Preamble: SFO to Lima

As I write this, the Dobies are approximately 7 hours into our 9 hour flight to Lima.  We have variously napped, watched movies, drew pictures, done math, read books, programmed, nibbled on things, and poked at our pods and pads and other devices.  Surveying my fellow passengers, they appear to have sunk into their zombie phase of the flight.  The cabin is dark now—quiet, and dinnerless.  I wonder how will we manage to turn the situation around around?  It's strange to watch everyone staring expressionlessly into their screens.  For years now, whenever I fly, I can only look down the barrel of the cabin and imagine us all, in Uncle T's phrase, as a few hundred primates hurtling through the air at 30,000 feet in an aluminum tube.  So I'm mostly sitting, watching other people, and imagining that.

At lunch, I made friends with my seat mate, a woman in her sixties named Estrada.  When two people of good will find they only sort-of share a language, something wonderful sometimes happens.  Their earnest desire to keep the conversation going allows them to ride merrily over the top of any and all confusions and irrelevances that might grind a conversation between native speakers to a halt.

Me:  hey!  I used to know this word.....do you know a Spanish word for when you've eaten too many sweet things, and you just can't eat any more sweets?
Her:  yes!  yes!  Diabetes!
Me:  oh!  good one!  hmmm, yea, that's terrible, huh?

We happily exchanged a bevy of smiles, vigorous nods, and disconnected sentences about food, Lima, our families, our professions, the airplane.

She seemed like the perfect person to help me think out a newly hatching theory of travel.  Why are we going to Peru?  Sure, we'll see things, go to things.  Machu Picchu, etc.  But we didn't come to Peru in order to see Machu Piccu.  We're in Peru to be with each other.  But why go all the way to Peru to do that?  It must be that travelling lets us interact with each other in a different way. So I was thinking, what kind of travel best facilitates this special kind of togetherness?  Is it carefully preparing so that everything from the plane flight to the bus trips go just so?  I'm thinking that it might be better if someone intentionally only brings one pair of pants, or no hiking shoes, or develops a need for sidewalk chalk.  Then we can figure out how to navigate Lima together, in search of pants.  And in the process probably discover many other things.  That's when you really come together as a family and have great experiences.

This small speech either strained the limits of our shared language or her conversational charity, because it was met with only vague smiles.  After an awkward pause she asked if I was looking for pants.  Now that I'm recording this a few hours later I have to admit that the initial spark of inspiration I felt has been lost even to me.  They did serve a lot of excellent wine with lunch.