IT'S now past the mid-year point. Perhaps you've been on one trip and are already planning another. Then again, you may have been procrastinating and find it hard to make a vacation decision.

Some months ago we told readers about the travel plans . . . or depressing lack of them . . . among people met at my brother Jim's law school reunion, and the happily more exciting ones at our bank's country club gala.

As a journalist whose career has always centred on travel, a series of recent encounters have been real eye-openers. Where people are travelling, and why, have always held a special fascination for this writer. magazine has a regular column tracing just such trends and it is always interesting to study results of its surveys. Sampling is broad, varying from 10,000 up to 100,000 responders.

Almost 70 per cent listed "to relax and get rid of stress" as their major reason. "Spending more time with family" and "not having to face schedules" are a close tie for the top three reasons.

"Feeling more alive", "enrich perspective on life" and "gain knowledge of history and cultures" were often mentioned along with it simply being "an important part of life".

All those applied . . . and then some . . . when I chatted with alumni who arrived on campus for Northwestern University's graduation and class reunions in early June. While a depressing number of law school alums last fall had given every appearance of being already embalmed, but not yet buried, these without exception seemed to be in perpetual orbit. And not to just ordinary places but quite extraordinary ones.

And they crossed all age ranges, with the oldest at one luncheon attending his 70th class reunion, which would put him over 90.

"I went to Jerusalem in 1956 right after graduation," confided a very youngish 70 year old. "Now I'm going back on an unusual adventure." Armenian, she had a life-long friend now an Armenian bishop in Jerusalem.

"I'm going on a special ecumenical trip there with several Armenian clergy and five rabbis. It should be very interesting." Indeed it should.

We passed on to her the location of a unique shop inside the old city where a Palestinian Christian woman had organised an embroidery co-operative so Palestinian women, both Christian and Moslem, could embroider wall hangings, pillow covers, and so on, for sale in order to receive some income. Their work is exquisitely detailed, really beautiful, and we definitely went overboard in our purchases.

Queen Noor has started something similar in neighbouring Jordan and one of my evening caftans that receives the most compliments is the result of her project there.

A Japanese-American decided to fly in from Honolulu at the last moment, buying a ticket only one and a half weeks earlier. "I'd love to travel to Europe this fall . . . do you think it's safe?" he asked over an alumni dinner at a local country club.

His question echoed that of another alum, a feisty World War Two veteran who'd fought in the jungles of New Guinea, grown up on Chicago's south side knowing Studs Terkel and Nelson Algren. He, too, was concerned about safety of travelling to Europe. "What do you think? Should we go?"

An intrepid traveller, he'd met his very personable third wife in Mexico attending Spanish language classes in Cuernavaca a decade earlier. "I like to work at staying bilingual in several languages."

correspondent Georgie Anne Geyer had absolutely no qualms about travelling anywhere. We'd watched her as a participant on public television's for years and were familiar with her syndicated newspaper column, covering some of the world's hot spots, as well as books on Saddam Hussein, Fidel Castro and Anwar Sadat, but we'd never met.

Very personable, unaffected and approachable, she'd admired an Egyptian dress I'd bought on my last Nile cruise and was wearing at a reunion luncheon.

Her latest book, , covers royal and sacred cats of history. She was preparing to leave for Egypt to lecture on The Royal Egyptian Cat and looking forward to her return there with great enthusiasm.

"Aren't you a bit nervous about Egypt right now?" I queried. "No, absolutely not. An incident can happen anywhere. I never let that stop me."

It should come as no surprise recent polls show cruises are one of the most popular forms of vacation. Yet I keep encountering extremely well-travelled people who turn up their nose at the mere suggestion of sailing off anywhere.

"A cruise? Who wants to be with all those people?" is a refrain I've heard far too often recently. At which point this life-long cruise enthusiast embarks on a lecture about specific ships they would definitely enjoy and that would dispel their image of massive super liners carrying the equivalent of a small village.

What a pleasure to encounter a Hollywood celebrity at one of the reunion dinners whose favourite form of travel is cruising. Garry Marshall had come over during a cocktail reception for alumni to say hello. As a Hollywood producer, writer and director of film, television and theatre, many of his creations are household words.

Garry directed and, among others, and a long list of sitcoms ? and played Candice Bergen's boss in , team owner in and a list of credits as long as one's arm.

One of those rare, down-home, folksy types not too often found in the egocentric film industry, he'd responded with genuine enthusiasm when I asked about his favourite kind of vacation.

"Cruising . . . nothing quite like it, so relaxing." Favourite ships? "Seabourn, sail on it a lot. In fact, if I'm promoting a production someplace like Japan, I figure out a way to get there via a cruise.

"I'm not a wildnerness type . . . my wife likes it. So if the cruise stops some place too offbeat, I'd rather stay on board and unwind, especially since my hip replacement. I'm about to shoot a film with Jane Fonda . . . did you know she had one?" No, definitely not.

A bit of film gossip later and the subject shifts to Rome. "Sure, the Coliseum is interesting, but back up a few blocks and you're in the Bronx," kidded the Bronx-born success story. "Take me to the nearest Hilton. I'm a creature-comfort kind of person."

He's also a man with an inborn sense of humour that can always see the sunny, funny side of life.

My next in-depth conversation was with someone whose career has focused on the healthy side of life. A home economics-nutrition grad, she'd gone on to the University of Delaware for her graduate degree in nutrition and stayed on to teach that subject.

Super healthy looking, her major interest outside teaching was researching her family's unusual family tree. Her great grandmother had emigrated to Minnesota from Norway and homesteaded, definitely something unusual for a woman in the 1800s.

Any film fan who saw Max von Sydow's with Liv Ullman has some idea what life on America's northern frontier was like. Imagine a woman with little farming experience clearing the land and successfully cultivating it.

She was going about her research, something to pass on down to the next generations, with the same thoroughness that had given her a prominent reputation in her chosen field.

Travelling in recent months has brought us into contact with the liveliest, most imaginative travellers one can imagine. The couple met over dinner in the diner of Amtrak's Empire Building certainly qualifies as adventurous.

We were just entering Glacier National Park on that super-scenic rail route when I asked where they were bound. "We're heading back to Victoria, British Columbia after a year of travelling." Words that definitely caught my attention.

out he was a metallurigist who decided to retire at age 54 and take his 33-foot catamaran by a very circuitous route down to Key West, Florida and the Bahamas. The trip he'd always dreamed about had taken him and his wife one whole year. He'd actually considered crossing the Atlantic in it.. "In a 33-foot catamaran?" I raised my eyebrows in disbelief.

"I'm still not sure it couldn't be done," was the reply. But then thinking better of it, they'd sold the boat, had yet another back in Victoria they also intended to sell, and were en route back there.

But this wasn't their first out-of-the-ordinary escapade.

"Last year we backpacked across Vietnam, Cambodia and Thailand," volunteered the wife. "But now we're moving on," continued the husband. "We're through with that phase of our life and our new interest is biking . . . we'll be doing some cross-country on light Japanese motorcycles, probably pulling a light biker's trailer."

If you think that one sounds lively, consider the group we encountered in Grants, New Mexico in late May. A group of bikers ? this time on bicycles ? had left Los Angeles on May 13 (we met them on May 24) and planned to arrive in Boston on July 1.

They were part of a tour called Cross Roads and a Ryder truck where bikes are stored at night carried the logo www.crossroadscycling.com.

It was an amazing group covering a wide diversity of ages . . . some of them seniors. They'd already crossed California and Arizona and only a couple looked fatigued when they cycled up to the entrance of the Best Western where we were also overnighting.

Parked at the other side of the covered entranceway was a group of motorcyclists, also covering western sights in a different way. Later we encountered those same Harleys savouring the beauty of Monument Valley. Interestingly, Best Western apparently welcomed these groups on an annual basis and even had special facilities for hosing down dusty cycles and wiping them clean.

A recent showed changes in places attracting today's traveller. Regardless of age, over half plan to choose a new destination for their next trip and "on average are definitely more venturesome than in the past".

They are often "turned off by a place once treasured when it changes too much, and very ready to move on and try something totally different".

The final consensus was: "They are more daring than those of the same age in past generations." That means they never interviewed my parents who ventured to places that had their children raising their eyebrows!

But crossing the Atlantic in a 33-foot catamaran?

q We're off on two great train rides