On Tuesday night a travel services company hosted an information night on visiting Australia and New Zealand. The particular tour company they were featuring that night specialized in packages for the 18 to 35-year-old group. The event was being held at a popular downtown watering hole.
Travel.
18 to 35-year-olds.
Fun location.
Sounds like an opportunity to learn more about something I have an interest in and possibly meet other people in my age group, possibly of the guy-variety who also share this interest. Can you picture the twinkle in my eyes?
I told Lisa about it and she said she'd love to go since she had always dreamed of going to Australia. I didn't know that about her. I, honestly, didn't have any deep yearning to see the place. I also am having a hard time right now imagining a time when I will have $2000 or so to jet off across to the other side of the world for fun, but as I noted, my motives for attending the event were more social. Whenever someone writes into Miss Lonelyhearts complaining that they just can't meet people, she always tells them to join things, volunteer, get out there. Well this is me, out there. You know I'm out there, right? I'm a joiner. I try things all the time. I do always have some kind of fun.
Miss Lonelyhearts, I'm calling bullshit on this strategy. Only girls showed up to the event. There were seven of us. We outnumbered the travel staff by just one.
The presentation was good. It actually made joining a tour sound like fun. You fly yourself to the destination, meet up with your group and spend the next three to 16 days travelling and doing excursions with them. You get a tour bus, nice looking accommodations, nightly entertainment and a tonne of choices in activities like surfing, skydiving, sailing, rolling down a hill in an inflated ball. Hey, this was starting to sound like something worth saving up for.
After the tour company rep gave her presentation one of the guys from the travel services company who sponsored the event got up to speak. That's right, I said one of the guys. There were two of them. One was geeky cute but made mention of a girlfriend. The other one (the one who got up to speak) was tall, dark and handsome. I don't know his marital status, never did find out, but he helped a great deal to turn the social aspect of the evening right around.
After the presentation was done, TD&H drew names for door prizes. Guess who was the last name called? Yup. I got the best prize of all--a big fat guide book of Australia.
The others got up and left once the speaking was done. Lisa had just turned to me and said, "well...?" when the geeky-cute girlfriended guy came by and asked us about our travel plans. We explained to him that we didn't really have plans yet, that we were just starting to investigate our options. He moved on and then TD&H came by to chat with us. He gave Lisa the tote bag that he has pulled the names out of and asked us about our travel plans. He talked. A lot. Which was completely fine by me. I tried to be very encouraging of this by nodding, asking questions, answering his questions, although he didn't need much encouragement so mostly I just got to sit there and enjoy studying him. He had two earrings in his left ear and looked like he had spent the last 10 years or so playing football. I'll bet he had a motorcycle.
So the night was a win. I got a free book and a TD&H personal resource should I ever wish to explore The Down Under.
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