An Appetite for Air Travel and All the Rest

How much travel is too much?

A while ago we owned a cat. A very hungry cat it turned out to be. She should have been a Labrador Retriever, so obsessed was this critter with food. 

Having heard that cats were self-regulating animals, my husband decided one day to give her as much cat food as she wanted until she stopped eating on her own. He wanted to gauge just how big her appetite was. Frankly I don’t remember how much she ate. This was Jim’s curiosity at work, not mine. 

I’m telling this tale because recently Jim was wondering the same thing about me.  But instead of food, (my appetite is really quite ladylike) it was to see how long I could travel. Now, at the end of six weeks, having visited Singapore, New Zealand, Bangkok and the United Arab Emirates, I can say that I’m ready to go home. I've:

"This could be heaven or this could be hell"

•        filled the last page of my notebook
•         done my last load of laundry in a bathroom sink
•         bought my last bottle of $10 beer 
•          gotten lost on my last desert highway
•          taken my last airport photo (Sharjah International, how beautiful!)

Sharjah International at dusk.

Observant readers of FLYING LESSONS may have noticed I’ve not been posting much on the day to day goings on in aviation. No worries! (I picked that expression up from the Kiwis.) I’ve been reading Curt Lewis, the ATA SmartBrief, and all the other industry rags and following my favorite aviation journalists and I promise on my return to the USA, after filing the half dozen stories due to my editors at The New York Times, ABC News, the International Herald Tribune and Executive Travel, I will be back in full keyboard mode - criticizing, complimenting and commenting on this industry that we love.

Liz Opalka from Emirates

So thanks for keeping up with my travels (you can read the details at Go How) and sharing your news tips. 

Now I’m headed over to Emirates to meet Liz Opalka from the airline’s communications office and we are going to have a go at the A380 simulator before I fly in the real thing back to New York on Monday. So fasten your seatbelts, you are absolutely NOT free to move about the cabin when I’m in the left seat.

Filled the last page of my notebook, its time to go home.