ANNIVERSARY Countdown (Count-Up?)

Today is Friday, March 7th, 2014. We were married 986 days ago, on June 25th, 2011.


Friday, February 7, 2014

Travel Phobia

Good to be back.  I spent all of August through November immersed in writing about the arcana of higher education, and all of December through now writing about a pool hall in 1950s Saginaw.  When the spell takes me over, I just have to go along for the ride.

But like the groundhog, eventually I have to come out of the den.  The spring will be filled, like last spring was, with requests to travel.  DC in March, El Paso and Savannah in April, Baltimore in May, and DC again in June.  That I know of.  So far.  And those requests put me directly in touch with my greatest phobia: air travel.

Oddly enough, I'm not afraid of flying.  Getting into the airplane, leaving the ground, bumping around in the sky and landing are actually all pretty interesting experiences.  The seats are uncomfortable and long flights are really boring and confining, but I have no fear of actually being in a plane, even after having seen Denzel Washington fly one upside down.

My fear is actually the fear of buying the ticket.

As I've discussed a few times here, I have just a touch of "folk OCD."  I don't think I'm diagnosable, but I do have to check about thirty times before I leave the house that I have my car keys and my FitBit and that I know exactly where the cats are and can prove to myself that they haven't gotten out into the garage or something.  So going onto Travelocity and buying tickets is fraught with complication.

First, there's the dates.  I actually did buy plane tickets for the wrong dates once, for a job interview!  Luckily, I was onsite for a three-day window, so my mistake merely meant that I had to go to the airport immediately after the interview rather than be given a campus tour and lunch by the other postdocs; no one noticed my error, and I got the job.  So now, when I'm on Travelocity, I'm looking at the event dates that I've put into the calendar, but I'm also going back through the e-mail stream to verify the dates and times that my hosts have told me because I don't trust that I've put it into the calendar properly in the first place.

Then there's the destination.  Especially for DC, I always have to call or e-mail my host and ask whether I should come into National or Dulles, since they're like 600 miles apart.  But even otherwise… I'd never been to The Citadel before November, so I had to look at a map and convince myself that The Citadel really was in Charleston SC, and that the airport code CHS really was for Charleston SC and not Charlestown WV or Charlestown NH or the Chicago Hinterland Suburbs.

Now that I live in rural Vermont, there's a third problem, which is the site of departure.  When I lived in Oakland, I flew out of Oakland International (OAK).  When I lived in Milwaukee, I flew out of General Mitchell (MKE).  When I lived in Medford, I flew out of Logan (BOS).  No-brainers.  But now, I can drive two hours southwest to Albany (ALB) or two hours north to Burlington (BTV), or I could stick an extra leg onto the flight and go out of Rutland (RUT).

By the way, if you go to Google Images for all these other airports, the first photos you'll encounter are either the huge navigation towers or fields of commercial airliners.  The first photo in the queue for Rutland is two guys in t-shirts working on a single-seater with a tail wheel.

So when I'm on Travelocity, I have to price flights three different ways.  It takes hours.  And I have no particular airline allegiances, so I have to look at everything.  I'll fly Midwest when I can and Virgin America when I can, but they're really limited in terms of routes, so almost everything I get is going to be United or Delta or American.  I won't fly JetBlue again.

Now we've gotten to times.  If I have a 6 pm opening dinner and a noon conclusion of work three days later, I'd like to get a flight that arrives at about 3:30 in the afternoon so I can get my bags and get to the hotel and clean up a few minutes before the host arrives; and I'd like to leave on a 3 pm flight so that I can comfortably get from the conference hotel or the campus to the airport in plenty of time to go through security.  But the airlines aren't so interested in my preferences, so I end up with a 6 am outbound flight that arrives at lunchtime, and a 7:30 pm return flight that arrives home at 1 in the morning.  And by "home," I mean at an airport two hours from home.

And finally, there's the price.  I'm being reimbursed for all of these trips but one, but I'm buying them now and being reimbursed in dribbles throughout the summer.  It's like a farmer buying seed; I'm fronting a huge amount of money in the hopes that it'll come back later.

Grrrr.  I hate the whole thing.

So here's a thought experiment, based on my late March trip to DC.

  • Flying Cost about $400: $265 for the ticket, plus $90 for mileage to and from the Albany airport and $15 for three days of parking and $25 for the SuperShuttle in DC.
  • Flying Time (one way) about seven hours:  2:15 to drive to Albany, 2:00 at the airport to park and shuttle and check in and go through security and board the plane, 1:40 non-stop to DC, another 30 in the airport and 30 in the van to the hotel.
  • Driving Cost about $600:  922 miles round-trip at 56.5 cents per mile, and $30 a day for three days to park the car at the hotel.
  • Driving Time (one way) about eight hours, depending on traffic.

<sigh>  I guess I'll fly, based on saving my hosts $200.  But it sure would be nice to hop in the car, with my music and my pace and my choice of restrooms and refreshments on my demand… with no seatmate and way more legroom and a cupholder… with an entire TRUNK that I can put my luggage and computer bag into with no bag fees… and spend the same entire day-long trip the way I want.  I love to drive, and don't love so much being a component of the travel machine.

I suppose I shouldn't even consider driving to El Paso…