade in Pasadena. My schedule has prevented me from international travel since 9/11, at least for the moment.

Editor's note: We'll be hearing more about Jim's travel adventures in future issues

Here's Jim in an Amsterdam cafe.

I have, in the past 3-½ years backpacked across Europe four times, solo, through dozens of countries, and for the past year have been planning to attend soccer’s World Cup 2002 in Korea and Japan this coming May and June. Aside from the Olympics taking place here in the States, I can’t think of a “hotter target” for the terrorists, but I’m still going.

Am I crazy? Perhaps a little. Planning this particular trip with my friend, again backpacking, going on the cheap, has not been easy, but there is no fear of the terrorists. The only true fear I have is if we can get back to see our second match (USA vs. South Korea) in time after goofing off in Kobe for a few days between matches.

The hostels, the festivals, the train schedules, still trying to get a cheap airfare, the price of an even cheaper beer, dealing with the football hooligans, those problems weigh heavier on my mind than Osama and his boys. We did this for World Cup ’98 in Paris, and, come hell or high water, we’re doing it again.

But why? Why this nonchalance? I can’t quite peg it. I’m a Scorpio, so I guess that accounts for my passion and stubbornness. I’m also a Latino man, so maybe there’s some of that feigned “machismo”. But I’ve also traveled solo, and I’ve seen and experienced things some people can’t imagine, or don’t want to know about. I’ve survived “trying” relationships with women, so purple hearts all around just for that.

And, at the age of 28, I tended to my dying father who finally succumbed to lung cancer. Which wasn’t pretty. It’s not like the movies. There’s nothing noble or revelatory in death, only pain and anger. No music swells up as the last rights are given. You don’t suddenly obtain the meaning of life. If anything, it hardens you. There’s not much that can faze you after you see the high gloss wash over your father’s eyes and his last breath is exhaled into you as you fail miserably at CPR.

So maybe a lot of those things contribute to my high-minded saber rattling. I don't think twice about travel. I am going to Korea and Japan in June for World Cup, and when I get back, I’d like to take an Eastern European trek through Vienna, Salzburg, Budapest, Dansk, and Krakow.

Scared? Well, I’m not stupid. I don’t gallop across the planet and get back without a scratch, not even a tummy ache, because I’m insane. There’s caution involved, and sizing up a neighborhood before going down certain streets, and knowing how to deal with last-second setbacks and glitches and keeping an out eye out for what or whoever. There’s a simple and harsh motto I live by when I’m on the road: Get back to the room. Just get back to the room. Do whatever it takes, get through whatever you have to, but just get back! I fully intend to do just that.

Terrorists be damned. You buy the ticket. You take the ride. No sympathy for the devil…