You Must Be On Vacation

Two small children just walked into the gate area with their parents. The kids are wearing t-shirts with what I assume are individual pictures of their parents 30 years ago. It shouldn’t be creepy, but it is.

“You must be on vacation. No computer!” The words came from Helaine. They were dripping with sarcasm.

We are at Bradley’s Gate 2 and I am plugged in… more accurately plugged in twice. The iPhone, which still had 90% battery remaining is getting topped off for the trip cross country. It has replaced the laptop as my flying companion. At the moment it holds five or six hours of video along with a few hundred songs. More importantly, in the airplane mode it has enough power for BDL-DEN then DEN-LAX.

Two small children just walked into the gate area with their parents. The kids are wearing t-shirts with what I assume are individual pictures of their parents 30 years ago. It shouldn’t be creepy, but it is.

We’re 1,670 miles from Denver. It should be farther, shouldn’t it? It should be almost all the way to the West Coast. We’ll still be 860 miles from the Pacific.

Helaine and I were talking about trips-gone-by on our way up here. I remembered sitting on a delayed TWA L-1011 at Philadelphia. The doors were open. People freely walked back-and-forth between the plane and terminal. Those days will never return.

When I blog about flying I often get comments from people who don’t, won’t or have never flown. Don’t worry about missing the glamor. It’s been a long time since flights were glamorous–since people get dressed-up to fly. What you’re missing is this whole beautiful country.

America is much more diverse than what you’d expect if you’ve only traveled as far as you can drive.

Tonight we’ll be in Santa Barbara. It’s on the ocean but it couldn’t be more different than any East Coast ocean town. The Pacific Coast itself is different than the Atlantic. Anyone who’s been to both can differentiate them in a lineup.

This will be a long day of traveling. The scheduled terminal-to-terminal-to-terminal time is eight hours.

If time permits I’ll check in from Denver.

4 thoughts on “You Must Be On Vacation”

  1. Have fun in SD. It’s like stepping back in time. Check out a local place called Brophy Brothers on Harbor Way. Up the beach from the SD pier.

    Sit at the bar, smell the ocean, and have the mussels. The gin is good too!

    Enjoy!

  2. Geoff, why do you seem to never fly direct? Everytime I read about you or your family members traveling it’s always a connecting flight. Is it because direct is not available or it’s cheaper? Just seems like it takes much longer time to get there and much more stress involved and things that could go wrong. Not judging, just wondering! Thanks!

    1. There is one daily non-stop to Los Angeles from Hartford, but it’s on Delta. We have mileage/tickets on Southwest. Luckily we also really like Southwest.

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