I seem to be jinxed on air and auto travel. This is the third time now that I’ve had one of my travel adventures during some kind of government shutdown. The last time, was Antarctica, and there was a good chance that my flights could have been cancelled due to the TSA shutdown. I lucked out on that one, after stressing out looking for alternatives to getting to LA for the international flight. Then there was another shutdown, where all the rest stops on the main highways were shuttered. That was difficult for anyone with bladder issues. And here we are again…..another TSA shutdown, and chaos at the major hubs. The one thing I REALLY DO NOT NEED on this trip is stress. Right.
It takes two flights to get to Panama City from Sacramento – I opted to stay overnight in Houston, so flew in yesterday. That was an easy flight, until I tried checking in for the flight from IAH to Panama City. For some obscure reason, United would not let me check-in – apparently, I needed some document to prove that I was going to leave Panama, since I was flying back from Costa Rica. United had my reservations, but knew nothing about the National Geographic cruise. My first reason to stress-out on the trip. I called United, and they said I just needed to check-in the next day and everything would be fine. Sure. Do I look like someone that believes that foreign countries are paying the tariffs? The National Geographic travel agent was pretty sure that’s all I needed to do as well. That did not help either – I’m a glass half empty kind of guy. So I worried during the entire flight from SMF to Houston. And then I had to walk about a mile to get to the United check-in lobby, to try and get things worked out. This is a huge airport. Fortunately, I found a helpful agent who magically got me checked-in. Stress relieved. Another long walk and short train ride and I made it to the Marriott for the night. I really could have used a martini. I had gelato instead. Almost as good.
My flight for Panama City was scheduled for 9:30 the next morning, so I figured I’d start heading over to the international terminal (hey, I was traveling to another country….seemed like the right place to go). I checked the TSA site, which had a 15 minute wait to get through security, so I figured maybe leave around 6:45 to get to the terminal. I woke up early for a change (sarcasm…I always get up too early), and headed down to the train station, to get to Terminal E. Baggage check-in was a snap, then I turned around to head to security. Yikes!! The line was endless. But wait….it got worse.
As I moved along this first line, the entire mass of humanity waiting to get through security came into view. There were separate TSA Pre and Clear lines, merged together for some reason, but the all the lines seemed to be crawling along at the same speed. But at least they were moving. After a while, someone from Clear separated their customers from the TSA Pre line, so that moved us ahead a bit. Still a long line. What a mess. Not a problem for me since I had a lot of time before my flight, but I wound up letting some young woman cut in front, who only had a few minutes to catch her plane. I told her to look for kind people who would let her cut further ahead, but she was too shy. I would have done that.
Eventually, I made it through after about 30 minutes or so. The main problem was at the TSA end – there were only two luggage scan stations out of about 15 that were staffed. Quite the bottleneck. A big thank you to the US Congress. The only good news is that everyone seemed to be taking this mess in stride (a slight pun, not intended) – most everyone quietly suffered. And nobody blamed the TSA workers, just our ineffective government.
After all that, I looked down at my boarding pass and realized I was in the wrong terminal. My flight left from Terminal C, not E. So, I opted for the long walk rather than taking the train. I needed to stretch my legs. And like most airports, there was lots of cool and strange artwork along the endless corridors.
I ended my airport excursion at the United Red Carpet Club – international first class does have some useful privileges. On to Panama! It’s got to get less stressful once I get there.
I’m not really starting a travel agency but I feel like I could run one of late since that’s all I seem to have been doing the past few days..weeks…months. As I strolled along a trail on my daily walk/limp the other day, I started thinking about how making travel arrangements has changed over the past half century (I’m really old).
When I first started working, back in 1978, we actually had travel agencies that took care of everything – you picked up a phone (a land line of course), told a real person where you wanted to go, and magically, an envelope with tickets and an itemized itinerary showed up on your desk or mail box. As online capabilities for reserving airlines and hotels appeared a decade or two later, the burden of travel reservations slowly moved away from travel agencies to the travelers. Hotels and airlines ramped up on reward programs, which likely accelerated the migration for both corporate and personal travel to online reservations. Reaching frequent flyer goals, such as 100K with United, became something of a game for IT consultants – increasing points outweighed getting to your destination so that flying to Chicago from Denver with stops in Seattle and Fargo made perfect sense.
When we first got married (1975…I told you I was really old), vacation travel for us was just hopping in a car and staying with friends and family, or looking for the cheapest hotels. We rarely traveled anywhere by plane, and there were travel books that listed hotels along highways and various destinations. AAA was great for planning trips. Once we both started working, we relied on our company travel agencies until the Internet made everything available online, and then we both became pretty adept at making reservations. We rarely did long-term planning – sometimes we just decided (usually after a glass or two of wine) to head off to somewhere – Ireland, Italy, Maui. No problem – we just pulled out our laptops and coordinated on hotels, cars and flights. The one time we used a travel agency, we wound up in separate seats on a long flight to Tahiti. But after that experience, we always handled all of our own reservations.
Jan and I were a pretty good team at most everything we did together, except for tennis. That’s a long and painful story which I’ll share if I ever start drinking again. So now that she’s gone, travel reservations are just one more formerly shared task that I now have to do solo. Bummer. Given the number of trips I have been scheduling, this has become something of a necessary burden, especially for some of the more distant destinations (now that I’m a world traveler).
Up until recently, I’ve been focusing on just two tour companies for my adventures, and both of these, National Geographic/Lindblad and Natural Habitats/World Wildlife Federation, have travel agents who take care of pretty much everything. It’s just like the good old days – I speak to a real person, provide them with what I’m looking for in terms of flights and they take care of everything. For example, on my Grizzly Bear trip with Natural Habitats, I wanted to get there a day early to see a bit of Kodiak on my own, and then stay in Anchorage for a few days rather than heading straight home. The Natural Habitats agent worked it all out for me. All I have to do is figure out where I want to go in Kodiak and Anchorage. I did something similar with my first trip to Iceland, arriving two days early so I can visit a weird volcanic chamber, and maybe go snorkeling in the continental rift. All I had to do was reserve my extra-curricular activities – National Geographic took care of the rest.
So up until now, my life as my own travel agent has been pretty easy. But now I’m making my own life more complicated. There are quite a few touring/cruise companies that cover the Arctic and Antarctic, and not all of the smaller ones have their own travel agency. The hard part though is comparing each of the tours – how large are the ships, number of passengers, solo cabin size, comfort features on the ship. The larger ships are usually more luxurious, but with more passengers, the excursions are more crowded and require staggered scheduling. The smaller ships on the other hand, may not have as many creature comforts (hot tubs for example), but you get to spend more time doing what you came for. Finding reviews is important as well – I was keen on going with one particular company for the Svalbard trip, which emphasized how they welcomed solo travelers on their web site. The reviews told a different story, so I went with another small-ship company.
One complication with the small companies is trip insurance – it’s a necessary rip-off, since most foreign destinations require at least minimal coverage for emergency medical and evacuation services (including shipping your body home…never mind, lets not go there). The larger companies offer insurance as part of a package, which you pay with the final invoice. With smaller companies, you are on your own, and usually have to pay within 15 days of the initial deposit. Ouch.
So now that I’ve settled on this one particular cruise company (Poseidon) for two of my trips to obscure, far away places, I’ve discovered that there are some good reasons for using travel agencies. The first trip I booked with Poseidon travels to the Falkland and South Georgia Islands (penguins!!), and starts and ends from Ushuaia. Now that was easy with National Geographic/Lindblad – they had a charter flight from Santiago Chile, where we stayed at a Four Seasons for one night. As it turns out, all other scheduled flights go out of Buenos Aires, and for most of them, you have to switch airports. OK, complicated but I can figure that one out – it may require an overnight at a hotel airport, but I’m good with that. I’ve already done that a couple of times, where I fly to a major hub, stay at a nice hotel near the airport, and then take an early flight to my destination. That way I’m not as rushed and exhausted when I get there.
The next trip later in 2027, is a nightmare. I really wanted to go to Svalbard, Norway after seeing a series on Apple TV, The Long Way Home (worth watching). This is truly one of the most remote spots in the world, accessible by plane via either Oslo or some really small city in Norway (Tromso). That makes it hard enough. But (there’s always a but for me) I’ll be finishing off a Natural Habitat photography tour in Iceland just before the start of the Poseidon one, and will be leaving from Reykjavik Iceland. There is no easy way to get to Svalbard – I will have to stay overnight somewhere in Norway, and may wind up stopping in Copenhagen to get there. I have a long time to figure it out, since I’m not leaving until July 4th, 2027…but I’m already worrying about it.
A few people have asked me how I manage all the travel arrangements for the many trips I’ve scheduled so far, and they are usually surprised that I’m doing this all on my own. I kind of surprise myself sometimes. It’s time consuming and sometimes frustrating, especially now that I have eight trips in 2026 to manage (…there’s still a few gaps), and then another five so far in 2027. I keep spreadsheets which lists costs, important dates and task reminders, but even with that, I find myself having to dedicate entire days sometimes for the initial scheduling of a trip, and then follow ups when I have to make payments or schedule airline travel. I have inserted automated reminders in my calendar for payment dates, and spend a lot of time checking out various excursions for my free days on the trips. For the first Iceland trip, I had already booked the magma chamber (another cave) trip, and had hoped to do a really weird one – snorkeling in a continental rift zone. In really cold water. Unfortunately (or maybe fortunately), the tour operators do not book anyone with any type of heart disease. Kind of makes sense – that’s why I have declined the “polar plunge” opportunity twice. So I’m doing a half-day tour to see Puffins instead. Safer I guess, and those little guys are so cute. Sort of like penguins that can actually fly.
Not my photo…I wish it was
I’m not really complaining about any of this – it’s kind of hard to bitch about traveling this often, to so many strange places, and it’s not like I’m pressed for time any given day when I’m not traveling. In some ways, it is sort of like a work replacement, without the free food.
Two days and I’m off to Baja and the friendly Grey Whales. I did not get to pet one the last time I was down there. This time for sure.
The Traveling Widower 