Trip Anticipation

I don’t think the anticipation phase of a trip gets nearly enough recognition.

The actual vacation gets all the attention. The photographs. The restaurant recommendations. The souvenirs. The stories people tell after they return home. But for me, especially before a trip west, the build-up becomes part of the experience itself.

In many ways, it feels almost like an advent season.

For years now, the desert has been the only destination that truly calls to me. Phoenix, especially. Long before airport day arrives, I begin preparing myself mentally and physically for it. I start trying to trim down a little and build up my stamina. Downtown Phoenix is best experienced on foot, at least for me, and the miles add up quickly beneath the relentless desert sun. Museums, gardens, coffee shops, parks, rooftop patios, neighborhood wandering, long evenings downtown. Exhaustion and dehydration can sneak up on you very quickly if you are not prepared.

So the preparation becomes part of the ritual.

I think about outfits weeks in advance. I start mentally pairing shirts and shorts together. I wonder whether I need a new bag. I evaluate the condition of my underwear drawer with a level of seriousness that only experienced travelers fully understand. Little by little, ordinary daily life begins making room for the trip ahead.

The waiting can feel like torture when you are really looking forward to something, so I try to remind myself how quickly the whole thing will just be a memory again. So I enjoy the anticipation. The build-up. I try to enjoy every minute of the entire process.

I rotate my screensavers to photographs from previous trips west. Desert sunsets. Downtown streets. Camelback Mountain standing watch in the distance. I start monitoring the Phoenix weather even though I am still sitting fifteen hundred miles away in Mississippi humidity. I listen to Phoenix radio stations while driving around Columbus as though the Valley were simply a neighboring town.

I write a countdown on my desk calendar at work, starting at the 60-day mark, and ending on airport day. I will start lining up outfits for the trip. Hanging certain groups together. Pairing up shorts and shirts in my closet or in my dresser. When I go in to get out work clothes, I see the little groupings of “trip clothes” and it keeps my excitement up.

This trip I fly out on a Wednesday morning. I will have my checked bag completely packed (but not closed and zipped) by that Sunday afternoon. That gives me two days to walk around it, seeing what’s in it, giving myself time to make changes, deletions, or additions. I will start the toiletries bag, leaving it on the bathroom vanity top, so that I can still use the things I need.

By Tuesday evening, the ritual reaches its final stage. The checked bag gets zipped and placed beside the front door. Final decisions get made about the laptop bag, the sling bag, the clear stadium bag I’ll need for the Diamondbacks game only forty minutes after my plane lands at Sky Harbor. (I’m literally going to hit the ground running.)

At that point, the trip already feels like it has begun.

The main reason for all this is to remind myself that it’s okay to look forward to things. It’s actually important to. But also find ways to live in the moment. Let the pre-trip be an excitement-building phase. Make it part of the whole experience. It makes the waiting more tolerable and ensures that I am well prepared on airport day.

So instead of treating the days before a trip as something to “get through,” I try to make them part of the experience itself.

My time in the desert always goes by much too fast. I’ll use any tactic I can to prolong the experience.

Because looking forward to something beautiful is its own kind of joy.