So…I have a couple of regular flights that I take. I know what time they leave, what time they arrive. I’ve got the whole routine down pat.
Except when I don’t.
Like the recent reservation I made only looking at the numbers in the departure and arrival times, somehow entirely missing the flight number and the abbreviation for the time of day. That’s how I ended up flying out in the evening instead of the morning. Not the worst thing, but I think I got a little cocky when I was making my reservation online.
There must be a happy medium between not paying any attention and obsessively checking to make sure every i is dotted and t crossed. I just don’t know that I’ve ever visited that place.
Happy trails…
My current quest is intriguing to me. (Or I suppose I wouldn’t bother with it.)
It is designed to open me up to a new culture and new people. To get me traveling and exploring in a new way. But the first several steps of the adventure are right here at home–at my desk, listening to my iPod, reading books, and talking to locals.
My quest: to become fluent in Polish by April.
Thanks to Benny the Irish Polyglot of Fluent in 3 Months, I know what steps to take. Now it’s just a matter of taking them, even while I’m in my normal environment. I am up to the challenge.
If you know a Polish speaker who might want to correspond or converse with me, let me know.
Wish me luck! życzcie mi szczęścia!
One can find rock hard beds and paper thin walls in hotels around the corner and around the world.
The particular hotel I am recalling from a trip to Mexico was one of them. In the evenings I was restricted to watching the t.v. channel my next door neighbors were watching, since I could hear theirs like it was in my lap (they hadn’t cranked the sound). Luckily they watched an English language channel and weren’t channel changers. I won’t even start about what my evening was like once the Shakira concert started in the square outside my hotel!
The bed might as well have been a sheet of plywood (it wasn’t, I checked), for all the cushiness it offered.
Despite these downsides and the echo chamber effect of tile floors in the hallways of the three-floor atrium outside my interior window, I actually liked this hotel. That’s not saying I wouldn’t have stayed at the Ritz if I could have afforded it. But this hotel gave me a different experience of a city than I usually have, so I love it for that.
At last, I finally figured out how to use Skype on my cell phone and possibly even integrate it with my phone number. Not that it’s the hard, it just took me awhile to a) get an iPhone and b) set up the service.
Now maybe I don’t need to worry that my phone service isn’t international. There are just too many options about how to make oneself available via phone overseas.
Fingers crossed this works. My plan is to test it soon…and leave Alley424 world headquarters to work from an undisclosed location abroad!
In lots of cities around the world I leave a lot of shoe leather on the sidewalks, as I generally prefer to walk. For longer trips I might take public transportation, though that wasn’t the case in Mexico City. Other than the tourist trolley I took one day to see the sites, I basically walked and walked and walked and walked.
Check out this great post from Chris Guillebeau about making the decision to walk or take the train. It’s about an airport, but the general theme is the same. The comments are especially revealing–many of us choose to rely on ourselves when faced with a choice like this. Interesting…
Do you prefer to write on the computer or by hand?
Check out these 12 writers who prefer writing their stories longhand. A couple of the names may surprise you. They sure surprised me!
The universe has many immutable laws, such as Newton’s laws of motion and Avogadro’s principle. It turns out that the bad passport photo constant is not actually one of them.
Who’da thunk it?
It is not a law of any type of science that you must look like a vacant-eyed, crazy-haired, drug-addled low life in the photo representation of yourself pasted for the next decade inside your national identity document.
So why, then, do so many of us look like the photographer caught us on our way out of the crack house where we spent the weekend? Or speeding away from the scene where we just ran a busload of senior citizens over a cliff on their way home from a gambling trip to Vegas?
Photo courtesy of greenolive, stock.xchng
Plunge into ice cold water, that is.
 So…why not me?
Yesterday was my second annual polar bear plunge with the L Street Brownies. This time I dunked my head under water.
- Air temperature yesterday at 8:00 am: 41° (F)*
- Water temperature yesterday at 8:00 am: 43° (F)*
Wow!
*As measured by NOAA buoy station BHBM3 – 8443970, Boston MA. (They told us that the water was 38° (F) and this station is around a corner of the harbor. Either way…it was cold.)
Photo courtesy of midly, stock.xchng
On commercial flights, they don’t really let you visit the cockpit anymore.
A few years ago the pilot of a Embraer regional jet did invite me in to show me around. Before we took off, of course, while the captain was still doing his visual check of the plane outside. If you’ve been in a regional jet you know there isn’t much of an “in” to the cockpit if you aren’t sitting in one of the two seats, so I was really just leaning in. But it was pretty cool and I learned a bit about the art and science of flying for a commercial airline.
These days, I guess the best you can get is a pair of wings. On my last flight, there was a couple a row ahead of me traveling with an infant. The flight attendants brought her a pair of wings and a certificate signed by the captain commemorating her first flight. She didn’t notice it at all, but it still was a nice gesture. That’s the first time I’ve ever seen that, though. I wonder if it is standard procedure or if it was just a holiday thing. Hmm.
Photo courtesy of cx_ed, stock.xchng
What are your travel dreams for 2012?
Places I want to go outside the U.S.: Thailand, England, France, Belgium, and Poland. Farther-fetched but still on the list of possibilities: South Korea, Japan, Australia, Bali, Costa Rica, Panama. Not sure I can make all of them, but here’s to dreaming big dreams!
Where do you want to go?
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