Traveling Smithless

My thrice weekly Travelsmith catalogue arrived yet again. You know, that travel apparel catalogue whose mission it is to send you out into the world wearing outfits that look like you shopped exclusively from a travel apparel catalogue. I snorted derisively, and chunked it (as I do three times per week) into the recyclable bin without flipping through it.

As far as I can recollect, I've never bought anything from Travelsmith. I don't know why they are so committed to the belief that if they just keep stuffing their catalogues in my postal box, and offering me 95% off from the sales insert, I'll finally break down and buy the Men's Soft Velour Travel Suit for First Class Comfort or the Women's Flex-Stretch Leather Topper with a Touch of Shimmer.

First off, their travel apparel does not scream National Geographic Adventure or Planet Earth photo journalist. Jane Goodall did not have any need for a Shirtdress with Nano-Tex, or the Pack-N-Go Knits ( "Softer. More Sophisticated. Just as Packable.") and Sir Richard Burton did not wear the Microfiber Anywhere Adventure Pants (with zippered security pocket, guaranteed to repel both pick-pockets and romantic overtures). The only place you're going in these travel-lounge outfits is the VIP bar at the airport and the tour bus from your hotel.

Clothes that you buy from Travelsmith consign you to relentless, waist-band comfort in the company of people who look just like you. People who pack special TravelFlex slippers and CoolMax jeans and Micro-Pique Belted Trench Jackets. Clothe yourself in a Travelsmith ensemble and you will find yourself facing a continental breakfast each morning, sitting across from other Travelsmiths, and discussing your hopes and dreams for lunch.

You will not be lying under a frangipani tree in a tropical ditch wearing an improvised garbage bag for a raincoat while waiting for a tequila fog to lift from your brain. You will not be returning home wearing clothes that were never your own, and whose origin remains an enduring mystery. You will not be cruising the Patpong district of Bangkok in your Refined Luxe Explorer Shirt with patch pockets and side vents.

Travelsmith clothes and accessories are designed to give you the illusion that you will be prepared for any circumstance, while they simultaneously prevent you from ever HAVING any circumstance. They keep you safe. They force their cautiousness on you by convincing you that your shirt SHOULD keep you cool and unwrinkled in the tropic heat. That you MUST "lounge in luxury" since you're taking along your Three Piece Striped Terry Set ("Instant Style!") in cotton/poly. In reality, Travelsmith, with all their promises of stretchiness and packability and versatility, robs you of one of the most satisfying aspects of a really good trip…your opportunity to leave home, be wrenchingly uncomfortable, and return to complain about it.

I know you may be thinking, "But what's wrong with looking nice when I travel? What's wrong with being comfortable?" I would argue that there is, certainly, nothing wrong with looking nice or being comfortable, but if grooming and keeping comfy are your primary travel objectives, you will be inevitably limited to all sorts of nice experiences - nice hotels, nice restaurants and dining with other nice people who approach you because you look as nice as they do. Your opportunities for getting into even a little bit of trouble with the locals are way diminished, and if you aren't traveling for the pure joy of going out into the world to be a different you, I don't know why you are bothering to leave home in the first place.

I believe that packing for travel is an act of sympathetic magic. While you pack your clothes and toiletries into your bag, you are also packing your expectations. Travelsmith knows that you are terrified of being mismatched, inappropriate, too hot or too cold or even a little mussed. They know that you want to go about your travel adventure in coordinated, pre-pressed style. They offer you the vision of tidy travel, regular meals, secured reservations… a trip where everything goes according to your plan because you had the foresight to pack the right Adjustable Antistress Shoes, Tropical Microfibre Sportscoat and the Mix-and-Match Crepe Separates. All promise you the assurance that they resist water, stains, the sun and wrinkles (and, possibly, fun).

We tend to find what we're looking for. In a carefully coordinated travel costume, you'll find yourself having cocktails in your hotel lounge. In your disreputable aloha shirt, decrepit shorts and Tevas, you'll find yourself explaining to a bartender at a grass palapa in Rarotonga that there's more to a margarita than just tequila - you need triple sec and ice and lime juice, and contreau would be good too. But he'll only have tequila, and after the first you won't care so much (see garbage bag and frangipani tree above). Or, in the same pair of shorts, a t-shirt and Chacos, you can ask the guy tending bar at the wildlife park in Africa what kind of mixers they have to go with vodka. He pauses to consider and replies, "You know, Orange Fanta is very good with vodka over ice." You ask, "Do you have Orange Fanta and ice?" He responds, "No. And we do not have vodka, but we have beer."

The thing that I have always loved most about traveling is that I am free to be a new me when I am out in the world. Disconnected from my routine and far away from the conventions of my own culture, I get to explore my uncharted edges - travel pokes at my weaknesses and strengths and I get some useful insight into managing my own psychology. Conversely, Travelsmith wants me to be the same fussy, tense person I am at home, only in a synthetic wardrobe. A wardrobe that I won't be tempted to take off to go skinny dipping anywhere. An outfit that marauding baboons will never steal from my bag because I'm not getting near any marauding baboons in that getup.

It's sad. Very sad.

So, here's my pitch…when I travel, I become untethered. Whatever I believe about myself and who I am in the world becomes pointless and absurd. Suddenly, I am eager to enter the hula competition at the Banana Bar (perhaps I was topless; perhaps not) in some Micronesian archipelago. Even though I order chicken and something shows up on my plate with four suspicious drumsticks, the admiration I have for intrepid travelers everywhere allows me to accept iguana as a perfectly acceptable substitute. I want to be intrepid, too.

I'll consider anything when I'm on the road. No one in America has ever offered to sell me a young Oriental Short-Claw Otter for twenty bucks. But at the edge of the road by a forest, I almost made the deal with a young boy. I reasonably contemplated having a special pouch made to wear under my dress - the better to carry my adorable contraband on the flight home and claim, "Oh, he's an active kicker! Just like his dad."

Only while traveling can you stand looking down on the tourist bus disgorging its contents at the jungle's edge and ask yourself if there is such a thing as a Pyramid-High Club. And is there enough time to start a chapter here and now before the pack (uniformly outfitted from the Travelsmith catalogue) makes it over the trail and reaches the steps?

I wasn't wearing anything that resembled a Classic Herringbone Trouser Skirt or a Micro-Chenille Robe on one memorable trip down the coast of Quintana Roo. Someone's old college roommate, Lance, who looked like Hunter S. Thompson's doppelganger, showed up unexpectedly before our departure and decided to buy a ticket and tag along. Traveling toward Belize in a VW van was going well enough until the third day kept me stopping in at every baño to deal with a persistent case of tourista. Hearing of my digestive troubles, thoughtful Lance came to my room to offer relief in the form of tincture of opium. Whereas most people travel with Immodium or Kaopectate, it turned out that Lance was a traveling pharmacopia of contraband, opiates and weird medicinals that took you up, knocked you under, or leveled you out.

As it became more apparent that we were sharing a van rental with a guy voted Most Likely to Spend Life in a Mexican Prison, I was having the minor freak out. Fortunately, Lance wandered off into some sort of beach cult near the border and we were able to continue on without the persistent fear of arrest dogging me. He caught up with us in the Cancun airport lounge for the flight home - I stayed far, far away as he cleared customs.

Having a nice travel outfit has never played much of a part in my travel adventures. For that matter, few of my memorable moments in the world had anything to do with dramatic scenery, historically significant sites, good food, famous art in famous museums, architecture or relaxation. My memories are all tied up in the quirkiness of the unexpected - the "aha" moment that signals any good traveler that while we may be uncomfortable riding cross-country through Costa Rica in a van full of car-sick vomiting seniors citizens, we are also elated. We know that we are having a genuine experience completely outside of our comfort zone.

What I remember from my trip to Venezuela is the mother of a friend insisting that we travel with a lamp she wanted us to bring to her daughter back in the U.S. I don't remember much about what Venezuela was like, but I remember every detail of that lamp.

I think the beaches of Thailand were, probably, beautiful, but I mostly remember almost retching with suppressed laughter from watching two extremely pale North Americans who had seriously misjudged the size of their swimsuits. Every breaking wave, every attempt to sit in the sand or on a beach chair or bend over caused his trunks and her bottoms to retreat several inches below the line of respectability. Each would tug aggressively up on the elastic waistband, futilely trying to force the garment to stretch over a grub-white expanse it was too small to cover - sort of like trying to get a twin-size fitted sheet over a queen-size mattress. The memory still makes me laugh although it was twenty years ago. And it may, very well, be the last scene that flashes across my mind when I leave this world.

I remember my fruitless search for Scotch tape in Nigeria and my days thwarting miscreant baboons armed with only a homemade slingshot. I remember being wary as we picked up a hitchhiker in Canada and asking him (believing that if I was going to be bludgeoned to death, at least I'd have fair warning) "You aren't carrying a tire iron, are you?" Only to have him pull a tire-iron out of his backpack and say, "Yeah. I just found this. Do you need it?"

I remember falling in with a zither player at a folk festival and learning more about zithers and zither players than I had previously thought possible.

On my travels, I learned that it is unwise to sleep anywhere out of doors where you can see a big snake track in the sand. I learned that people are smart and funny wherever you go, and sharing a common language is not very important. Mostly, people everywhere respond to good intentions. It doesn't mean that you won't be cheated or have your money or luggage stolen, but it's nothing personal.

Without a Travelsmith itinerary, you aren't as likely to eat in nice hotel restaurants with a menu in English, and you may find yourself eating eels off a street vendor or wondering if the monitor lizard is any good. You discover that people will bring you food if you just walk into a local eatery, shrug your shoulders and look expectant. People will, also, politely guide you out of their living room when you've mistaken their home for a restaurant and sit down at their table while wondering why there aren't more patrons (or tables).

I remember leaving a country one day where dogs are herded and eaten, and returning home to my own country to buy pet food at a colossal Pet Emporium the very next day. And sleeping on the floor of an island airport, being startled awake when every time a plane arrived and the PA system blasted out ukulele music. I remember my astonishment in a coastal parking lot in Maine when a chartered bus arrived and emptied out 40 tourists - all carrying identical walking sticks, having, no doubt, previously stopped at Ye Old Maine Walking Stick Mercantile.

On my first visit to Harrison Hot Springs in the early 80's, I forgot to pack a swimsuit. Those were leaner times. I could only afford the public pool and didn't have enough to buy a new suit on the spot, so I rented one instead from the pool's collection of vintage and abandoned swimsuits. I found myself soaking in a thick navy blue, 50's era, skirted and belted one-piece with pointed bra cups so large that my breasts just floated up and out of them. My subsequent trips years later as a guest of the classy resort there and wearing my own swimsuit were not half as memorable.

But all that said, you might be suspiciously squinting at my photo and asking yourself, "How old is this woman?" I know where you're going. You're saying to yourself, "That's all fine for a young person, but once you hit a 'certain age', people are going to wonder if you can't make a little effort with yourself." And you are right about that. I used to travel in a third-hand wardrobe when I expected I might sleep in a foreign airport or on a canal boat, or I anticipated that my luggage would be lost or stolen, or that opportunities to do laundry would be sporadic.

When you're in your twenties and early thirties and can rely on a speedy metabolism and great hair to overcome a bohemian wardrobe, you can get by on a shirt given to you by a British army officer that becomes an object of religious worship. You can carry off a careless sense of style that tells the world you're an evolved traveler and don't require material attachments.

As we age, we put more and more effort into becoming presentable and our focus changes while our knees begin to sag. My suitcase for my summer vacation was filled with JCrew tees, respectable age-appropriate walking shorts, and Liz Claiborne tops that floated away from my un-svelte mid-section. I worried that I hadn't packed the Children's Motrin or the charger for my Mp3 player, instead of visualizing my next piña colada. I had a separate rolling bag for hair-care products alone. So, I know that we tend to upgrade our travel style as we mature…the world expects us to look more respectable if we hope to receive more respect. But it doesn't necessarily follow that you have to mutate into a Travelsmith borg.

I beg you, when you pull out your suitcase and begin to pack for your next travel adventure, take a moment to think about who you are and what you want to bring back home from the world. Excitement? Romance? Cultural experiences? Contact with the natural world? Do you see yourself singing Danny Boy in an Irish pub or communing with orangutans or meditating in far-flung temples? Don't worry. Somehow, you'll find shelter. Somehow, you'll find food and companions. Let yourself be surprised…startled, even, by packing like the intrepid traveler that you are. Travel smithless.

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Ingrid is currently living and respectably employed in Austin, Texas with a firm specializing in environmental law. She hopes to get back home to the San Juan Islands next spring to stay.
While Ingrid is spiritually promiscuous, she credits her guru, Jimmy Buffet, for her mantra..."If we couldn't laugh, we would all go insane." Besides a passion for Tiki Studies, Ingrid is borderline biblio-obsessive. She is an old-school Libran - i.e., she won't be leading the Revolution, but she'll work to make it an attractive affair and hire the musicians and caterers."

Her column appears every other Thursday in San Juan Islander. To contact Ingrid, send emails to ingrid@sanjuanislander.com

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