Stay Put

traveling can be a wonderful experience. Seeing new neighborhoods, enjoying new restaurants, meeting blind dates. Unfortunately, I am one of the people who falls into the "traveled for potential love" category. Note the past tense in "traveled." That was one lesson that I learned the hard way: never inconvenience yourself for a suitor as he or she is very rarely worth it.

Yes, I know that there are exceptions to this rule. And I am not that cynical. I have read the odds-defying success stories on Jdate where Jenny from Minnesota wrote to Jared from New York and when they met in person, it was love at first site and they eloped. And my friend in Florida traveled to another state to meet her year-long email penpal and left glowing (you can use your imagination for that one.) However, the only glowing that came from my long-distance travels was when I turned on my iPod on the journey home.

I have made the love quest twice in my life. Well, technically, one and a half-times. The first was when I jumped on Amtrak after being invited by a blind date to attend a Flyers hockey game. So even though I traveled south to meet a guy my relative "thought I would have so much in common with" the commitment was less than 6 hours (1.5 hours to get there, 2.5 hour game, 1.5 hours back.) And while there were no sparks, I saw a good game. And the french fries rocked.

The next time- um, yeah, that's another story. I honestly believed I must have either reached the strangest level of desperation, or was possessed by aliens. I vote for the latter. You see, I had met ____ (wow, I even blocked his name from my memory and this happened last year) online- he wrote me, I swear. Let's call him Ian, until his name is remembered. The emails were fun. Ian and I quickly moved to the phone and would talk for hours. He challenged my thoughts, he was bright and interesting. He lived in Indianapolis.

Now there is no way I would EVER move to Indy (ok, never say never) and this topic came up a week before my planned trip to visit Ian. You see, Ian decided to fly me out there. He felt that Indy was a more neutral city than NYC. What a bunch of bullshit. Regardless, when I told Ian that I would never move there and really could see a lifetime in the big Apple, we got into a huge fight. We actually thought that if we had no future together, why should we meet. Talk about putting the cart before the horse. I snapped back my senses and decided to travel to meet him- how bad could a weekend in Indy be?

BAD. Talk about awkward. Ian wanted to drink his way through the weekend and was flat out wasted on his sofa within a few hours. And the restaurants that we "enjoyed" consisted of Wendy's, Taco Bell, and some fast-food steak joint. I swear. Now I am not a food snob, but I sure as hell didn't fly across the country for a Fiesta Bowl from the Bell. I was trying to think outside the bun, but all my brain was telling me was to get the hell out of that state.

The 42 hours I spent with Ian were awful. And I forgot to mention that Ian dipped tobacco. A lot. So the entire time it was me, Ian, and his spit cup. GROSS. He drove me around Indy, which was nice, and we went gambling in Ohio (at separate tables, of course.) But there was really no spark. I cried on the plane back, upset at my stupidity. How could months of communicating (with pictures and a great connection) fall so flat. Why did I need to look elsewhere when I had never had a problem meeting men, and there were plenty of that gender in NYC.

I'll tell you why- because we all believe in fairy tales and had that one come true, it would have made a great story. Instead, it's another funny posting on my blog. Not a bad trade-off.