Affordable Travel

Most passengers who don’t fly often think that seating arrangements are pretty much decided based on how close you want to be to the front of the plane, and if you want a window or an aisle. But those who travel regularly and are pros at booking a seat that will ensure that they get the most comfort for their dollar, also understand that there is another critical decision, and that involves whether to be on the starboard (right) or port (left) side of the aircraft. Why does it matter? Because unless you are flying at night, the sunlight will most likely hit the craft on one side or the other, and that can affect your level of comfort, your view, and your ability to nap or not. For instance, if you are flying from Montreal to Los Angeles during the day, and the sun is rising in the east and setting in the west, chances are that the port side of the plane will get most of the sunlight. If you want to nap without closing the window (which might annoy someone who likes looking out) you might choose the other side of the plane. And for instance, if you are flying from Montreal to Barcelona, and want to sleep, you can try to figure out where the sun will be and sit on the opposite side of the plane. Some say it wont’ matter on a cloudy or rainy day, but they aren’t experienced fliers. Those who have flown a lot know that most of the time, regardless of the weather on the ground, once the plane hits cruising altitude the sun will be bright, except of course at night.

There have been songs written about, television shows about it, and even board games and souvenir postcard collections named after it - there is in fact a whole line of blue jeans that has co-opted the Route 66 name, but along the way, as it became more and more famous and its legends grew larger and more colorful, the actual two-lane American highway all but disappeared into oblivion.

No, Route 66 will not show up on your modern GPS coordinator, nor can you print it out using a computer program like Map Blast, because although we all want to find adventure on that old highway, it just doesn’t appear on modern maps anymore. To find it, you have to be part history buff, part maphead, with a dose of road warrior tossed in for determination. But you will have lots of help. There are something like 150 different clubs, websites, blogs, and publications dedicated to keeping Route 66 alive, at least in our nostalgic memories. Here’s a hint to help you get started: You need to find a vintage 50s or 60s era muscle car or sports convertible, preferably in cherry red. Then get some cool sunglasses, tank up on gasoline, and if you start asking in Chicago, you will eventually discover the leftover bits and pieces of Route 66 that snakes to Tulsa, Amarillo, Santa Fe, and Los Angeles. But be sure to take along a camera and a scrapbook, because one of these days the Route 66 you traveled will be only a distant and legendary memory, replaced by Interstates and shopping centers. Meanwhile you can help to preserve the character and legend of the road, by doing your part to ride it in style.

The Smithsonian institute is funded because a scientist who lived in the 1800s left his entire fortune to the US government, to create the museum in his name and continue to maintain it according to his last wishes.  But he was not, as one might suspect, a patriotic and loyal American. In fact, he never stepped foot in the USA, and as far as historians can tell, he didn’t have any friends or contacts here. The whole arrangement remains an interesting mystery, and some who have studied the story believe that his big gift to the USA may have done to spite his own homeland of Great Britain, because of the way he had been treated in his own country. There are many theories as to why he decided to create the Institute, but for whatever reason, it now exists and thrives - in Washington, DC, the capitol of the USA - more than 150 later, as the most expansive and thorough museum in the world. Admission is free for all Smithsonian museums in Washington, D.C, which is the world’s largest museum and archival research conglomerate. 16 museums and the National Zoo in Washington, plus 2 museums in New York City, contain more than 140 million items, including art, music, mummies, dinosaur skeletons, airplanes, movies, clothing, jewels, and just about anything on earth of value to preserve for future generations that you can imagine. So if you plan to visit one or more of the Smithsonian projects, be sure to give yourself plenty of time. There are people who have spent months inside the museum and have only glimpsed a mere fraction of what it has in its many displays.

The customs offices of the world are great places to lose things, not by accident, but by deliberate and vigilant customs officials who confiscate those things that are not allowed into a country. If you are traveling with agricultural products, for instance, you might be surprised to find out that they can’t be imported, because of government regulations intended to help prevent the accidental importation of pests, bacteria, and other undesirables. After all, it is believed that some of the world’s great plagues were started by the transportation (unknowingly) of disease through agricultural products or the rodents and insects that tag along on them as little stowaway passengers.

Customs officers will usually require that you hand them a written document, filled out before you land and then turned in when you cross through customs, that states whether or not you are carrying such products. And they are willing to forgive innocent mistakes, without coming down on you as if you were a criminal smuggler. But that doesn’t mean they will let you break the law, either. If you have packed yourself a nice ham sandwich with lettuce and tomato for the arrival snack, you might end up handing it over - and the customs people will perhaps eat it for you at their own lunch break. Similarly, if you are carrying a dozen roses that your boyfriend gave you in the departure lounge, those might end up on a customs officer’s girlfriend’s breakfast table by morning, thanks to your losing them at the border. After all, they are agricultural products. So what if you want to bring some Holland bulbs back to grow tulips in your window boxes? The best thing is to have the florist sell them to you and handle the shipping themselves. And if you want to pack a lunch, bring one that is already sealed up, like an unopened snack bar or an unsealed package of nuts.

In the town of Mount Airy, North Carolina, where the popular television show “Andy in Mayberry” was based (Mayberry being the fictional version of the actual town of Mount Airy), there is an annual music festival that attracts larger crowds and more musical performers each year, although the premise of the event is the celebration of old fashioned and traditional style acoustic music, played primarily on the fiddle, banjo, and guitar. Drums are out of place at this event, as are electrified instruments. Instead, hand crafted dulcimers and old fiddles are the more common tools for making music, which takes place on the main stage and also around the many campfires where people pitch tents to spend the weekend in a grand musical convention. But at night few of the festival goers get much rest, instead choosing to stay up until the wee hours of the morning to sit together in impromptu jam sessions, picking and singing tunes and passing bottles of liquor and cups of strong coffee to fuel themselves onward.

The gathering happens each year in the springtime, and if you contact the local Chamber of Commerce for Mount Airy, you can get information on lodging, tickets to the festival, and camping options. Plus, if you would like to compete for one of the prizes awarded to performers, there are many categories of contests and people of all ages can fill out applications and then perform their songs in front of the thousands of audience members for a chance to be recognized as the next great fiddler of the long-standing festival.

In 2005, a civilian contracted with a private company to catapult him into space, for a price that was over the moon and probably could have covered his expenses for around the world trips for the rest of his life. Many speculate that soon tourists will be flying to the moon or other out of this world destinations as easily as they now skip across the Atlantic from New York to Paris or London, and there are prototypes for passenger aircraft that can carry a hundred or more people at a time into the stratosphere, at rocket speeds. Some investors are spending millions to get into this futuristic idea of travel, while others think that it represents a dream or a pie in the sky that will not be realized for hundreds of years, because of the enormous expense involved in providing safe space travel.

But it was only a century ago that people felt the same way about the car, and when the first car carried people at speeds as fast as 30 miles per hour, this was considered a terrifying and extreme mode of transportation. Then air travel followed, and before long people were crisscrossing the planet in supersonic jets, making air travel as common as riding a bike or taking a walk in the park. In fact it is difficult now to imagine a world without air travel, which represents the bulk of the tourist market for international travelers. So pack your bags and your space suits because soon you may be taking a stroll through the park on the nearest celestial planet.