Celebrity Travel: Go away with John McCutcheon
A. I speak Spanish serviceably. I try to pick up enough of the local tongue to be polite and respectful whenever I play some place that doesn't use English. I'm old enough that it's harder than it used to be, but it seems I have a better memory for such things than lots of folks my age.
Q. Where would you like to go that you have never been to before?
A. I'd love to go to Tuva in Mongolia for their throat-singing festival.
Q. When you go away, what are some of your must-have items?
A. Eye shades so I can get a good night's sleep, athletic shoes so I can run, an iPad for reading and keeping in touch, Starbucks coffee packets and a legal pad for songwriting and poetry.
Q. What would be your dream trip?
A. The Orient Express across the entirety of the Asian continent.
Q. What is your guilty pleasure when you're on the road?
A. A good cigar at evening's end.
Q. What is your worst vacation memory?
A. On the day I got my driver's license, my family of 11 took off on a trip from Wisconsin to South Dakota. I was expected to help drive one of the cars. However, being as my license was provisional, I could only drive with one other adult in the car. That meant that I would drive my father's company car and he had to be in that car for insurance purposes. That meant that my mother was left alone driving the family station wagon with eight kids inside and a pop-up trailer behind. I wasn't used to keeping an eye on another car in an ad hoc caravan. So we constantly lost one another. This was in 1968 (before cellphones so) it meant pulling over to the side of the road and waiting for the other car to come by. More than once, both cars thought they were ahead and pulled over to no avail. It was horrible. The tension between my parents was palpable. It was the last family vacation we ever took.
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(Jae-Ha Kim is a New York Times bestselling author and travel writer. You can respond to this column by visiting her website at www.jaehakim.com. You may also follow “Go Away With…” on Twitter at @GoAwayWithJae where Jae-Ha Kim welcomes your questions and comments.)
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