And so the journey begins with a kiss and a sad wave goodbye. Why do I do this, heading off alone, leaving those I love behind? Struggling to sleep in a too small bed, seduced by places I’ve never seen, the mental exercise of planning, then I am vulnerable to the call. But once I am away I realise how much I love and miss my B and Alex.
I must do this. Must ride the long and possibly monotonous tracks where the would just suffer. The compulsion to experience what must be evanescent UN a shrinking future. This is the calling of the Japanese rails. So too the aging inefficient Qantas 747s, steadily supplanted by their less fuel thirsty younger cousins.
This is a nostalgia whose time approaches, resignation, but not an embrace, for a future that must yet come.