I looked at the families with kids in strollers getting ready to leave on a trip to visit Grandma and Grandpa. I looked at businessmen wearing looks of misery on their faces as they prepared to get on yet another flight (kind of like George Clooney in Up In The Air). I looked at the couples reading books and ignoring each other.

As I looked at all these people, I realized something. I realized that I was in an airport and could really go just about anywhere in the world I wanted.

Okay, so the person I came to the airport to get on a flight and see would be bummed if I didn’t show up. The truth is that I could disappear and go anywhere I wanted.

I had my bags already packed, and had my identification and credit card. What else would I need?

I could vanish to any destination, and never be heard from again. With your credit card in hand, you actually could disappear for a long, long time.

The question really is this: To where would you disappear? If you could go anywhere in the world, to what place would you want to go?

What would you want to do once you got there? What would you want to experience? What is going on in your life right now that would make you want to escape to someplace else for a while?

I know why I would want to escape right now. It would be because right now I’m sitting next to a screaming kid. So I would want to go somewhere that was quiet and peaceful, where all the children were well-behaved. That place would also have great beaches and fantastic food of course.

Maybe I’m actually describing the place I am right now. Maybe I’ve been there for the last few weeks and none of you even noticed that I’m not in my home office in California.

Maybe I’ve already left on my escape. Maybe I did it because I just really wanted to experience something different, and I wanted to take a personal dare.

So, how daring are you? Where would you go if your best friend dropped you off at the airport?

Think about it. You have no destination in mind and you walk up to the big board and see where all the flights are heading. As you look at that board, you say to yourself “I can go anywhere I want right now. This is where I would go and why.” Where would you go?

We do now have a new name for the blog courtesy of my girlfriend’s mother (aka Mama). Yes, her southern mother Mama calls it “the blob.” She makes up words for just about everything. Sushi is “osaka,” and the list goes on and on from there. It actually was fun learning a whole new language the last couple weeks.

Although Mama has now returned home, something crazy did happen on her last night here: we thought we actually had killed her. Earlier that day, Sonja had to go work. Since that meant her mom was going to be left home basically sitting on the couch and watching television, Sonja thought it would be a cool idea to drop her off at The Promenade instead.

The Promenade is a place that you can walk around and check out lots of different stores, restaurants and vendors. The problem is that Mama is 77 years old, and doesn’t really like to walk around that much.

When older people turn 77, they act a lot like kids. They’re basically as needy and as painful as kids, but they’re just not as cute. They can’t really run around (actually sometimes they can’t even run at all because it hurts them).

Anyway, she dropped Mama off there around 2:30 pm and basically said “Mama, I’ll see you around 6:30 or 7:00 pm.” At around 6:15 pm, however, Mama started calling saying “Where are you darling? Where are you darling? I’m scared. I’m terrified!” She called about eighteen times.

Mama wasn’t feeling too well because she was standing outside in the cold. Apparently she didn’t want to go into a store because the store didn’t have what she wanted to drink. So instead of sitting in the store relaxing and drinking something good, she decided to stand outside.

By the time Sonja picked her up, Mama said her chest hurt because she’d been outside and that she didn’t feel well. When Mama got back to the house, Sonja banished her down to her bedroom and told her to go to sleep.

When Sonja and I went to go to sleep, we were laying there wondering “Did we kill her? Is Mama still alive in there?” I woke up at 7:00 in the morning and I was waiting for confirmation that Mama was alive – a door squeak or SOME indication that Mama was still alive in the next room.

I kept wondering “Did we kill her mother? Should we go and check on her?” So Sonja wakes up and starts getting up to go to the bathroom, and I say “Babe, should we check on her?” She says “No, she’s all right.” I said “I think I might have heard her snore…”

After two or three more silent minutes pass, I’m still laying there wondering if we killed Mama. Did banishing her to The Promenade do it? Did the extra walking in the 65 degree cold do her in for good? What exactly happened to her? Then right at 8:00 am on the button, I hear the door creak and a toilet flush and I realized that we didn’t kill Mama.

Did Mama kill us by hanging with us for two weeks? Absolutely not. Is it hard? Yes, at times.

When older people travel and visit you in your pond, they are like a fish out of water. They don’t travel well. Young people don’t travel well either for that matter. The only people who travel well are those people in the middle.