Taking a long day trip tomorrow via public transportation, requiring careful attention to times and locations I’ve not specifically been to in years and never by bus.
Yes, there are all kinds of new-fangled technology tools for trip planning; you can get directions, maps, bus schedules and more right on your phone! But my ultimate destination has no internet access, and I want all of my phones’ battery juice reserved for collecting photos and videos.
Even if those two problems were not factors, I still prefer to write everything on paper by hand and use my analog notes as my primary reference tool for this trip. Here’s why:
- Writing by hand is a way of STUDYING; you are more likely to remember details you’ve written down than a bunch of shit you’ve only looked at on a screen
- You are simply better prepared having read through directions and decided upon what is important to make note of. Writing by hand forces you to look at things line by line; you’re less likely to overlook details that could totally ruin your trip or cause you to not have enough time to go to the bathroom or eat OR to have a lot of time on your hands with nothing to do or exposed to the elements without having packed appropriate layers.
- Writing your own travel notes allows you to SELECT what information is actually important without cluttering your vision with a bunch of irrelevant bullshit. Of course, I usually make sure to write down some fairly trivial details for fun or out of anxiety or poor executive function, but it’s still less than all the extraneous information I’d have to sift through on a screen or even a printout. It’s also possible to save a lot of space (& reduce distraction/noise) by abbreviating things you’re familiar with that the internet spells all the way out every time (ex. When I write CT or JT I know they stand for different counties’ transit systems; I do not need to spell out the counties or the word “transit” but I won’t fail to make the distinction either; the route numbers aren’t quite enough to make it clear for me on this unfamiliar route)
- I don’t always understand the format, structure and symbols in directions provided by google maps, etc. I’ve found it’s better to transcribe the information using my own mappy symbols and structure (plus it gives me time to go through the directions and prepare when I am not under pressure with wheels actually moving under me and a clock ticking).
- Yes, there is a TON of information available in our palms on our mobile personal internet-connected computers, BUT … you can only see as much of it as your screen can display. It is better to have a big piece of paper you can unfold, or TWO big pieces of paper you can set next to each other, or a notebook with different pages for different stages of your journey and types of information that you can tab and flip to as required without scrolling, waiting for a page to load, etc.
- You can color code things the way you want, according to your own level of color blindness and/or hierarchies of danger-warning-alerts and ease.
- BECAUSE I DERIVE PLEASURE FROM WRITING! It’s an excuse to take out my pens and make notes of things and have it feel … important. It’s part of DESIGNING my journey; this stage of preparation is a happy-making opportunity to anticipate what’s to come.
Travel-writing is journaling is logging is charting a course is captaining your own ship. Preparing for a trip by writing down important information is preserving the very personal nature of your journey.
As much as this trip I’m taking tomorrow is available to tons of people, is pre-determined by bus schedules, seasonal accessibility, and road closures, and will be shaped and constrained by decisions made by others, it is unlikely even one other person will take this trip and all of these buses tomorrow or even this week. When I wrote down the routes and arrival times and departures today I made a log of an intimate opportunity nobody else will share with me from start to finish or even probably halfway. My handwriting is like the creases in a map that years from now I may look at and FEEL and remember.
I don’t care if it’s a grocery list or a bus schedule; every day — even (maybe ESPECIALLY) every seemingly mundane chore — is a personal adventure or slog we experience in many ways alone, or at least differently than others. It is not prepackaged. You do not receive your itinerary from a travel agent. No cruise director will gather you at a muster station to tell you what to do if you miss the bus. I write it down because I know this, and it is beautiful. This is my trip, and I have now begun an intimate record of it just by writing down a bunch of times, places, and reminders.
The next exciting part? Deciding which pen(s) I’m going to pack and bring with me!