Around-the-World Trip Logistics & "Rules"

Some preliminary research convinced me that doing a package of flights with Star Alliance or another group of airlines was impractical and too expensive. I would need to use a number of different airlines in order to easily get to my planned destinations and stops along the way. There seemed to be no advantage to using a travel agent since I could find all the flights myself on the internet. So I started looking at possible flights and stopovers. I established a couple of rules:

1) No backtracking. I would always travel west. There would be some north and south travel required but no travelling east allowed (at least not by plane). The flights would be expensive enough as it was without unnecessarily adding mileage in the wrong direction. Besides, time was somewhat scarce so why waste it going backwards?

2) No connecting flights. I did not need the stress of making and missing connections. Therefore, I would find flights that would take me to intermediate destinations where I wanted to visit and spend at least a day (preferably more) at those stopovers. If a flight was late, cancelled, etc., I would lose time at the intermediate destination but my whole schedule wouldn’t suddenly fall apart. The exception is my flight back from Lisbon, Portugal to Denver. I change planes in Newark, New Jersey and see no earthly reason to spend a day touring Newark or New York City. If I miss the Newark-Denver flight, it’s no big deal because that’s the last leg of the trip anyway.

No overnight flights. Since I'm traveling west to earlier and earlier time zones, I can thankfully avoid these. No overnight train trips either. I want to see the landscape, not sleep through it. An exception is the Madrid-Lisbon overnight train. It's the only option.

3) No checked luggage. Spending three months living out of carry-ons will be a challenge but I don’t need to deal with lost or delayed luggage which contains essential items. Following this rule requires me to wash some laundry every night. A downside to be sure but I also remember traveling through southern Africa in the mid-‘80s during my free-lance journalism days when I was schlepping a big backpack, humongous duffle bag (which I soon nicknamed “the elephant”) as well as my carry-on. It was one thing to deal with all this crap in my early ‘40s but hopefully I’ve learned some lessons about the pain of too many travels weighted down with too much extraneous stuff.

4) Get really organized! I developed Excel spreadsheets with flight times, hotels, conferences, visits with people along the way, train and bus schedules, car rentals, etc. I couldn’t afford to forget anything. I systematically made plane reservations from east to west and I made them on-line several months in advance of my trip knowing that one sold out flight could screw up the entire schedule. I scheduled the flights first and built the schedule around the various conference dates. Once I had scheduled the flights (nearly all by the end of March), I went to work filling in the blanks in between.

5) Travel on the cheap. No five-star hotels for this kid. No hostels where I have to share rooms with strangers either although if I can save 20 bucks a night by sometimes using a shared bath down the hall, why not? So I booked the cheapest flights that worked into my schedule and spent lots of time on line finding the cheapest rooms that had good ratings from people who had stayed there.

6) Convenience! Convenience! I chose hotels that are close to airports and train stations (I’m taking trains from Belgrade, Serbia all the way to Lisbon).

  

6) Try to minimize dependency on taxis as they are usually expensive relative to rapid transit, sometimes hard to find, and often unreliable especially when you have to ride all the way across town to catch a 6:00AM train.

7) Security, security. I’m talking about security for me and my stuff not TSA. Split up valuables so that if something gets stolen or lost, you will still have some credit cards, money, etc. This entails using a pouch worn on a string around my neck and inside my shirt, a waist pouch worn under my shirt, an ankle pouch worn under the top of my sock, a wallet in my fanny pack or front zipper pocket on my pants, and my money belt which looks like it’s there to hold up my pants but has a zipper on the inside which opens into a long skinny pocket that holds currency folded in thirds lengthwise. Cameras and cellphone will be tethered to my pants and belt with a lanyard and carabineer. The MOST important item – my passport –will permanently reside in the pouch around my neck.

When leaving luggage in a hotel room or a car try to chain it to something with my lock with loops designed specifically for this purpose. Of course, anyone with a sharp knife or wire cutters can overcome these obstacles but they may be discouraged if they aren’t pros. Assume pickpockets, thieves, and other tricksters are everywhere, so be really aware of where you venture and what’s going on around you.

Double back up all computer files and photos on two flash drives kept separately from my computer and from each other. Be ready for a catastrophic fiasco by keeping a set of computer files on my laptop back home and an external hard drive in my safety deposit box. For photos and new files during my trip, back up at least once per day and get copies sent back home or uploaded to my blog ASAP.

I know all these precautions sound unduly paranoid. However, ten years ago I almost had my passport lifted by on a crowded Roman subway train. I hadn’t zipped up the pouch where I’d put it and I figured out what was happening in the nick of time. Then a couple years ago, a good friend got rolled by three guys just after leaving an ATM machine in Argentina. They got all his valuables and money and he wound up having to come home early. Then last year I had a couple close calls in Quito, Ecuador that I’ve never told anyone about because I felt really stupid about them. I’m saving them for a short story that maybe I’ll get around to writing someday.

Keep all your stuff together to the extent practical so you minimize the chances of forgetting something left in another part of a motel room. My eyesight isn’t as sharp as it used to be and I occasionally overlook stuff that I’ve laid down away from the rest of my stuff.

Make a mental note of where you put stuff because it will be easy to misplace items even within your luggage and wind up frantically trying to find it (like I did with my cell phone this morning – I spent 10 minutes before boarding the flight this morning tearing apart my luggage trying to find it because I’d forgotten it was in my fanny pack and the first time I looked there, I didn’t see or feel where it was located at the front of everything else). Locks on the zippers on my backpack and my computer case.

8) Always assume the worst. Flights and trains will be cancelled or late. My computer or camera will break down. People will be unreliable or nasty. Food will suck. Hotels will be infested with bugs. Vehicles will break down. The woman sitting next to me on the plane right now will spill her water on my computer. Sounds awfully negative but by assuming the worst, you won’t be devastated when it happens. And if things actually go well, it will be something to feel really good about.

9) Stay healthy by eating well, being paranoid about potentially untreated water and ice, washing your hands regularly, getting plenty of sleep, and having a good supply of drugs in the backpack to combat unwanted germs and vermin. I remember being so sick once in Pakistan back in ’89 that I didn’t know which end everything was going to come out of first. Not fun!

The preceding post was written on 12 July 2012 on my flight from Denver to Oakland and on 15 July while awaiting the departure of my Oakland - Honolulu flight.