Flying home from a quick trip from Des Moines, IA, where I had a diabetes oriented lecture to students at Drake University, I’m exiled out to the ‘B’ gates and Minneapolis-St. Paul International airport. This airport overall is really modern with a small mall and numerous eating and drinking establishments. The rest rooms all feature classical music and it’s generally about as classy of an airport experience one can have domestically. I think of all us walk by gates for departures to places like Paris, Singapore or Tokyo and think what it would be like to just switch our plans and take off only with what we have in our bag.

No such destinations out on the ‘B’ gates- these are places like Flint, Green Bay, Billings, and Sioux Falls. There is nothing wrong with any of those places, but the places of dreams are out on ‘C’ and ‘G’ gate, a long walk from here. Still, I’m wondering, what if I went impulsively to Flint? There are probably some fun things to do there, and I’d learn something about it that I don’t know, shattering some stereotypes along the way. Back when I was still drinking, I did spontaneous road trips to places all the time like Albuquerque, NM, or small cities with minor league baseball.

It’s the dream of travel that we all have; it doesn’t have to be big or exotic, it just has to be. See you soon, Cedar Falls.