When I Learned to Live – Part II

This entry is part two of my chain of entries named “When I Learned to Live.” To see part one, click here.

School had never been a challenge for me before college. I missed 30 days a year, I slept when I actually went to class, and I still maintained Valedictorian ranking up until my very last semester in school (thanks Gohlke). I was used to not having to try with my education, and I am to this day still incredibly blessed with an innate ability to process things quickly and without much repetition. That gloating aside, Penn became more of an intellectual challenge in avoidance than it did a spot to bunker down and study. It wasn’t exactly shocking that my habits were in fact… habitual – imagine that, right? Class bored me, the incessant coddling of the professors from overzealous grade mongers annoyed me, and the general lack of maturity in the student population was both disheartening and frustrating.

My itch to travel was still alive and I yearned to scratch it. It took me about a semester before my random gallivanting began to resurface in the manner of short trips. With my truck now in Philadelphia for spring semester, I felt my single city constraints break free, and I urged, nay, forced my schoolmates to go to random locations with me. It began with little things – instead of eating on campus or strolling into Center City Philadelphia, I would urge them to experience the likes of a Texas Roadhouse in the middle of the east coast. To my extreme pleasure, the artificial “yeehaws” and line dancing from Northeastern accented waitresses was spot-”off,” just as expected. Now, Texas Roadhouse was only a 30 minute drive from campus, but the relative lack of exploration from Penn students made this a great adventure for many. This travel eventually grew into random excursions further from town. I met a girl named Kristen, and on our first date, which was a Monday night, we ended up drinking margaritas at Chevy’s in the middle of Time Square in New York City, and strolling back into Philadelphia at about 6AM on Monday morning. This was the life.

So where do I go from here? It wasn’t until about October of my sophomore year that I began to figure out a way to incentivize my trips. Through means that are too boring to deserve an explanation here, I began to calculate that through consistent use of the same airline, and by locating cheap cross country fares, I could begin to accumulate miles at an extraordinary pace, often as diminished cost to myself. In order to jump-start my new life, I needed to fly a certain amount of miles within a three-month span, which accelerate my elite status on this airline. The result? I left Philadelphia by myself on a random Friday morning in the middle of the fall semester, ended up in Chicago for a connection, then flew standby to Boston for an eight hour layover. I took the T into downtown, visited the actual Cheers bar, meandered through Boston Common, and had pizza over in Cambridge on Harvard’s campus at a place recommended to me by a friend who had attended the school. A quick trip back to Boston Logan Airport, and I was on my way to Shannon, Ireland. I landed there, had my passport examined, and strolled outside in the lush green countryside nearby the airport at 6AM in the morning. Why was I there? To turn right back around and board a return flight 2 1/2 hours later. Passport stamped again (with a funny look from the customs official), and I was back on my way to Philadelphia, via Boston, Chicago, and St. Louis. About 28 hours after I had left, I was back on campus, and no one there had any clue that I had even left besides my roommate.

Elite status now achieved, I used the weekends, and oftentimes the week, to travel to random locations. Every year our school has Reading Days. This is called Dead Week, Zero Week, or any number of iterations on other campuses; it is quite simply the time between the end of classes and the start of final exams. Given my disdain for the consistent gray skies and sub-freezing temperatures of Philadelphia in December, I decided that I was going to go somewhere else. Flight boarded, a few connections later, and I touched down safely in Honolulu. For the next seven days, I lounged on a small patch of real estate on Waikiki Beach with Diamond Head to my left, strolled the street vendors and shops on Kalakaua (including an expensive trip to Coach for a watch and Tiffany’s for a ring), and slept blissfully at the Waikiki Parc. It was eight degrees in Philadelphia.

It is difficult to explain the serenity of travelling randomly and alone. To stroll these streets, collapse on the sandy shores and crack a textbook with the ocean lapping the beach in front of you, and have no one to interrupt your thoughts is completely liberating, and I fed on this serenity. A flight back, a few exams later, followed by a ski trip, and my weekend travel was now in full force. Almost every other weekend, I returned to Dallas to visit family and the girl I was dating. The alternate weekends were spent going to random cities. I spent nights in Chicago, Los Angeles, Seattle, Portland, Austin, San Diego, Miami, Nashville, Las Vegas, Orlando, and many others. I would purposefully schedule three-four connections to each, often spending only about six or seven hours in my “destination” city before turning around and heading back to Philadelphia. Some trips I had an immediate turnaround and didn’t step foot outside of a plane or airport for the entire trip to the opposite coast in back. For three years, I took over 120 flights a year.

Yet, all this travel was not in vain. I would venture down to Lou Malnati’s in Chicago or visit Venice Beach in Los Angeles. Another great benefit to these trips was the chance to visit with family. Half of my family is Californian and lives in San Diego. I would purposefully schedule the latest flights in the day that I possibly could and would include a connection in San Diego. Then, I would standby on the earliest flights of the day and arrive in San Diego at least five hours before I had to board a flight towards my next destination. I once, in the middle of an itinerary, visiting and hung out on the beach in San Diego. The other times I had the chance to go to lunch or even to dinner with my California family, all the while it was just a random and seemingly normal weekend that I was enrolled at school in Philadelphia.

All of this travel, all while in school. Yet, when all is said and done, I am a diploma holder from the Wharton School of Business at the University of Pennsylvania. An Ivy League graduate! How did I lead such an absurdly obscure life for so many years and end up at the same point as my classmates? The scary part is that these stories only begin to scratch the surface of what I accomplished while I was at school. Since returning home to Dallas a year ago, I have felt caged, unfortunately. Do not be surprised if my adventures lead my elsewhere, very quickly, or if I attempt to channel this passion into something else equally as spontaneous and obscure.

I suppose the most appropriate question would be – where next?