End of an era; our last airline flights

As I write this my wife and I are packing for our last airline flights and we could not be happier. When you are working you need to be able to get someplace fast so you put up with the incredible hassle of flying. For someone who traveled a lot for business and for vacation via airline flights you get used to the hassle but it was even beginning to wear on me. As much as I was looking forward to 2008 being a low business travel year for me at work I cannot begin to express how happy I am being retired and the progress being made to getting our home sold, but more on that in a later post (part 3 of the ongoing saga towards fulltiming coming soon!).

The worst thing about using airlines for vacations, even more than the packing and prep work for flying, is that we leave our babies behind. Our cats JJ and Sandra stay in our home and Jo's friend visits them every other day but we miss them, did the feeders work? did they run out of water?, etc., and they miss us. The best thing about our new lifestyle is that our cats will be going everywhere with us.

The hassles of travel begin as you are preparing; 24 hours in advance you need to get your A from Southwest. I can say I am not a big fan of the new boarding process. In the old days when I traveled a lot I was able to get a lot of exit row seating. Now with the new process I go from too early to clicking again immediately and ending up with A35 when I used to be an A2 or A3; I am convinced that somehow there are folks electronically ahead of us in queue!! This has happened the last two times I have flown; both on vacations by the way.

After the boarding pass you begin packing so that you can lug heavy suitcases to the car and then to the airport. I noticed that airlines have started weighing bags, ours came in at 44.5 pounds or we would have had to pay, whew. Now I see where some airlines are beginning to charge just to check bags. Then you have to go through security and wait for the privilege of being crammed into seats way too small and aisles way too narrow, only to be jostled about by turbulence along the way to your destination. Once you get there you have to wait for your checked bag; if you are lucky that is. At breakfast during our current vacation we overhead a family that has been without luggage for two days already. They were planning on moving to another hotel and the airline was going to charge them to get their bags to the new hotel; the airline said the deal was to the hotel when the luggage was lost. The airline was also balking at paying for clothes and necessities for the family because it had only been two days. Just makes you want to travel more doesn't it?

Once you get your luggage and rental car and get to your hotel you have to unpack everything you packed and try to get used to a new bed and pillow. I usually do not sleep very well the first night because of all the hassle and this vacation was no exception.

The new era of travel will begin when we start fulltiming in our fifth wheel. There will be NO packing involved as everything we own will be with us. We will be sleeping in the same bed every night with the same pillow. Moving from location to location will involve disconnecting from water, sewer and electricity and pushing a button moving the slides in. Then backing up the truck and connecting the fifth wheel to the truck and off we go. We plan to drive no more than 200-250 miles per day and staying at some campgrounds for up to a month.

As promised earlier I will periodically have tips of various natures to share; this one is for business and personal travelers who use National Rent-A-Car. Honeywell and National have a contract that allows you to bring the car back and not have the tank full. National will only charge for the amount of fuel used at an agreed to rate. With gas prices climbing higher and higher you can usually save my tax dollars if you do not put gas in the tank and let National do it. For my recent vacation the going rate for gas in the Seattle area was $4.43/gallon. I was charged $3.81/gallon by National. That is not the biggest difference that I remember; once I was charged $1.99 in Albuquerque and the going rate then was about $2.85.

So to all those that are still taking airline flights wherever you we wish you luck and we will be thinking about you as you deal with the ever increasing hassle of travel.