Booking-Up

Booking-Up

I have now booked all of our travel for 2023. I’m not sure why I do that all so early, but I do. I don’t think I get such a great price advantage by doing that, especially if you add in the inevitable flight changes that sometimes are required, but I do worry a bit about availability of the preferred flights and that is clearly helped by booking early. This year’s travel consists of a trip to Egypt and Jordan next month, a trip to NYC in May, a family gathering in July in Utah (I don’t need flights, but my family will), my son Thomas’ wedding over Labor Day weekend in the Hudson Valley near New York City, and finally, a motorcycle trip to Morocco which flies in and out of Malaga, Spain. That’s a lot of travel plans, but I’m glad to say they are all on the books now and I have used as many flight credits, frequent flyer miles and AMEX points as I possibly could. I actually think that in total I have reduced the out-of-pocket cost of those flights by over $15,000 by using all of those benefits, so it has been a meaningful savings for me.

We keep saying that we have travelled enough in our lives and expect that we will be traveling less as we go forward. That certainly happened in the extreme during COVID, and we have made up for some, but not all, of that post-COVID. We should be in a more normalized state now, but we have yet to see that cut-back come through in our annual planning. If you see where Kim’s siblings are at this point in their lives, both of them are certainly on a far more restricted travel program, mostly for health limitations. That could happen to any of us at any time. And we do know a few people who are committed to scaling back on their travel and seem to be following through on that, but its hard to tell if and when that will happen to us. I am officially drawing a chalk line on 2024 at this point, since we don’t have any weddings that I know of or any special events to draw us to travel. That should give us a decent baseline to see if this scale-back is a realistic change or just an ongoing unmet aspiration.

As of right now we have several friend groups beyond our family parameters that show ongoing interest in making travel plans with us. There is Mike & Melisa, with whom we are going to Egypt and Jordan soon. We will see how they feel about all that after we have traveled together. I anticipate that we will get along just fine, but time will tell. They have places like Patagonia, Southeast Asia and Polynesia on their bucket list. Then there is Gary & Oswaldo, who are prone to cruising. At the moment, we have discussed a cruise around the British Isles, which sounds worthwhile to us. And then there is Ann & Chris. They are less specific and our travel with them to date has tended to be motorcycle-oriented. They are not the forward planners that we tend to be, but we sense that there is a desire to get something on the books together. Add to those three groups other friends and family that come forth with specific travel ideas and you can start to see why we are having a challenge scaling back our travel schedule.

So far, both Kim and I do not feel impeded in any way for physical reasons. By the end of two weeks we are usually ready to get home and relax, but so far no binding restrictions. The things that keep us from traveling more are a combination of dog care and general comfort issues. The dog care is easy to understand and justify, but the comfort issues are very hard to pin down. We have friends Terry and Paula that are thinking about going on an extended travel program. When they were last here they discussed just hitting the road for something in the range of three to six months with little or no specific agenda other than to immerse themselves in local culture. Terry is a natural linguist who will learn whatever language he needs if he doesn’t already know it (he already speaks several other languages). Paula is a very sensitive soul who will connect easily with whatever culture she chooses to immerse herself. If any two people I know could make such a cutting-loose approach work, it is these two. It has highlighted for me just how different I suspect Kim and I are in that regard. I don’t know that we would characterize ourselves as homebodies, but we are spending more and more time at home the older we get. On a rainy day like today, we have no problem doing a few things and then just tossing in the towel and lazing around for the rest of the day either napping or watching TV. And here’s the thing, we both do it without any guilt whatsoever. That’s gotta mean something.

What I think it means is that we are doing what everyone does sooner or later. We are slowing down. I find myself thinking when I get back from somewhere about how long I have until I have booked to go somewhere else. It used to be that I did that with longing, being anxious to hit the road again. Now its with longing for the downtime in between trips. I suspect that may be why we make sure to plan out our trip bookings in advance as we do. It would be too easy to shrug and say that we should just skip this one or that one if we didn’t have it already booked. Getting booked-up may be one of the more important things we do to stay active as we get older.

Kim and I have often said that the best part about traveling is the anticipation of the trip. We have been talking about this Egypt and Jordan trip for months now. We have planned to watch Lawrence of Arabia with Mike and Melisa some time in the next few weeks. Mike told me tonight that they had just watched the Indiana Jones movie that featured Petra, so it’s clear that they are into the program as well. Looking forward to travel and doing the research and planning excursions is the most fun part of the process. The second most fun part is getting home afterwards and relaxing while we tell people about what a great trip we had. The trip itself comes third in the categorization of the best parts of the experience. Imagine that.

There was a day when travel agents were the only ones who could plan trips efficiently and cost-effectively. Those days are long gone and even if the service was available and affordable, its not clear that I would want to use it. It is not only easy to book or change flights, hotels and rental cars, but it is actually an advantage to do it yourself. I feel that I get to easily see all the options and even get ideas while I’m booking-up my travel plans. And then there’s the feel-good of doing for myself. The older I get, the less I want others doing things for me rather than doing for myself. It may seem like a small thing (and it probably is), but there are few things I enjoy more than booking-up.