Bee Travel
Spring escape
CHRISTINE HICKS- USTA Travel
You know the difference the instant you walk outside. That cold slap of air you anticipate across your face has been supplanted by an unexpected warm caress of a spring breeze. You want to take your jacket off, your sweater off, your shirt, your... OK, OK - stop! The sun isn't just out, up and yellow; it actually warms your face, your hair. You bask in its refracted glory through the snow-and-salt-spattered windows of your car. It's spring.

Or very nearly so. For a split second, my brain asks why anyone would want to leave here now, just when the weather's getting good. The other half of my brain kicks this side, removing the giddy, sun-tinted glasses of this early spring perspective, recalling the long winter and its propensity to recoil before letting go entirely.

While peeling off layers in the momentary madness of 50-degree temperatures, the urge to travel becomes somehow more urgent. Maybe it's an allergic reaction to cabin fever. Perhaps it's whiplash from seasonal affective disorder. Thoughts of driving midlife crisis cars waft into a highly susceptible area of the brain, thoughts about highly impractical two-seat rag tops, at home on the Pacific Coast Highway 1 or Route 66. Who hasn't wanted to take off cross-country in that "Easy Rider"/"Wild Hogs"/decidedly-50-something kind of way in a last gasp to recapture for one moment that altruistic, change-the-world person we once were?

We still are those people, just more practical. Did we sell out? I don't know. And for the purposes of this treatise, I don't care. I do know that you can rent the experience. No, no, not the cross-country trek - the mid-life crisis vehicle. And it's a relatively cheap thrill, when you compare it to actually owning, say, a Hummer 3, Nissan Z or Chrysler Crossfire convertible. You can have your stick-shift fix for a week on Highway 1 in an Infiniti FX-35 with Hertz, for example, for a mere $489.99. That's about the same price as four 2-day "Dennis Hopper" passes to Disneyland. Come on - it's not about the price, remember?

You can even rent - should you muster the wherewithal, permission of interested parties and copious amounts of life insurance - a Harley at prices slightly more stratospheric. For $749 per week, you can take your choice of nine Harleys from Chicago to Long Beach, for example, including helmet and unlimited mileage. Leather is optional and can also be rented. If you're "Fonda" bikes and the road, this is the penultimate travel adventure.

Let that first warm breeze lift you to that place of wild-eyed optimism that sparked your imagination all those years ago. Tread again in those mental paths that you had intended to make a difference. Take a week of life by the horns. You can do it. You're older. You're smarter. And, as Kathy Bates said in "Fried Green Tomatoes," you've "...got more insurance." You've got more spending money, too. Spend it on a dream.

(Christine Hicks-Usta has enjoyed more than 30 years of globe-trotting as a member of the travel industry in various capacities. Direct questions to her at Bee Group Newspapers, P.O. Box 150, Buffalo, NY 14231-0150.)