Twelve days!
That’s how many days I’ve spent in airports so far this year. It’s an amazing number when you consider that prior to this year, the number of days I spent in airports each year was closer to zero.
If I had to label our family’s traveling style, I would say we are car people. Our family vacations were most often car trips to Grandma’s house. However, when we could coordinate our work schedules with the kids’ school vacation days for a longer getaway, we would drive down south to go camping and boating.
Don’t get me wrong. I’m not saying we never got on an airplane as a family. One year, we went to the Grand Canyon! It was an amazing trip. We stayed in a historic lodge on the north rim of the canyon. Every day was filled with fantastic views and hiking in the cool mountain air.
We will never forget our family trip to Maui, Hawaii, either. Talk about an airplane trip! It took sixteen hours of traveling and three flights to get there. Technically, it was my husband’s work trip, and the kids and I tagged along. While he was in meetings, we rode horses into a volcano, boarded a catamaran to go whale watching, and played on the beach at our all-inclusive resort.
I have just realized something truly terrible. Both the historic Grand Canyon Lodge and the town of Maui have burned to the ground. Such a tragedy on both counts.
I’m so glad we had those amazing memory-filled family trips together because the next ten years were the high school and college years. The kids were busy doing their own thing and they often took trips with their friends. And I’m not even going to mention those awful Covid years that ruined everyone’s travel plans and so, so much more.
Hindsight and countless books on parenting would suggest that when our kids enter high school and then go off to college, this is supposedly the time to help us parents let go of our children and cope with our inevitable empty nests. For me, as evidenced through my four years of Empty Mess stories, that hasn’t been the case.
So this year, I vowed things were going to be different, and they sure have been! I’ve taken two trips to Pennsylvania, two trips to California, volunteered for a two-week mission trip to Africa, and hosted a destination wedding weekend for our daughter in Colorado!
Since my vow included a proclamation to be a BETTER traveler, I purchased new luggage. Not a full set of TUMI luggage like my friend Marsha; I’m too thrifty for that. I refuse to pay checked baggage fees, so I got a new carry on that starts out flat like a garment bag, and then folds and zips into the exact size and shape approved by the TSA. The advertisement claims that the bag can hold ten outfits and two pairs of shoes! This is true. What the ad doesn’t say, however, is how darn heavy the bag is to lug down endless airport concourses and hoist into the overhead bin.
The second part of being a BETTER traveler is losing my wide-eyed, terrified expression when I enter the airport terminal in search of the digital arrival and departure screens. Happily, I’m no longer that person. I’m getting comfortable with the airport process, which is almost entirely online now. I don’t like to boast, but I’m approaching PRO status with my pre-flight skills—booking discounted flights, getting myself to the airport, and using my digital wallet to store my boarding pass, to name but a few.
And I’ve discovered the secret weapon that all seasoned travelers use … the airport bar. Inside the airport bar, it is perfectly acceptable to sit by yourself and order a margarita at ten in the morning. There is no need to say, “It’s five o’clock somewhere,” to the waitress when you order that jumbo-sized drink. There is no judgment in the airport bar for the guy who is wearing yesterday’s wrinkled white dress shirt and the woman in her Hello Kitty pajamas who is curled up and sleeping in the corner booth.
Once inside that shadowy tavern, the rules of society change … we are now operating under airport rules.