[To my readers, warning… this post is pretty self-indulgent; It chronicles almost the past two years during which I on again off again travelled with Mik; It’s an overview of how it happened, what we saw together, what worked about traveling together, and what didn’t. In it are suggestions you might take to heart for yourself, should you team up with a travel companion, but you’ll have to read through all the hay to find those pins of value, cause this is a stream of consciousness, psychological dump on my part.]

After about 8 months of cumulative travel together over about two years … which was a pretty successful run considering how very different he and I are, Mik and I have decided to amicably ‘split up’ so to speak. Traveling together was no longer working for us — well seriously not working for me, and my low-level resentment occasionally blew up into me yelling at him, and THAT wasn’t working for him (well duh). There’s some low level anger, obviously, but for the most part we’ve dealt with it like adults.

[What follows is a sort of timeline of events … if you’re not interested in the blow-by-blow, feel free to skip to after the photographs stop, to get the meat of the problem.]

In the summer of 2017, after having already traveled alone for about 2.5 years, I had decided that it was starting to get a bit lonely, and had reached out to friends via Facebook to see if anyone wanted to join me in my travels. In September of that year, Mik a guy I knew, whose job allowed him to work remotely, reached out to me and asked if he could swing by one of my next stops and spend a day with me (he combined it with seeing relatives in a town nearby the place I was going to be in Canada).

Over lunch, he brought up the topic of our joining up our horses, so to speak, and traveling together. While the thought of having a travel buddy sounded good, I was more than a bit hesitant. My hesitation lay in the fact that Mik wasn’t so much someone I would refer to as a friend, but rather a peer who traveled in the same circle of friends as I had, about 10 years ago when I had lived in SF. In fact I barely knew him. We’d only ever had maybe one or two serious conversations in that whole period, generally around the topic of why as much as I thought he was a good guy, no I didn’t want to date him. After that, we’d maintained the connection via Facebook/social media (low-level) and about 5 years back, after I moved back to Chicago, he had asked to crash at my apartment for a few days while traveling through … I had a full-sized airbed that I set up in the living room for guests and again had an open invite up on FB. So I was a bit unsure about our potential for being travel buddies, but was lonely enough to be willing to give it a try.

In Late October through early November, we had our first trial run, and spent a little over a week together in Tennessee. First we rented an affordable hotel room with two beds, because I usually don’t sleep well with others. I was really happy to discover 1) he was a very heavy sleeper who, 2) didn’t snore — like not at all. Apparently… I don’t snore either, he said however that I am quite the chatterbox while dreaming, but he said it didn’t bother him.

This was then followed up by crashing at the homes of friends, first one of his, than one of mine in small towns, outside of Nashville… where we experienced sharing beds for the first time. This again also worked out all right (he was great about staying to his side of the bed after I made it clear that I don’t want to be touched while sleeping — HOW he manages to respect boundaries so well while asleep, boggles the mind).

Based on this one week, we decided that we were going to do more traveling together, he headed back to the west coast for work related stuff, and then on to Australia where he’s from originally (and his mom still is) … and I went to Disney World for the third year in a row…. and promptly realized I was bored out of my mind with the place. So I contacted him and asked him, “do you have crash space for me there?” And he did, so I spent the next month figuring out how to downsize my life from the contents of a car, to that of one large suitcase and one carry on, etc., and, on Dec. 31, 2017 I had posted about how after traveling alone for about 2.5 years I had decided that it was starting to get lonely, and how I would now be traveling him, for as long as that might last.

Later that day, on New Years Eve 2017/2018, I flew for the first time in my life to Australia. We hung out there, and did some other stuff, sometimes together, sometimes apart… Then on Australia day, which is sort of, a cross between 4th of July and Columbus day, while attending a protest in support of Aboriginal rights with him, I fell down and went boom, big time… which resulted in a concussion that took about a year to get over the worst of, but that to this day I’m still dealing with the repercussions of.

That said, he was great during the worst of it. Had the foresight to document it for me with photos, knowing that I’m perverse enough to want them. Once out of the hospital, I could see (it was all there in his body language) his inner child was seriously struggling with his adult side in terms of “showing up” for me versus doing what he wanted to do in any particular moment (Mik is 45 going on 9), but he was none the less great about it. A week later (I was STILL in very bad shape “I …  …was… …talking… …like… …this…” and was still suffering bad positional vertigo so that I needed to be steadied in order to walk…), but Mik was flying to Tasmania with his mom, and I was scheduled to go to Ballarat (all my posts from there),

LUCKILY the plan had always been for me to spend those next two weeks at the home of a friend, rather than to be in an Airbnb. She was a modern-day pen-pal; as in someone I’d bonded with over the last two years via Facebook, but had never actually met. She’d repeatedly said I should come visit her, so now I was going to. We had intended to spend two weeks traveling the area together, but obviously… life is what happens as you’re making other plans. That said, as dumb luck would have it, she was a former nurse, and as such was much better able (and more to the point willing) to care for me than he would have been. She was great about letting me rest 99% of the time, but still dragging me out for some short trips to places like their wildlife park… And to the Sovereign Hill Park where she regularly volunteers her time… a massive historical reenactment of Australia’s gold rush period, which I returned to for a FULL week during my second visit to Australia (I apparently broke their record for the furthest away person to buy a 1 year pass). It’s like Disney for history nerds, so totally up my alley… to the extent that I could see myself maybe going to that town for long enough stay so as to volunteer there myself.

Towards the end of my stay, when I had more energy, we did a slightly longer trip out to Grampians National Park, Victoria. She also took me to her favorite dentist who (again, as luck would have it) specialized in jaw work; Another of the after effects of the concussion was that the impact from the fall had been strong enough that it dislocated my jaw. As in I’ve had over 1K worth of work done on it since then, and it STILL clicks. That said, she and I get along really well, and for the most part our travel interests are MUCH more copacetic than what I had with Mik, so odds are she and I will most likely do some travel together in the future (although her job does NOT allow her to work remotely, and her finances are that of a hard-working, middle-class person, so any trips will have to be short interspersed ones).

After Ballarat I met up with Mik again in Adelaide, where he was visiting another girlfriend. From there we did a road trip along the Great Ocean road (link to all blogs on that topic). I’ve yet to do much blogging about that because at the time the post-concussive syndrome meant I didn’t have the mental strength to do much of anything. And then, I went to Korea and Japan and I had other things to write about … so my backlog of posts I need to complete is currently set to 140 (YAH!). Am thinking I need to think about staying put in one place long enough to catch up …

Photos from the as yet to be blogged about visit to The Twelve Apostles rock formation

That said, during that whole road trip I was really only able to do things that meant leaving the car for short distances. I could NOT manage enough moving around to REALLY be able to SEE any one location in its full glory… let alone the mental energy to be able to really enjoy it. Just sitting in a moving car kind of made my brain feel like it was buzzing. As such, to be honest, I’d like to do it all over again, because my memories from that whole period are a bit hazy (like I said, post concussive syndrome). Only this time I’d cover shorter distances on a daily basis and spend much more time at each location (how I like to travel versus how Mik likes to do it). That said, Mik was considerate and not irritating to be around during that whole thing, and didn’t get pissy about my limitations.

All through it we kept checking in with each other and both of us felt like this travel partnership was working for us. In particular, I was surprised at how not annoyed with him I was (there’s a reason I never got married, I find most people irritating after a while). At which point I actually allowed myself to feel some affection for Mik, because I was enjoying his company so much (and was grateful for how considerate he was being). From time to time there were minor issues but nothing to write home about. So we agreed, we’d start making plans for future travel once this trip was over.

After the road trip we ended up in Melbourne, where again I spent MOST of my time in bed getting over the mental strain of the road trip. We did however manage one day trip to Phillip Island, to see the Penguin Parade. We then drove towards Australia’s Capitol, Canberra, where both of us had friends,

…his where folks I sort of knew, from back when we all lived in SF, mine was a friend I had gone to the Royal College of Art, in London, with back when I was in my 20’s. This trip was also when I visited the locally famous Dog on a Tucker Box, and pit stopped at Glenrowan the home of Ned Kelly…  for the first time (we stopped by both a 2nd time the following year, spending a goodly amount of time exploring Glenrowan)

After a few days in Canberra, we headed north to Sydney again, which is when we stopped at the Big Marino, for the first time (the following year, I asked if we could stop there again so I could actually get some shopping done, and climb up into the sheep’s head, as this time I wasn’t utterly wiped out, like the first time we went).

Once we got to Sydney, I spent MOST of my time resting. Since we still had the rental car, Mik took me and one of his girlfriends, who was visiting him from California, to see Sydney’s Luna Amuseument Park (although we didn’t do any rides or anything like that). Apparently, while in Melbourne he’d walked me to the doors of THEIR version of the same, but my brain was so addled at the time that I didn’t realize that we had till we drove by it the following year when we did a longer stay in Melbourne, and he reminded me of it (the first time, I was just thrilled with being able to do a reasonably energetic walk, as in the post concussive dizziness had subsided enough to allow me to do that).

About a week later we attended the ‘concluding’ Parade for one of Sydney’s biggest tourist draws, MariGras Week — which happens the same week as Catholic MardiGras, but that at some point converted from a Catholic pre-lent thing into Australia’s biggest LGBTQ event (Again, I’ve not yet written that blog post, so I can’t explain why, yet). After that, we headed off on our separate ways, while making plans for possible future joint travel.

SO, a few months later we met up again in for a week in Ohio, where we spent a few days in Dayton, Ohio … a town I’d been wanting him to see. Dayton is in my opinion is one of the most undervalued tourist destinations in the US, as most Americans today have completely forgotten what the town had been in the past (it WAS the USA’s equivalent of today’s silicon valley during the industrial revolution). Mik, an engineer by trade, had passed through Dalton before, on the way to visiting friends who lived in nearby Columbus, OH, but didn’t realize its historic value and had never taken the time to really SEE it, but I had spoken to him about it at length, and had managed to convince him it was up his alley of interests. Turned out he wasn’t so much into issues of flight/travel… but what the town was ultimately about was the evolution of engines, and THAT he is very interested in, so he ended up enjoying himself but for very different reasons than I did. And here in lies one of the MAJOR differences between how Mik likes to travel and how I like to do it.

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[return to the meat]

It was after our Ohio trip, while planning our future ones, that I began realizing that most of my choices were turning into doing what he wanted and trailing after him. Me I’m essentially pretty easy, so as long as what he wanted to do was something I was physically capable of (my health issues meant I couldn’t go hiking with him, as much as I would have liked to) all good. The opposite, functionally, only happened after HOURS of negotiating, and tended to result in… you know how when you’re traveling with a little kid you have to actively plan it around what they want to do cause otherwise they’ll make it hell for you? It was a bit like that…. doing anything that he wasn’t really interested in meant being abandoned, because he was never willing to just trail along behind me.

Also, the entirety of the planning burden, was ending up on my shoulders. I was the one who had to search for out next digs, and every time it had to meet his needs, which included him having his own bedroom in any town he had lovers, so that he could have dates… which meant we weren’t really saving any money traveling together in those places. Only I had to also wait on him to agree to each location. I’d create lists of possible apartments, send him the list and then have to wait a full week or sometimes two or THREE weeks for him to get back to me, because he basically had to have nothing fun and hence distracting lined up before he be willing to sit down and do the work of planning.

That was when our disconnects started to really aggravate me. Oh, the conflicts were all pretty low-level. He and I really are pretty much OK with each other, it’s just that for me the benefits of traveling together were quickly getting outweighed by the annoyance of we are VERY different people. It worked for a while, then it didn’t. He likes the weather hot to equatorial, I like the weather cool enough to be able to wear a light jacket and a hat. If I agree to go where its hot and miserable, it happens, if I want to go somewhere cool, it rarely happens. He likes hills and mountains, I like looking at them from flat places where I can walk easier — cause I have real mobility issues and a high risk of falling if they’re not respected. I like shopping, historical and cultural stuff, he’s ok with that in short doses, but his priority is all about being social with old friends, reconnecting with old lovers and whenever possible finding new ones. I need a low-fat but in protein rich diet, he wants a high fat vegetarian one (and is disgusted by the smell of meat and fish). I love Japanese and Chinese food, he actively dislikes those kinds. I like things structured and organized in such a way as to allow for flexibility within obligations (which I never resent), he prefers lots of spontaneity and being able to do whatever he feels like doing whenever he feels like doing it (and resents the obligations that means he can’t, even though he admits there are a lot of benefits that come with my way of doing it).

This caused issues like him agreeing to things after long discussions, and then promptly forgetting anything agreed to that he didn’t actually want to do. At first I thought I was going crazy thinking this was the pattern, but I reached out to a bunch of mutual friends who had been his former partners, and they ALL said, “YUP, that’s what he does!” In NZ this actually resulted in me waiting to be picked up from Hobbiton at 10pm (which is the middle of NOTHING)  — even after my having said to him repeatedly, “you’ll pick me up at 10 right?” with him gripping and saying he’d already agreed to that so why was I repeating the question?… (I had because I knew he didn’t want to) …. only to realize he had in his own head decided that I’d agreed to finding my own way home. SERIOUSLY! Oh, and in addition, I prefer staying places for at least a few days each so I can rest a lot, and preferably for months if it’s a major city that has a lot of offer … while he gets antsy staying anywhere for more than 6 weeks (unless it’s a place he thinks of as home), and would prefer to not be there more than 3. … SO, yes, what it came down to was a basic disconnect

My theory about why it worked so well the first trip, but then did a mind blistering 180 the 2nd time we went to Australia, is that, at that point, in his head (he HATES when I do this), our relationship had shifted from “I’m on probation and being considered for a gig” to “OK, I can relax now, this is a sort of relationship with legs, she’s a housemate… with a moving house.” I’ve actually had a relationship like that in the past with the one guy I almost married. We were GREAT right up until I said “YES” to the ring, so to speak… and then from that day forward he went from absolutely charming bordering on perfect, to becoming a right asshole. When I asked him what had changed he’d said to me, “well you’re almost family now, I shouldn’t HAVE to be nice to family.” In Mik’s case… this was things like, he had been super clean and neat the first year, but then turned into something of a minor slob the 2nd (leaving puddles of water in the bathroom, wanting to bring food into my bed when we were streaming a show, etc).

I have confirmation of this being the fact with Mik, because over the last 4 months, every time he and I would have a “big talk”, or I get seriously pissed at him, he’ll shift back into the guy I was traveling with the previous year, at least for a few days…the same guy who I think (based on my personal observations), shows up when he’s with his sweeties (women he’s in non-monogamous relationships with who he only see sporadically, or for short stints) …. and everything will be good… and then he’d get comfortable again and all the behaviors I couldn’t stand would start-up again. (And again, I contacted all the women I know who’ve done long relationships with him, or whose sisters used to be his housemates, and they all confirmed, I wasn’t being neurotic… it was consistent with what they knew of him.) When that switch in his behavior would happen, I got annoyed and short-tempered and snarky with him… with lots of under my breath commentaries. Keep in mind, we’d done big talks to no effect, so I just gave up on trying …. because its pointless to talk about something when it never makes a difference because he just rejects that what I’m unhappy with happened or worse, he accepts it, and then forgets the conversation ever happened. There’s no learning curve, so — either way, it’s a lose lose scenario for me … till the next blow up, at which point he’s worried about his security again and he’s back to who I thought I’d be traveling with in the first place … that same guy who is great and easy to have around. Then wash, rinse, repeat … he gets comfortable again, stops minding his p’s and q’s…. we are back to where we started.

Also, as long as my health issues were emergency mode… he was great, but then he’d lose patience with not being able to do what he wanted to do when he wanted to do it. So, not wanting to be abandoned, I’d try my damnedest to keep up his pace, and inevitably end up falling down (literally, I went boom a lot more often with him than I do alone). Add to that the fact that he kept coming back from visits to girlfriends (many of whom have kids) with colds, and passing those colds on to me… He’s of the sort who gets better after 3 days, I’m the sort who stays seriously ill for a solid 2 to 3 weeks… and by the 2nd cold in 3 months… well, enough was enough. He was in fact ruining my experiences.

Insanity is doing the same thing over and over expecting different results. We’ve had THREE major attempts at fixing this in the last 4 months of traveling together, and the pattern got repeated. Three strikes and done. I told him in NZ, strike 2 … well yelled at him really, that I no longer wanted to go with him to Amsterdam. Then back in Sydney we had yet another blowup (in front of one of his dates) … after which, he’d been on BEST behavior, till finally I was like, “we need to talk about Amsterdam”, he agreed we did… and we agreed to cancelling that and all future trips.

The fact that I had, to his minor annoyance, insisted that we maintain a spread-sheet of ‘who paid what’ at this point turned out to have been a VERY good thing in the long run. For some small things, like dinners where the waiter refused to split the checks, we’d kept a pattern of taking turns, but for pretty much everything else, that all went into the spread sheet. I STRONGLY suggest this to anyone who gives this a try! Of course, he was the one in charge of the spread sheet (because he’s a computer programmer and knows how to make it REALLY work, while I’m clueless beyond using it as set up; as in every time I try to do more than just input data I’d seriously fuck it up and he’d have to go in and change the coding. That said, Mik being Mik, it wasn’t what he wanted to do, so it took him a few weeks to get around to it, with me having to send him constant reminders and him saying “oh yah, thanks for the reminder, I forgot.”; but, he FINALLY finalized it about 3 weeks AFTER he’d promised it would be done by (every leg of planning was like this, hence my mounting frustration with him)… with the end result being he owed me money… which he sent me via PayPal (about a week after figuring out he needed to — yes that me rolling my eyes). Last week, because he wanted my photos but was utterly unwilling to download them one at a time from cloud, we finally figured out how to cross share photographs — I’m a mac person, he’s a PC/Android person, it caused problems… DROP BOX is your friend ladies and gentleman… That said, it was ONLY our friend because he has a corporate account with them which allowed for (almost) infinite hard drive space. His google cloud account would only allow me to download from him a few at a time… not ALL at once as he was demanding… but unlike him, I have a modicum of patience. His unwillingness to accommodate to how websites like Airbnb wanted him to function versus how HE wanted to function, was part of why I ended up doing ALL the leg work of planning via those sites. ….snark snark snark