It feels like such a short hop, only four hours in a plane, so much shorter than the trip I just took with multiple hops and full days of travel. Hop, and I’m in Indianapolis. It is familiar here. I’ve been this place before. This exact Hotel. I will soon see people that I get to see only once per year. The prior trip was a venture into new places, foreign lands. This trip is more like a family reunion.
I’ve arrived late in the evening, though back home it is less late, so I am awake. Howard met me here, but he came from far to the east. He is sleeping now, still working to re-set his internal clock to the day/night rhythms of this place. He has two more days in which to adapt before the show begins in earnest. I’m glad to see him. He is even more glad to see me. We’ve only been apart for a week, but he’s been away from home for over three.
One of my worries in advance of his month-long travel was that breaking his patterns for so long would break him somehow. I forgot that brains are significantly location dependent. I remembered it again when I got home and discovered that all the shipping thoughts which I’d set down for weeks were apparently stored in the driver’s seat of my car. They were right there waiting for me when I climbed in for a quick errand. Howard will be able to slip back in to his home thoughts and work again. Yet when he returns he’ll have new thoughts and experiences, just as I did. Travel caused me to see familiar things in new ways. I would have liked time to explore that experience, but the turn around to this trip was filled with urgent tasks.
Now I am here. GenCon begins on Thursday.