You know the old adage, “You can’t get theah from heah.” It’s proving true in the case of my nephew who just started his first year at Cornell University. It seems there is no direct route between Boston and Ithaca. It’s only a six-hour drive, so that’s always an option, but he chose (wisely, I think) not to bring his car to school with him.

My sister (his mother) and I have researched planes, trains and buses galore. There’s just no direct route that we can find. A US Airways flight through Philadelphia appears to be the most expeditious route, but buses and trains follow meandering routes that add hours to the trip. So, it looks like he’ll by flying home occasionally and, probably more often, relying on the school’s ride board.

Ride boards today are much different from the ones that existed when I was in college. Way back then, the “board” was an actual bulletin board, usually posted in the university bookstore. Students looking for passengers to share the cost of gas posted sheets of paper which they “fringed” at the bottom to create tabs with their contact information. Interested parties pulled off a tab, called and negotiated a ride fee ― very “dark ages” compared to today’s online means of communicating.

I was pretty homesick during the first few weeks of my first year at college. I was a student at a school about a 12-hour drive home, so zipping in for a weekend visit wasn’t really an option. Still, the ride boards caught my eye. My parents were not keen on the idea of me “accepting a ride from a stranger,” but I eventually made the call without their permission and arranged a ride with a law student who was returning home to Boston. We were joined by another first-year student who wanted to visit a friend at MIT. The door-to-door fee was $25.

After an uneventful overnight ride ― I slept most of the way ― I arrived home at about 9 a.m. on a Friday morning. My Dad was work; my Mom was out; and my siblings were at school. When my Mom arrived home about a half hour later, I scared her to death. (I hadn’t told my parents I had decided to take matters into my own hands.) Following a rather lengthy lecture, I spent the weekend visiting with friends and family; happily boarding the train to return to school on Sunday night.

Homesick no more, I learned a valuable lesson that weekend; a lesson that, perhaps, ignited my wanderlust. You can go home again, but getting out and experiencing the world makes each homecoming all that much sweeter.