I'm not the kind of guy who can't enjoy
a couple of weeks of down time. I categorize “down time” as days
that I'm not on the road. For the past 25 years or so, there have
only been four or five years when my days on the road didn't
outnumber my days at home. Three of those have been since moving to
South Carolina eight years ago, and another was my last year in
Florida when I had a nine-to-five job editing books.
This year will be another of those
down-time years. Usually by June of a typical travel year for me, I
have at least 35,000 to 40,000 miles under my belt. In my salad days
of flying, I would have had 50,000 to 60,000 miles in the bag by mid
June. This year I have just over 25,000 and almost 10,000 of that
were carried over from 2013.
There was a point just before Delta
filed bankruptcy and I began liquidating my stockpile of Sky Miles
that I had 1.2 million miles piled up in my bank. When you fly all
over the place for a living, you don't feel much like flying on
vacations. The miles just kept mounting up. Thinking that I might
lose those earned miles in the bankruptcy, I began flying everyone I
knew all over. I flew former girl friends into Florida for long
weekends; I flew family members first class here and there; I took
some trips I really wasn't all that interested in taking. Finally I
had my miles stash down to about 200,000 miles. Other than making a
bunch of people very happy, it turned out to be a really bonehead
move. Delta and its frequent-flier program both survived.
Don't get me wrong; there is nothing
even remotely glamorous about clocking 120,000 miles or more a year
in the air. Sure, from time to time I have been booked in business
class by a car company jetting me to Europe or Hawaii to drive some
new car, but those perks are few and far between. It's happened fewer
than a dozen times in 25 years. Otherwise, flying is a dehumanizing,
fatiguing, frustrating cattle call, and that's when I fly Delta on
which I have sufficient clout to obtain a choice steerage seat or be
awarded the occasional upgrade to first class.
I wish I had kept track over the years
of how many hours I've sacrificed cooling my heels in airports
waiting on flights, or how many nights I've spent in flea-bag motels
as the guest of an airline because of a canceled flight. I suspect
I've changed planes in Atlanta close to 1,000 times over the years,
and in Dallas another 300 to 400 times when it was still a hub for
Delta. One year, when I still had hair, every haircut I had was in
the Delta terminal of the Dallas airport. I can't imagine how many
miles I've walked through airports getting to my departure gate or,
when changing planes, from an arrival gate to a departure gate. Ten
thousand steps, my ass.
I rarely sample airport food, but I
have sat at more than an occasional airport bar. I can't begin to
guess the number of beers I've guzzled in airports to pass the time.
What must it be in gallons?
Technology today is such that a
percentage of the time spent flying and sitting in airports can be at
least somewhat productive, but that's only been in the past 10 or 15
years. Before that? Forget about it. It was a lot of time wasted.
Even today, I don't typically do much work on a plane or in an
airport.
Yep, I'm dealing with a little down time
right now: two full weeks at home. I have one trip at the end of this
month, but four already looming in July.
So I'm enjoying this down time while I
have it.
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