Travel?

Wende came up with a travel meme, and even though Colleen has every right to wipe the floor with us, here goes.

First trip you remember
Probably the cross-country move at age 3 or 4. Dad had just finished seminary in South Carolina and re-entered the Navy with a commission (as a Chaplain). First duty station was in Southern California, and we drove the southern route (Grand Canyon and all) in a maroon-and-ivory Impala. My only memory of my sister before she was 18 months or so is of her sleeping in the car seat on that trip. I do remember lots of other stuff that happened before this, but no travel.

This was the first of more childhood cross-country car trips than I care to remember, all associated with moves. Needless to say, I never had any of those college-age lifestyle fantasies that involve romanticized road tripping.

First trip you took by yourself
I assume this means all by yourself, without any other people at all. So, I think that would be the trip to a job interview in Parsippany, New Jersey, in college. I had to rent a car, which turned out to be the worst-designed model year ever of the Dodge Neon. The pedals were positioned at an angle such that I couldn't rest my heel on the floorboard while depressing the accelerator (no cruise control, naturally) and the horn attached to the steering wheel at exactly the place where it would have been most comfortable to place my hands. I got back to Ithaca with spasms in my legs and thumbs. I didn't get the job, but a few years later, the company (well, part of it) turned out to be one of my major clients at the second company I worked for in Mass.

First out-of-state (-province) trip as an adult
I'm realizing that this does skip most of the interesting stuff, since I had a rather travel-intensive childhood and had been in most of the states prior to adulthood. Also, I would hit at least 6 states just visiting relatives no more remote than first cousins - and I don't have a very big family.

So, if we're talking age-18-and-up, I suppose it would be school break trips to my college roommate's parents' house in New Jersey. That would be out-of-state in the sense of being a destination in a state other than the one where I was currently living, but it's not very interesting.

If we're talking real-grown-up-world, a few months into my first job in Mass., I took a business trip to...Springfield, Illinois. Also not terribly interesting, but after a few months in Boston, I was nearly giddy to drive on streets that were perpendicular to one another. I also heard my first livestock futures report on the radio on that trip.

Most humiliating travel experience
Ignoring all the times my mother prompted us to dress in the ugly American getup while we were living and traveling in Europe...

Since Wende's story involved tumbling over in public, the first thing that comes to mind is similar - visiting Chicago a few years before I moved here, I was crossing Michigan Avenue after dinner when my shoe flew off and and I landed on my face in the middle of the crosswalk. This was shortly after running into a turnstile at the wrong angle in an El station, which resulted in a bruise on my thigh literally eight inches in diameter.

But I'm actually not that humiliated by garden-variety clumsiness, so more traumatic was the time I was trying to pass security for a Boston-San Francisco flight, only to be told that my driver's license had expired. I'd never lived in one place long enough for that to happen before, so the possibility had never crossed my mind - and I never got a warning notice from the RMV. They did let me board, but hand-inspected all my luggage.

Possibly best hour
Every hour in Assissi. When we were living in Italy, one of the American Navy Catholic Priests had a seminary friend who was in orders there, and arranged trips to spend Thanksgiving weekend there every year. This included bringing all the ingredients for an American Thanksgiving dinner to be prepared by the ancient Italian ladies who cooked at the medieval inn where we stayed.

Second place: Watching older couples on the platform dancing to the music of the kid playing the guitar in the Clybourn Avenue station.

Moment that most would have been improved by someone who could pick up a cue
The trauma of being on a high school trip in Budapest with idiot chicks who don't know how to recognize the wrong part of town in a barely-post-Soviet-bloc eastern European city.

And for a bonus, I'll add my own prompt:

Travel story most likely to cause the eavesdroppers at the next table to do a double-take.
Tie between, "After the bypass surgery, we took my grandmother to Venice, and there were pigeons landing in her hair the whole time," and, "Once, when I was building a playground in Romania..."