“I don’t care to belong to any club that will have me as a member.”

– Groucho Marx

Every time I travel, I am struck anew by the serendipitous nature of life. Hell, every time I walk out my door I feel that way. But it is especially apparent when I get out of town.

Yesterday afternoon I returned from the Travel Media Association of Canada’s conference in Peterborough, Ontario. To be fair, Peterborough was never on list of my must-see places. In fact, it wasn’t on any list…for any thing…any time…any where…any how.

But it was great. Among other things, I strolled on the walking/cycling path along the Otonabee River, was lifted 65 feet on the world’s highest boat lifts, listened to kick-butt music at the Historic Red Dog Tavern, visited an amazing under-construction 1500-acre Buddhist pilgrimage site and had eleven ‘speed-dating’ appointments with destination/tourism boards that would like media coverage.

You know those algorithms that are built on these ideas?

• If you liked that book, you’re gonna LOVE this one.
• If you liked that tune, you’re gonna LOVE this one.
• If you liked that movie, you’re gonna LOVE this one.

That’s all very lovely and it does make things easy, right? But soon we have this curated life where everything becomes dangerously generic. There are no challenging ideas, no accidental stumbling upon a book that is NOT in your ‘liked’ genre. Soon, your friends/tribe think the same, dress the same and oh-please-kill-me-now, no one challenges the status-quo.

Which is one of the reasons I am a member of TMAC.

Let me explain…I can easily reach out to tourism boards and destinations when I want to visit their area. I’ve been at this long enough to qualify me to get to most of the places I want to go. But what about the places I don’t even know about?

You know how when you go up the buffet table thinking you want spaghetti and suddenly you have a bowlful of butter chicken? Or how you go to google something and an hour later you’re researching yak behaviour? Or you put a bagel in the toaster and end up eating the Nutella on its own?

Oh, oh…is that just me?

Well…anyway, TMAC is like a big buffet. Through these conferences, I find out about places I didn’t even know I wanted to visit. This past September I did a great cycling/canoe trip in Kitchener-Waterloo. It was a direct result of meeting Minto Schneider at the TMAC conference in Saskatoon. Trust me when I tell you, Kitchener-Waterloo had not previously been on my radar but I’m so glad I went. It’s a really cool region and, among other things, I can now add ‘riding in an Old Order Mennonite’s buggy’ on my list of experiences.

I’ve got nothing against curating a life. It can be quite lovely. But when everything looks a little too Pinterested, I know it’s time to shake things up.

I think I’ll ease into that process by starting with a massage. My spa trip to Phoenix starts tomorrow.

I’m looking forward to stumbling upon the unexpected.