One Month Out

The news for the past week has been mentioning a heightened travel threat in a certain section of the world. Selfishly I do not normally pay attention to these alerts unless they happen to be talking about my back yard. Well this time it mattered because the threat was in an area that I will soon be traveling to. What also struck me as odd was that both of the places mentioned were both of the places that I was going to be visiting very soon. I guess London and Paris are on high alert. Travelers to London and Paris are being warned to be aware. AWARE? I'm already a little uneasy being so far away from home. I've never travelled this far from home as an adult. The travelling that I did as a child isn't even a memory for me.

I tried to calm myself about the notion of ending up in the middle of a suicide bombers chaos while trying to enjoy my first big boy pants excursion to the other side of the world. Then I opened up the 10.4.10 issue of the USA Today and saw a picture of a French soldier standing at the ready outside of the Louvre. I'm not naive enough to think that world travelling does not have its risk. I'm not naive enough to think that my own back yard is an utopia free from any type of violence. However to think that I am going to be purposefully going into a hot bed of activity for a leisure excursion definitely caused me concern.

So what does a sane grown man do? I sent a fearful text message to Mr. Tim Barron. The guy that got me to sign up for this 'holiday'. It simply read: "How much threat of terrorism would cancel our happy trip to Europe?". Mr. Barron's reply was: "It would take a lot more than this!" My response was: " Many moons ago I was supposed to travel with Blue Lake Fine Arts Camp throughout Europe - it was cancelled because of terror threats. I WAS HEARTBROKEN". He assured me (assurance through text messages?): "This won't". So I said: "Okey dokey". Then I saw an article online about my same concern. Another spot on the travel itinerary is the Eiffel Tower. Apparently that is a target as well. That's when I decided I should put my feelings on paper / blog / for the world to see...

I wonder how much is a lot. Ugh.

~Melik