Traveling (Wo)man

Jess’s post and the replies fed nicely into a dilemma I had this week. How much do I do to promote Wild Goose Chase? When is enough enough?

I’d planned to be at the Quilters Heritage Celebration in Lancaster, PA for four days this week, signing books. An all expense-paid trip. Paid by me. Like LCC, I would have spent over $1000 to get there. And no witty crime writers in the bar.

After American Airlines cancelled my flight the second day in a row, I was stuck. Getting east from the left coast isn't easy and connecting flights to Harrisburg happen once a day. I was willing to go after a one-day delay but a two-day delay, I decided the trip wasn't worth it. I needed to cut my losses ($60 in cabs going back and forth and back and forth to the airport), and stay the heck home.

But should I gotten there somehow? Isn’t that the American way? It’s clearly not the American Airline way.

Ironically, I’d planned this post to be about the Amish. Lancaster is the original home of the Amish. They never have these kinds of travel problems. They only go to places that the Mennonites can drive them to. Niagara Falls is a big destination. The Grand Canyon. Last time I was there, Rueben Yost told us about his trip to California. Even though he was a farmer, he couldn’t name the spiky leaved plants he was seeing from the bus. Artichokes, we told him. He’d never seen an artichoke.

Traveling by horse and buggy has its limits. Left turns are a bitch, evidently. And horses can only pull a buggy about fifty miles a day. Anna, Rueben’s wife, got misty-eyed when she told us how much she missed seeing her daughter. She lived 55 miles away. 55 miles! I’d drive that for the right piece of fabric or a new book. Or to watch the pelicans dive bomb. I’m three-thousand miles from my mother. For Anna, her daughter might as well be on the left coast.

I didn’t get to go the quilt show and meet my new fans, but I did save a lot of money. I think I’ll spend some of it on gas and go to the ocean. Next week, I’ll fly to NY to see my mother.