Planning to Plan
Do you remember Owl Jolson? He is that little adorable Merrie Melodies cartoon character from the 1936 animated short called I Love to Singa. It’s about a young owl whose father (that sounds funny…Who, Who) believes that the only pure music is classical whereas little Owl Jolson wants to sing Jazz. In other words, its a cartoon version of The Jazz Singer, with all the angst and cultural struggle that every generation feels at some inflection point or another. Is it tradition which should be maintained or is progress and modernity allowed? For some strange reason, the theme of “I love to singa” makes me think of other things I like to do with a passion and planning seems to be one such thinga.
I will admit that by nature I am a planner. Somewhere through my development I learned that I perform better and am thus happier with myself if I plan ahead. Whether it is for a speech I have to give, a lecture I have to impart, a project on the grounds I need to build or a trip I want to take. Planning has always been a fun activity for me. Kim and I often say that half the fun of traveling is the planning part. I not everyone likes planning, but for some reason I do. It’s a way to live a project or a trip many times over and to refine it to the best that it can be. Right now I have four trips on the planning docket and I have spreadsheets with evocative photos at the top all made up to get me in the mood for the voyage for each one. I have our Spring Break trip to Tennessee with the granddaughters, our trip to VIrginia Beach with all our kids, our summer trips around Southern California, again with the granddaughters and culminating with a visit to my youngest son’s new home in Denver, our motorcycle trip through the Maritime Provinces of Nova Scotia, Prince Edward Island and New Brunswick, and our recently booked cruise through Cape Horn from Buenos Aires to Santiago. That’s a lot of traveling and a lot of planning. I am in charge of each plan except for VIrginia Beach, which is being handled by my oldest son, Roger. The Spring Break and Summer trips have a heavy hand in them from Kim and daughter Carolyn. But so far, the Maritimes and Patagonia are all mine.
Those two trips differ in significant ways. One is a far more planning exercise than the other. In fact, where the Maritimes motorcycle trip is fraught with complexities the Patagonia trip is almost laughably passive. The Patagonia cruise would take place next February when the weather is nicest in the Drake Passage at the southern end of the earth. We would fly into Buenos Aires, a city I have spent many days in over the last 35 years, but haven’t returned to since about 2000. We would fly in from San Diego (perhaps LAX) through Panama City and go right to the ship. After a few days in BA to look around, we head our to Montevideo in Uruguay. From there we go to Puerto Madryn in central Argentina, from which we head over to Port Stanley in the Falklands (the Malvinas for you Argentine nationalists). Then its down to the Drake Passage and Ushuaia, the closest spot to Antarctica without going all the way there. From there we work our way up through the Chilean coast to Punta Arenas, the Amalia Glacier and various Fjords to Puerto Montt, and eventually Valparaiso/Santiago. From there we fly back through Panama City to home sweet home. An interesting option for us on that trip will be to pay about $100 per bag for us to have a service that picks up our bag at our home doorstep and delivers it to our cabin on the ship and return it to us in the same manner. So, you see, that trip is sort of a hands-off travel excursion that makes everything super easy for us from start to finish. It’s almost like never leaving your armchair and watching it all on your big-screen TV.
On the other hand there’s the motorcycle trip to Nova Scotia. The flights are no particular problem from San Diego to Halifax, compliments of Air Canada and a long since paid for credit I have been sitting on. But renting a motorcycle is a more involved affair in the northland and it involves a 45 minute ride north of Halifax with no ability to arrange truck transport to and from. Motorcycle touring by its nature involves a lot more luggage since you got all your riding gear, including foul weather gear, which I’m sure in a must in September Nova Scotia weather. I have booked all the hotels myself and it gets challenging up on the Cabot Trail, which is about a remote and area you can go to on the continent. We’ll be staying in towns with Native American sounding names and hotels with the likes of 9 available rooms in total. There is also a ferry crossing to Prince Edward Island and then back again into New Brunswick, as well as one last ferry from St. John’s, NB to Nova Scotia. On this trip there are a million things that can go sideways and its almost certain some of them will. I will be the man on the hot seat since I am organizing this for anywhere from 6-12 others. I will rely on Kim to book some convenient eating places noting that using the word restaurant may be giving them too much credit.
For every convenience that Viking Cruise lines offers us for our intended travel to Patagonia, booking.com is forced to suffice for the Maritimes. I bet that foul weather in September in Nova Scotia will compete quite well with whatever foul weather Cape Horn can throw at us in February. All that and no cruise director to go yell at if things aren’t just so. But the Maritimes do fulfill the planning Jones I have with all the attendant downsides attached. What started as a trip for 16 has already seen 7 fall by the wayside for various and sundry reasons. One other has had to make it a short trip, truncated by the need to attend a family wedding (I might add that he would have otherwise just cancelled, but the trip was organized at his urging). And yet another couple has advised that a pending medical concern might cause them to have to cancel, putting them squarely on the 50/50 line of attendance. If all that occurs we will be down to three couples. Those three rooms are matched by reservations for 9 rooms that I currently hold. We have several asks out to others who may hanker to see the Maritimes, but those are always less than high odds since the lure of motorcycling is usually not involved.
I am always curious about why I enjoy planning so much when it all seems to get thrown into a cocked hat, as they say, at any moment. For instance, I called my friend Mike just now to see where he stood since he has asks out on both trips. He told me that on Patagonia he is 50/50 where Melisa is probably higher than that. On the Maritimes he gave it 75/25 odds. When I asked him to explain any of those odds or the differentials therein he threw up his hands and said he didn’t know and hadn’t thought enough about any of it. I quickly backed off, knowing from experience that pressing an issue like advance travel planning elicits only one answer, no. Now Mike is a planner like I am, but I guess planning is fun if you’re the one doing it and a lot less fun if your at the other end of the planning stick getting hit over the head with it. In any case, I will continue planning to plan, but tiptoeing my way around everyone so as not to force my planning dysfunction on anyone.