Traveling....

Traveling is an adventure. Everyone is busy on their own adventures, while you travel on your own. So many different personalities, stories, and backgrounds all jammed together in tight spaces to get somewhere. For anyone else this is wonderful time to kick back, not talk, and maybe get some of the sleep they missed out on the night before, but for me?Well its a chance to gather "intel." not in the spy movie types, but where i can sit in my seat and just immerse myself in the atmosphere. For instance there there were 3 guys that sat behind me on the Sitka to Seattle flight. They had just come in from a fairly long fishing trip in Sitka, and no offense meant, but the smell of fish guts and slime seemed to linger still around their non-shaven appearances and may still cling to their chairs on that specific airline…….They were a very boisterous trio, and though they desperately wanted to separate to the other side of the isle, they were a tight packed group who's laughter seemed to cascade over the chairs.They played poker and B.S for the whole 1hr and 40 minute trip and as they played, they talked. They told story after story of their fishing exploits and the "exaggerated" dream fish that they supposedly caught. They delved into home life only once or twice where the eager listener, (me) learned that all 3 were married. One of the guys went so far as to tell his fellows, that his wife kept calling and calling because she was so upset that he hadn't called. Though anyone can tell that comments were laced with a fairly strong devotion as he kept emphasizing that she probably missed him too much…….The others 2 said very little about their wives but hinted that their wives "missed" them too.. We started our descent over the outskirt islands near seattle and it was like my neighbors tongue was suddenly unraveled….He began to tell me his life story in fragmented paragraphs. He leaned over me to look out the window and pointed out a small island below. then he took a deep breathe and i knew i was in for a tale. He began by telling all about him and wife and when they first moved to the picturesque little town that could only be reached by an old wood ferry. He told about their little house that looked over the road and was the pillar of the community, or part of it anyway :) He gabbed about his 2 kids, that went to the high school in the slightly larger town on the other side of the island and that were now grown trying to be doctors or something with enough money to pay the bills well. This little old man, that smelled of fish,who's bright orange shirt and worn denim coveralls had seen better days, opened up and told me everything in the 20 minutes before touchdown. I have to admit when i had first spotted him coming down the isle i crossed my fingers and begged that he was sitting anywhere else but isle 22b, but by the end God had given me a lesson in not judging a book by its cover. The plane landed and we went our separate ways. We nodded and wished the other well. Yet something had changed, we went back to being 2 random people that talked on an airplane, different roads to take, different lives, different stories but for a moment in time our paths crossed and I walked away the better for it :)