This phrase, the virus of restlessness, might be the best description I have heard on the itch to travel.
That need to move and simply go.
My reason for travel is typically nothing more than the itch of the virus itself.
Of course, the realities of work and money are always interfering with my decisions on what to do and where to stay.
Let’s travel more.
And loaf, more too.
When the virus of restlessness begins to take possession of a wayward man, and the road away from Here seems broad and straight and sweet, the victim must first find in himself a good and sufficient reason for going. This to the practical bum is not difficult. He has a built-in garden of reasons to choose from. Next he must plan his trip in time and space, choose a direction and a destination. And last he must implement the journey. How to go, what to take, how long to stay. This part of the process is invariable and immortal. I set it down only so that newcomers to bumdom, like teen-agers in new-hatched sin, will not think they invented it.
-John Steinbeck, Travels With Charley In Search Of America
