Well here I go again. This will be my 3rd round-the-world trip for Save the Children USA. I love to travel. My father worked for an airplane manufacturer, and later for a small airline, as an aircraft electrician. I first flew in an Lockheed Electra turboprop in 1957 in order to visit him with my mother where he was on location in Oakland, California on a contract for U.S. Navy PBY amphibious craft. Even though I was only 5 years old, I still remember arriving at the airport, seeing, and feeling all the hustle and bustle and knowing that this was something special. Later my father worked on the development of the Convair 880 commercial jet airliner at Edwards Air force Base in the high desert of Lancaster California. I recall late one evening he woke me from sleep at the motel that we were staying at and took me on a drive to the hanger where they were preparing the 1st 880 for flight trials. I remember we waited in this cold hanger for what seemed hours. Then, we boarded the plane. My father would function as the third crew member - the flight engineer, essentially watching all the instruments and dials allowing the pilots to fly the plane. When we prepared for take off, my father took me back to the seatless fuselage and strapped me to a bulkhead. I remember being thrilled - and nauseous - from them taking the plane through its air trials. These were maneuvers that you do not normally experience on regular flights. It was exhilarating.
To this day, my Save the Children travel agent, Raymond Franko, knows that I prefer a window seat, so that I can look outside. Also, I seem pre-disposed for long flights since I can sit in a narrow coach seat for hours without having to get up and frequent the locations most travelers need to. Some reference to a cast iron aspect of my anatomy could be in order here.
This trip starts from the Sea-Tac airport outside of Seattle, Washington state, USA on March 30th. I will first fly south to Los Angeles (I dislike that airport), then fly west across the Pacific for a brief plane change in Osaka Japan, then onto Bangkok Thailand for a 9 hour layover. This layover extended from just a couple of hours to over 9 hours, due to a last minute change to my itinerary. So, I decided to book in advance a room at the airport hotel. I was going to arrive the next day to my destination, Yangon, Myanmar (formally known as Rangoon, Burma) late in the evening, then get up early and begin my day at the Save The Children office. The chance to lay down and catch some sleep would beneift everyone.
After a week conducting a mobile data collection assessment in Myanmar, I will return briefly to Bangkok for a direct flight to my next Save the Children destination, amman, Jordan in the Middle East. Upon leaving there on April 19th, I will continue flying west to Chicago and then finally Seattle. 51 hours of flight time (not including layovers) and over 22,000 miles traveled by air. Whew! I love it.
When I first start communicating with a Country Office (CO), I begin planning out my itinerary. Since it usually always involves visits to two or more CO's, I need to figure out all of my departure and arrival dates and times. This is so that I can provide these to Mr. Franko, the travel agent, to secure appropriate flights. Then, I put all of the information in a spreadsheet (shown above), which i print out and keep in my shirt pocket while I travel. it contains all of my flight times, seat numbers, departure and arrival terminals and more. I also load this itinerary and all of my other travel documents onto my personal PDA. I include the actually itinerary sent to me by the airlines in Adobe Acrobat form (a PDF file).
Several times at some remote airport I have had the ticket counter person state that they did not have any reservation under my name. Even though I have a paper copy with me (usually several copies since some immigration officials require leaving them a copy), I usually just flip on my PDA and state that is curious, here is the flight reservation document that your airline sent to me. That always resolves the problem. I also keep printed paper and PDA copies of my passport, including color photos of my luggage. This latter item helped me describe to an airline employee in Guatemala what my luggage looked like when it was misplaced.
On this trip, it will take a total of 23 flight hours and 35 hours overall to reach the airport in Yangon. Piece of cake. It will take me until my 3rd day to recover from the 14 1/2 hours of jet lag. I will not have that luxury, I will start the training the day after I arrive.
