Dreams Deferred – Torun & Trips Not Taken (Rendezvous With An Obscure Destiny #61a)

There comes a certain time in life when you realize that you will never be young again. That you are closer to death than you could have ever imagined. That half of your life is over even with the best of health. That your life will forever be defined by all that is behind you rather than what is ahead. We have all heard of the road less traveled, but that Is a young person's pursuit or the aged survivalist who through a combination of choice, circumstance, and luck, never took the easy way out. I have no idea if I ever took the road less traveled. What I am certain of is something less positive, the trip not taken. The buses that left the station before I arrived, the trains that were already down the line while I stood staring at the clock, the flights that I never made, the chances I would not take. This includes an aborted trip to Torun during my springtime travels in Poland.

Neverlands – Too Many To Mention

For every trip I have taken, there have been many more for which I could not follow through. When you are closer to the end then the beginning, whether it is your life or a two-week trip, time becomes a ticking clock that offers ever diminishing returns. The sand in the hourglass is running out. You barely noticed this at the beginning. Now all you can see is each separate grain of sand. A limited amount of time can focus the mind. It becomes now or never, act or do nothing. When faced with the question “To go or not to go?” I answered with a negative. In the process, I convinced?myself that I did not have a choice. I had a choice and each time I took the escape route. I will never know whether I made the right decision, but from a distance it feels like failure. This is not nearly as haunting as another related thought. That many of those trips will never happen. The future is not what it used to be. I am running out of time. Then again, I was always running out of time. The difference is that I realize this.

The trips not taken are the bane of every traveler’s existence. In that respect, I am no different. I would like to change Sinatra’s famous lyric in “My Way” from “Regrets, I’ve had a few, But then again, too few to mention” to “Regrets, I’ve had more than a few, too many to mention.” At the top of my list of regrets are the trips not taken. The dreams I deferred due to lack of courage, lack of money, lack of time, lack of will. I convinced myself that I was too tired or allowed circumstances to dictate what I would do. The trips not taken are a thread that runs throughout my life. There was the dream of Albania in my early college years. Now Albania is all the rage and still interests me, but not the way that mysterious Balkan nation did in the early 1990’s when it was emerging from a hermetic existence. That was just the start of my Eastern Europe misadventures. I came to a fork in the road and decided to turn back. My stillborn journeys fascinate and frighten me in unequal measure.

Limitless Appeal - Outside The Realm Of Reality

I would like to read my mind back to me and find out just what I was thinking when I decided against a trip. Some nights, like this one, these aborted journeys come back to haunt me. Like the time I was so tired that I denied myself the delights of a return visit to Oradea. Or the time I drove past the exit for Lugos on the way to Timisoara. There is a statue of Bela Lugosi still waiting on me in Lugos. The memory of that miss is still vivid, the will to return is weak. The countless times I have committed in words rather than deeds for a trip to Tallinn. A visit to the Estonian capital still has not happened, now I wonder if it ever will. The Castle of Siklos in southern Hungary has been on my list of must-sees for almost a decade. I have a stinging suspicion that it will stay that way. The list grows longer and more static as the years go by. Chernivtsi and Edirne, Kaunas and Plovdiv, a second time in Spis land, a first time in Bukovina. These are the dreams I can always remember. They still exist outside the realm of reality.

While I cannot remember every one of my trips not taken, I can vividly recall a more recent one that I denied myself in Poland. This would not be for want of trying, instead it would be for want of deciding. We had just returned from an enjoyable and exhausting time in the countryside of northern Poland. Prior to that we had spent several days in Gdansk. Before that, we had done a trip from Gdansk to Berlin and back. We were acting like young men, while our bodies and biological clocks were ready to rebel. The wear and tear from constant travel had pushed us to the limit. Each day we drove off into the Polish countryside to explore byways and backwoods areas by vehicle and on foot. We took numerous detours, doubled back to search the same areas again and figured out logistics on the go.

Tripping Out - Point of Exhaustion

Caught up in the spirit of adventure, it was only at night that we took notice of the creeping malaise that eventually wearies every traveler. The constant need to be situationally aware had a cumulative impact. Then the next day we were back at it again. Like all addictions, this one was bound by the laws of diminishing returns. The more we did, the less we felt. Everything was educational, even the roads and restaurants. Somewhere along the way we managed to overwhelm ourselves. And yet I still harbored one last dream. All we had to do was push past the point of exhaustion. I knew this was pushing the limits beyond our capabilities at this point in the trip. Most people would go back and spend the day relaxing at the guest house, preparing for the flights back home. Logically, that would have been the best plan, but we were at the point of exhaustion. This was less about logic and more about one last adventure. A day trip from Gdansk to Torun and back.