I was in my emerald green Ford escort wagon heading for Canada from my condo in Sarasota, Florida at a fairly good clip, driving the seventeen hundred miles in three days. I allowed my mind the luxury of daydreaming about the next six months that I would be spending wandering the villages, towns, cities and countryside of Southeast Asia. All I needed was a few days to take care of all the little incidentals that demanded my attention every year. Then I would be heading overseas to new and exotic places.

I had read all the guidebooks that I found in the library. I exercised my mind by learning to convert Canadian and U.S. dollars into Vietnamese money and I must confess that I was getting pretty good at it. I didn’t want a repeat of my trip to Turkey where I sat paralyzed at the Dalaman airport trying to figure out what one hundred and eighteen thousand Turkish lira meant compared to the Canadian dollar or one hundred and twenty-seven thousand lira to the U.S. dollar.

Once I arrived in Toronto I would be staying with my brother, Harry, and his significant other, Sandra, for about a week or so. I needed to have Phil, a good friend of my late husband’s, do my income tax. My teeth needed X-raying and a thorough cleaning. I needed a not-to-close eyeballing from my doctor and, most important, I had to renew the mortgage with the woman who had purchased our last home in the Beach area of downtown Toronto. I wanted to visit Sam, my next door neighbor at the wool store I closed in 1989, so I could get one last half-decent haircut. Last but not least I would check the prices of a return ticket to Great Britain and buy one of those last-minute flights that bounced you around all night. I couldn’t believe that I was doing that again but traveling all night was so much cheaper than traveling at more convenient times. I felt I had months to recuperate from jet lag.