I frequently lose my train of thought. Maybe it’s age. Maybe it’s too many unimportant details rattling around my head. Maybe it’s… Why did I come upstairs? Regardless, it’s a great expression to describe that feeling of your brain drifting. So I thought I’d muse a little about some expressions coming from themes of travel and transport. That’s one.

Before we continue, or I suppose me saying this is actually continuing, an interesting note. Lose and miss. In Spanish, perder is the verb which means both. Generally, it’s easy to understand from context what is being referred to. But imagine you want to say you’ve missed the bus. Not lost it. There’s a difference, although both would convey the meaning of something not being there, something missing. (And without straying too far from the topic, when you miss someone, you notice their absence. So it’s all connected). The expression miss the boat is more or less equivalent to perder el tren. It’s saying that you’ve missed your last opportunity, not that you don’t know where your boat (or train) is because you are so absent-minded. We might also differentiate with a pronoun. I’ve missed my boat could mean you had a journey planned and you overslept, while I’ve missed the boat is not literal. And I’ve lost my boat is something altogether different. Maybe it has drifted off because I forgot to moor it. Silly me.

Staying with boats, I’m quite fond of the expression that ship has sailed. In essence it has pretty much the same meaning as missing the boat, but I like the image it creates, a large ship floating away, so visible but so unreachable, because a big vessel is unlikely to turn back for you, isn’t it?

What about jump ship? It’s used to mean abandoning an something or someone when things are getting rough or going down the tubes, and it probably comes from sailors in the past, maybe having been press ganged, who decided to literally jump off the ship, swim to shore and escape from forced service. Cowardly or sensible? And one more nautical term, to be on an even keel. The keel is the long bottom structure of a boat that keeps it balanced, or even, flat, so the expression is used to mean stability. Maybe you’ve been through some turbulent times, but now things have calmed down and are on an even keel.

So that’s enough about boats. Let’s move on to roads or paths, metaphorically speaking. To take the road less travelled is a concept, not a direct quotaion, taken from the poem The Road not Taken, by Robert Frost (early 20th century). It is about being independent, non-conformist, making choices, perhaps challenging, in order to achieve a richer life. So when you take the road less travelled, perhaps you are taking a risk, making a decision that though it may lead you on a unknown path, it is in the hope that it will bring positive results. It is about living life.

In a similar way, when you are at a crossroads, you have important choices to make. In folklore, there are many references to the idea of a crossroads, (yes, it has an s on the end, but is not a plural noun; if you say it without the s, it’d just be an angry street), as a place between two worlds, a place where you may meet the devil. It is a place where you are forced to make a choice about which path to take, for better or worse and maybe not even knowing where that choice will take you. Maybe it will take you off the beaten track. This is an interesting expression, meaning somewhere few people go. It makes sense if you think of a track or path through the countryside, trodden, beaten down where many people have walked. There is a walk I do where I live which is through olive groves, and there are various beaten tracks, until the earth gets ploughed, and then little by little a new beaten track emerges. But that’s by the bye. So maybe you want to plan a holiday off the beaten track, away from the tourists, and discover new adventures.

Anyway, there are countless expressions I could mention, for example go off the rails, when someone loses it, swerves away from the straight and narrow, or backseat driver, someone who wants to be in control and takes it upon themselves to criticise or tell the peron who actually is in charge what they should be doing. But I don’t wish to bore you much longer. Just a quick note on air travel. Have you ever caught a red-eye? I was always under the impression it was an early morning flight, but apparently it can also be an overnighter. In any case, the manifestation in our eyes of that lack of sleep gave rise to the term. All to get a cheaper deal. And speaking of cheap deals, most of us travel light nowadays, don’t we? Airlines charging for the privilege of taking a change of clothes with you when you travel means that most of us end up taking a small bag and hoping that there will be a washing machine where we’re going. Or we just wear our luggage. Coats with lots of pockets. I must be old because I remember a time when luggage was free. Happy days.

To conclude, thanks for reading, and I hope it has been of interest. And remember, travel broadens the mind. Just take care when you park your boat. You don’t want to lose it.

PODCAST

Podcast Travel and Transport It’s not the same as this article!

Also on Spotify and Espanglisher on PocketCasts

Subscribers will receive two emails, (sorry!) one with the blog post and another with the podcast.