Twelve Feet, Six Continents, One Year

March 24th arrived twice for us, first in Hong Kong, while we waited to board our 1am departure for San Francisco and then again in San Francisco, because we landed 3 hours before we departed, or 10pm on March 23rd. After spending the night at an airport hotel, we flew from SFO to PDX at 11:35am on 3/24. The only notable part of this flight was that we upgraded to First Class because it was approximately the same price as flying coach and paying for all the luggage we needed to check. The main perk was expedited everything: check-in, baggage handling, security, but not boarding. Not boarding because there were fewer than 50 people on our flight. The gate attendant called it, "Alaska Airlines Private Charter Number 427." He offered to board the flight according to quality of smile. Half the passengers were airline personnel being moved around. One pilot noted that he wasn't flying his usual route to Hawaii because they had cut back to a single wide-body, once a week, w...

This one is on me. One of my trip planning decisions was to avoid New Zealand during the school holidays. As a result, we went to Australia first and as far west as Perth before cutting back to New Zealand, five hours east of Perth and many hours in the air. The good news is that we really never saw a crowd in New Zealand. So much so that we harbor some doubt that there are enough people there, including tourists, to ever really make a crowd. The bad news is, well, today. The nonstop flight from Auckland to Singapore is nearly 11 hours. Ours arrived thirty minutes early. Still, that's five hours longer than the flight from Perth to Singapore. It's also five hours of jet lag to address. We landed at about 8:00 and found that customs was so empty that they split the six of us into two lines to speed it up (and give a second agent something to do). We saw no more than ten others in baggage claim, although there were many more in the connections line. Singapore has seemed decid...

This post is probably not interesting to anybody except my future self. Feel free to skip this one if you visit this site to see pictures of our cute kids. I don't mind. Tuesday, December 10, 2019 (Santiago, Chile). Wake up with alarm. Elise's back hurts. A lot. Finish packing, showers, etc. Breakfast at excellent hotel buffet.  Discover flight is two hours delay. Reschedule airport shuttle. Kids watch more TV. Easy shuttle to airport. Easy time checking bags, going through customs, etc. except that Lily's visa is invalid on account of a typo in her passport number that I didn't catch. The application fee is mysteriously waived so, you know, whatever. The kids are getting pretty good at this. Even have time to change remaining Argentine pesos into Chilean pesos to spend on souvenirs.  Fail to mail postcards from Chile because 'open" post office in the airport is unstaffed (as warned). Eat lunch at Ruby Tuesday in Santiago Airport because, well, w...

Seen through any lens, this place is beautiful (photo by Sam Westover) Part 1: The Backstory This is a story about a man named Josh. Some of you know him but didn't know that he has a passion for travel. Some of you know him and his passion for travel but not his extensive and well-placed family of travel professionals. Now all of you can know that we are in a Costa Rican paradise because of his assistance. Let's start this story in the middle, of course. It's late 2018 and my colleague Megan and her husband Josh have come over to tell us about Argentina. Megan has told me that Josh is from Buenos Aires and (insert long digression here) his family has an apartment that there might be available for visiting friends. Megan, almost exclusively, knew about our plan but hasn't told her husband because he also works in our field and appreciates that I'm in a delicate situation. At first, on the premise of a hypothetical future trip to BA, Josh is telling us ab...