Andy Jarosz, whose travel blog is 501 Places, is a thoughtful writer, I think. Reading his post, "Are you a travel bore? Why there’s no excuse in the internet age" reminds me of the days when we'd haul out the slide projector and screen every chance we'd get after our adventures. My wife Mirja and I were so avid we'd watch those slides every night on weekends, with or without friends.
I imagine everybody gets better at, as Andy puts it, "not feel(ing) the need to bore my work colleagues and neighbours with stories that to them are likely to be irrelevant and uninteresting."
Most everybody, at least.
We still talk about the aging gentleman who never quite shook the habit. At a big dinner table one night with a bunch of strangers, he couldn't stop describing all the castles he and his wife had stayed in - every room they'd had, and how each was more fabulous than the last.
It seemed to go on for hours. We once slept in the turret! This castle's bed had curtains! That castle organized a fox hunt! At this castle we rode a carriage!
Instead of the competition Andy writes about, trying to outdo one another with travel stories, this fellow's stories set off a different kind of competition around the table: surreptitious eye rolling. Even his wife joined in.
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