Keeping Score
Today is my day off. I was planning on doing something else today but after streaming an episode of “Fire Country” last night, an interesting topic came up.
In the episode, the two main characters, Vince and his wife Sharon, are sharing drinks in a bar. Another man walks in and he and Sharon start having a discussion and Sharon tells him to keep his voice down. It turns out that the two of them had shared some intimate conversations over the previous months while Sharon was away. Vince heard part of the conversation and assumed, Sharon had an affair with this man and a fight ensued.
Following the fight, Sharon spoke of Vince’s affair several years prior and Vince retaliated with a line something like “ I didn’t know we were keeping score of our extra-marital affairs”.
This brought up a couple comments from my husband. He is slightly concerned about this subject since I am planning an extended solo trip to Australia next year. Would I meet someone? Would I have an affair? Would I tell him? Luckily, I am confident in my marriage and there is no question of my fidelity. Sure, I will meet a variety of people and have great conversations, but that is as far as it will go.
So that got me thinking, what would a traveler want to keep track of on a scorecard?
These are some of the things that could be interesting to tally up during my 3 month stay:
How many flights, trains, bus trips
How many beaches visited
How many kangaroo sightings
How many steps walked
How many nights spent in hotels, hostels, homes
How many people met that I would like to keep touch with
How many organized tours
How many days I did nothing
Daily costs
When you travel, is there something else you need or want to track?
Let me know in your comments.
How many UNESCO sites, how many drinks, how many bad meals...
We keep track of where we go, what we did and how we got there and back via our calendars. If there are more details, via photos we take and want to remember or share with others, then we write them down or keep photos as memories. Experiences, people we met and enjoyed, sights, places of special interest - not exactly a travelogue or an article for a travel magazine but sometimes a brief post which I did recently on a trip to 3 countries in South America - Brazil, Argentina and Chile. And now, being an ex-pat in Mexico, that is a kind of extended travel experience.
What's amusing is your "planning on doing something else today, but......" I had the same experience a few days ago when starting to write a new post here on Substack and ended up writing on piece on "Why We Write." Now I will try and go back and see what the "something else" was. I think it may have had to do with how we make an "impact" or what kind of "impression" we leave where we've been???