Laura and I were both dreaming at 4:30 this morning when my alarm went off. With not much sleep, waking up at this hour is not a fun way to start a vacation. We have a little over a month of time off from work, so we are going to try and make the best of it by doing some traveling. We have a lot planned, but we’ll see how much of it we actually get to do. These next 33 days have plans for Texas, London, Paris, Washington DC, and oh yeah, a little relaxation at home too.
When we travel on vacation, we always travel on the cheap, using my travel benefits that get us standby travel for next to nothing: Two roundtrip tickets from JFK to Heathrow set us back about $250. It is standby, however, which means we only go if a seat is open. Opens seats are usually best found on flights in which paying passengers don’t want to go on. This is why our alarm went off at 4:30 — there were 67 open seats on the flight to DFW that left at 6:45 this morning. The flight that left at a respectable 10:00 am was full; imagine that. It stinks to get up so early, but the payoff by going standby is that we have more money to spend on things at our destinations, instead of the travel to get to those destinations.
The flight to DFW was nice with so many seats available as we were able to sit together and have plenty of space in the overhead bin for our stuff we refuse to check below. I’m always amazed at the amount of stuff (read: crap) that people are willing to lug around with them on vacation or just when traveling. Feel free to bring everything but the dog (a couple in front of us at the ticket counter had four dogs with them) but we enjoy our time better when we pack light. Not checking bags means no waiting at baggage claim, less weight to carry around the airport, more freedom at the destination, and no lost luggage. It takes some practice, but we’ve done three weeks in Europe with just one carry-on each, and an extra hand bag that goes under the seat. No sweat.
Once at DFW, we’re changing planes to go on to Tyler, TX, to see my parents. Instead of them having to drive five hours round trip to pick us up in the Metroplex, we’re going to give Pounds Field a chance. It’s the small, local county airport. I love these small airports. They try hard at customer satisfaction and usually excel: free wifi, clean facilities, quiet terminals, lots of tourists info, helpful people at the information kiosks, and short lines at the rental car desks, ticket counters, restrooms, and restaurants. Free wifi at JFK, LaGuardia, O’hare, or LAX? Forget it. Sometimes, the costs of flying into the postage stamp ports costs a lot more, but in most cases that I’ve seen, it isn’t much more to fly into Tyler, especially if time is money.
We left at home with about 600,000 newborn children of ours, and we’re hoping they do well on their own while we are away. Huh? No, not bed bugs. We planted a bunch of grass seed in our yard and are hoping this rainy, cool fall weather we are having will help it come up soon and then do well next spring. We’ve reclaimed some of our yard from past owner’s flower beds and groups of bushes. This has all become overgrown and ugly, so we just want to turn it into grassy yard. We’ll see how it all turns out. We bought about five times too much hay to cover over the seed, finding out that a small bail of hay goes much farther than I thought it would. We gave the rest of the hay away . . .
With my six month checks behind me and lots of vacation in front of me, I’m looking forward to this time off and glad to kick it off with a trip back to the homeland where the sun is warm, the dirt is red, and the family is close.