You Virtually Can't Get There from Here

It's two A.M. and I'm still looking for a place to stay on St. John. The problem isn't a lack of appealing choices: St. John is the least developed and most beautiful of the U.S. Virgin Islands, and it would be hard to find a place here that didn't look like a brochure advertising Caribbean travel. In the past two hours alone, I've seen everything from ecotourism tents on the beach to postcard-quality villas with tiled swimming pools and private hot tubs. No, I'm afraid this is clearly a case of "it's not you, it's me." How else to explain why, at two o'clock in the morning, I feel compeUed to scan yet another search engine's websites for accommodations for a trip I probably wiU never take? Let me confess right off: this isn't a first for me. In fact, it is how I spend an increasing amount ofmy time: I choose a destination that I think I'd like to visit—last year it was Italy, two years ago, Vancouver—and then spend days, even weeks, drawing up endless itineraries of the ideal trip; reading every website on the place; bookmarking info, about houses, hotels, beaches, music clubs, hiking trails, and restaurants; e-mailing owners of smaU B&Bs and people interested in house-swapping; scanning the airlines' web pages again and again in search of the cheapest fares and the best connections; and then, more often than not, staying home. I've got powerful memories of aU sorts of experiences I've never had. I can picture the viUas where we would have stayed on our bike trip through Tuscany. I often find myself remembering the fjord-filled cruise we never took along the Alaskan coast. I've chosen the plays we would have seen if we had gone to London three years ago and the performers I would have taken in had I actuaUy attended last spring's New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival.