On souvenirs, poop jokes, and regrets

The kickoff of the Crazy 8s
Author tour in Baker City, OR.

Friday night's first stop on the Crazy 8s Author Tour went phenomenally well. Pretty much.

My gamble of calling audience members perverts and sexual deviants to kick off my talk about stereotypes in the romance genre produced the desired laughter. My jokes about hating another Crazy 8s author because his book wasn't released yet fell a bit flat.

No matter, there are more tour stops coming up, and I have a few more opportunities to pull my head out of my butt  improve my approach.

The best thing about signing on for a multi-stop book tour spanning far-reaching corners of Oregon is the chance to explore areas of the state I've never visited. This is a hard concept for people in smaller states to grasp. You can drive across many east coast states in a couple hours. To cross from the Oregon coast to the eastern border of the state would take you about nine hours and nearly 500 miles of driving.

Though I've lived in Oregon for most of my 38 years, I had never spent time exploring the northeast part of the state. The Crazy 8s stop in Baker City was the perfect opportunity to see areas like Wallowa Lake on the fringes of the state's largest wilderness area, and Hell's Canyon, the deepest gorge in North America (don't think I missed a single opportunity to make deep gorge jokes).

The new theater chair in our home office

My gentleman friend and I stopped in charming small towns along the way, pausing to explore antique shops and quirky little art boutiques. In one shop, we discovered a seat that had been rescued from an old theater and lovingly restored by an artist. My gentleman friend – who has a master's degree in theater – was smitten. He'd always wanted to own an antique theater chair, but this wasn't a splurge he'd budgeted into trip planning.

"You know the number one thing I've learned about traveling over the years?" I asked.

He smiled. "Check to be sure you aren't in someone's driveway when you pull off on a deserted gravel road to get frisky in the car?"

I splurged on a memento of my own.
Earrings made from real pennies
stamped with the word "lucky."
One penny is from 1997, the year
I moved to Bend, Oregon.
The other is from 2006 – the year my
gentleman friend moved here.

"Right," I said. "That too. But one thing I've learned is that you never walk out of a shop after purchasing a travel memento and think, 'I wish I hadn't bought that.' But if you leave to think about the purchase and end up forgetting, you'll always, always regret not buying that souvenir."

It's absolutely true, and the reason nearly every piece of artwork in my house has some special meaning from a trip I've taken. It's also true of life in general. I'm a whole lot more likely to regret the things I don't do than the things I do do.

And now I've gone and ruined this post with doo-doo humor.

Do you find your regrets tend to center more around things you haven't done than things you've done? When it comes to travel, do you ever regret souvenirs you don't purchase, or are you the sort to go crazy with the credit card in cute little shops? Please share!

Oh, and for the record, not every travel memento I bring home costs money or requires purchase in a shop. My gentleman friend's casually-snapped photo of me wading in Wallowa Lake will be taking my breath away for years to come.