BoomerGirl Diary

OK, so you’re probably wondering. Who is that delicious hunk? And why is his arm around that 50-year-old Boomer Girl?

The answer to the first question is “I wish I knew.”

I’m the 50-year-old Boomer Girl, and unfortunately I have no clue of the name or regrettably the phone number of this bare-chested, drool-provoking 20-something hunk. But I can provide answers for why his arm is around me. It’s his job. He’s a model at the Abercrombie & Fitch on Fifth Avenue. He and two other similarly endowed young men get paid to hang out in A&F’s flagship store so customers like me can get our pictures taken with men we probably couldn’t have successfully wooed even when we were their age.

Before you get the wrong idea, I’d like to go on record as saying that this was not my idea. I wanted to see a Broadway play, have bubble tea in Chinatown, and snap photos of Taz, my 13-year-old, in front of the Statue of Liberty. But on the very top of my friend’s daughter’s list of “must-do’s while in New York” was “get her picture taken with the Abercrombie model.” And since my daughter wisely refused her part of the assignment, I stepped in as understudy.

This trip to New York occurred last summer. I don’t get many chances anymore to see my best friend from college. Mary moved to Florida long years ago. Since her parents, the only reason she returned to the Midwest, also vacated for warmer climes, we have to make a real effort to get together.

But we do, mainly because we have daughters the same age, and it’s our fantasy that they will become as close of friends as we once were. Never mind that they only get to see each other once a year for four or five days. And that it takes at least three or four days to get over that shyness of meeting a new person ... again. Mary and I spent so many nights talking until 3 a.m. about everything from why Andy Gilmore, my junior high crush, still intimidated me to why neither of us wanted to work for the evil empire that we quickly take up where we last left off. But the girls need a little longer.

On this trip, the current incarnation of our “best friends” fantasy, all four of us made a list of our “top 3 New York must-sees.” Unfortunately, not many of the items could be cross-referenced so we spent a lot of time walking and riding subways (One subway ride is mandatory. I’m sure it was even on somebody’s list.) and going from one part of Manhattan to another. The highlights, I think we might even agree upon, were staying in the recently opened Mandarin Oriental, a really posh hotel overlooking Central Park, and riding a human-powered rickshaw from the theater back to our hotel.

It was raining when we came out from seeing “Tarzan,” and New York taxis, as you know, are impossible to flag during the rain. But it was really quite simple to flag down a rickshaw that normally holds two people and talk its driver into transporting all four of us for a rather (or so we thought) reasonable price. We also gave the poor fellow who we just knew was a struggling actor only days from being “discovered” a rather generous tip.

But back to the hunk with the blue eyes. Even though getting my picture taken with the A&F model wasn’t on my list (and wouldn’t have been even if we’d been allowed 300 choices), here’s why it’s important to “be flexible.” From this serendipitous agreement (to walk the 18 blocks to Fifth Avenue so Sarina could have a photo to show her friends back home), I got an assignment for a new travel book.

This yet-to-be-named book (I’m still finishing up another book for National Geographic) will be a list of the 100 things you really want to do while traveling. Forget Lady Liberty. Wouldn’t you rather have your photo taken with a bare-chested stud? And then it will go on to list 99 other secret longings we travelers keep to ourselves.

As a travel writer, I get to do lots of things worth longing for. Besides the obvious perks (setting foot in all the world’s continents by the time I was 35), I’ve lunched next to Dennis Hopper in Taos, N.M. I’ve stayed in the same hotel suite as Billy Joel and Christie Brinkley in Sydney, Australia. After dishing with the concierge about their extremely loud, all-night spats, I must say it wasn’t news to either of us when their divorce made international headlines. I’ve dined with folks at a New Zealand fishing lodges who compared notes on their Lear Jets the way folks back in Kansas compare notes on their Ford Tauruses.

I’ve picked coffee in Nicaragua, brought rugs in Fez, Morocco, and sung Beetles songs with drunk Germans at an outdoor keg party.

So that’s what this column is going to be about. My journeys as a travel writer. And, no, I won’t bore you with the particulars about the hotels and the rental cars. I figure those details are easy enough to find on the Internet. Instead, I’ll tell you what a 50-year-old woman does when she gets away from her normal life, the life where she’s expected to prepare meatloaf, run carpool and launder her daughter’s favorite pair of jeans three times a week. I’ll tell you how it feels to find out about the most recent terrorist threat from the gate agent who is trying to explain why he’s confiscating the expensive bottle of Merlot you’re bringing back from Newfoundland.

I’ll tell you what it’s like to slide down a waterfall in Shenandoah National Park with two 20-something tour guides. Which just about takes us full-circle. Traveling as a Boomer Girl is a thousand times better than traveling in your 20s or 30s because suddenly you just don’t care what the cute guy thinks or whether your fellow travelers are appreciating your witty repartee. You just follow your nose, live by the seat of your pants and say “Whoopee!” to the whole amazing experience.

Editor's note: BoomerGirl.com wants YOUR travel stories! Tell us where you've been, who you were with and what kinds of crazy adventures you've had and we'll consider it for publication on our TRAVEL page. Submit your tales to cathy@boomergirl.com and we'll get back to you. Meanwhile, happy trails!