Remember back to 1994. Are you with me? Grunge is in. Seattle is the place to be. Coffee shops are becoming the rage in places other than the Northwest. David Letterman is still on NBC and hosting Late Night. That same year, Letterman sent his mother to the Winter Olympics in Lillehammer as a correspondent.
"Did I tell you my mom's got a traveling jones?" he would ask Paul Shaffer. And in classic Letterman style, he would ask it over and over again and at completely random moments during the show.
Living a sheltered life in Maine, I had no idea what a "traveling jones" was and neither did anyone else. It was 1994 and the Internet was nothing but AOL and lynx and maybe Pine and Pico; there was no Urban Dictionary to consult. My OM team and I co-opted the name for one of our cars, the Traveling Jones (I think it was the one that popped the balloon, but when haywire during competition and almost took out a judge's shin), but other than sounding cool, we really didn't know what it meant.
I have since learned that a "jones" is a "yearning" or a "yen", although its connotation is that of a yearning for an addictive substance. So, Letterman's mom was addicted to travel, as am I.
I can't think of a better name for my blog. (Obviously, or I would probably be writing a post about that right now instead of this.)
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