travel-tips

Pre‑Trip Logistics and My Fragile Sense of Competence

Two weeks before we leave for Europe, I ordered a universal plug adapter on Amazon.

About two hours later, I found the one we already owned sitting right in front of me. I did not tell my wife. What I said was, “It’s probably a good idea to have two of them.” She believed me, or she was kind enough to pretend she did. Either way, my fragile sense of competence lived to fight another day.

Packing for this trip is more complicated than it sounds. If we were flying straight to the cruise ship in Copenhagen, it would be simple—once you’re on the boat, American plugs work, and a European adapter just doubles your chances of having too many things charging at once. But we’re spending a few days in Germany first, which means adapters matter. On our British Isles cruise a couple of years ago, we needed European plugs for exactly one night before the cruise and zero nights after. Different math applies here: five nights of actual need, twenty nights of me obsessing about it like we’re going off‑grid.

My wife will be flying to Houston for work the Monday before we leave. I won’t join her until Thursday. Her plan—which is honestly a good one—is to take a work suitcase to Houston, have our daughter ship it back to our son in Oklahoma, and then go to the airport together Friday afternoon with one checked bag and one carry‑on. Clean. Simple. Elegant. Almost guaranteed to be attacked by reality at some point, but I admire the ambition and I appreciate that someone in this marriage can visualize a straight line.

We borrowed vacuum packing bags from our son to make the most of our space. I have doubts about this. Not strong doubts, but doubts. In theory, vacuum bags help you pack smarter. In practice, they help you pack more, which is how a three‑week trip starts to look like we’re quietly moving to a new continent under witness protection.

The temperature question is the one keeping me up. Europe was hot last week, but it might cool off and be hot again by the time we get to certain ports. We overpacked for cold on the British Isles trip. We overpacked for cold in Alaska. At some point you’d think we’d learn. The problem is that packing for heat and then hitting a cold snap makes you look like someone who doesn’t know how to use a search engine. I would like to not be that person this time, mostly for my own dignity and the ability to walk off the ship without looking like I dressed in the dark.

We also had to reorder umbrellas. We lost our last pair somewhere between packing and unpacking after the British Isles trip. Maybe the OKC move got them. Maybe they saw our packing style and ran away to live with a more responsible family. Either way, they’re gone. Two new ones have arrived, which means somewhere in this house, there are four umbrellas slowly planning a reunion, and I will absolutely find all of them three days after we get home.

The t‑shirt debate is more personal. In my younger years, I loved the clever phrase shirts—the ones that made strangers think I was witty without me actually having to talk to them. Now I want the opposite. Minimal design. Small logo. Something that asks nothing of anyone. I’ll probably wear my Texas shirt because I lived there. Maybe a hat with the hockey team logo from the boys we billet. The older I get, the less I want to be noticed and the more I want to be comfortable. That’s my fashion evolution: from “look at me” to “I’m fine, let’s all move on.”

One souvenir I’m almost certain to bring home is a t‑shirt I’ll wear on the next trip. That’s the full circle: buy shirt, wear shirt, repeat, occasionally remember the trip, almost never impress anyone. It’s a quiet investment in future laundry.

The karaoke situation deserves a mention. My wife has already brought it up multiple times—how excited she is to watch it on the ship. I do not love karaoke. When the same person who cannot carry a tune insists on performing multiple nights in a row, the novelty fades faster than my patience. I’ll be there. I’ll smile. I’ll clap at the right times. She knows I’ll be there and smiling, and that’s probably why she keeps mentioning it—she enjoys the show, I enjoy the sociology experiment of watching one person’s confidence outlive everyone else’s eardrums.

So here we are: twelve days out. Adapters acquired (twice). Vacuum bags borrowed. Umbrellas replaced. T‑shirts effectively sorted into “attention‑seeking” and “emotionally stable.” Karaoke mentally prepared for.

We’re basically ready—or at least as ready as two people can be when one of them keeps ordering things we technically already own and the other one kindly pretends this is part of the plan.

The 6 AM Rule

I have a 6 AM rule.

If the airport dropoff requires me to wake up before 6, I am operating in dangerous territory. When I am awake, I am awake — but the manner in which I arrive at “awake” matters enormously. I shake the sand out slowly. I need time to build momentum. If that process starts before the sun has any intention of showing up, I will spend the rest of the day staring at walls, losing verbal sparring matches I would normally win, and napping in chairs I had no plans to sit in. I am, essentially, a human screensaver.

My wife has no such limitations. She can wake at 3 AM, drive to the airport, come home, and go back to sleep like none of it happened. I find this both impressive and deeply unfair.

The labor of being the free Uber isn’t actually free, by the way. It’s paid for in brain cells and accidental afternoon naps.

Earlier this year — February, maybe, or early March, the details are fuzzy in the way that only pre-dawn experiences can be — I did a 5 AM dropoff. The wakeup was somewhere around 4:30. I won’t describe the rest of that day except to say I spent most of it trying to goose a single brain cell into firing.

So I updated the policy. One pre-6 AM spousal run per quarter.

This coming Saturday, her flight is at 5 AM. The math on that wakeup is not complicated. She asked me something about the flight options — “5:00 or 1:00?” —, and I thought my preference was obvious. She said, “Oh, they gave me the 5:00 flight.” There I was. A man of principle, staring down his principles.

I haven’t decided yet what I’m going to do about that. A paid Uber is getting my vote, but votes change

Now, the rules are not the same for everyone. I’ve developed what you might call a tiered system. It is not written down anywhere, but it is very real.

Hockey boys know the score. They’ve seen enough early practices to understand that some hours of the day are not meant for human activity. If their flights are reasonable, I’m happy to run them. If they’re leaving at what the military calls 0-dark-thirty, they’re calling an Uber without any hurt feelings on either side. This is an understood arrangement.

Exchange students have, in my experience, been European, and Europeans apparently book flights like reasonable people. Arrivals tend to land in the afternoon. Departures can get a little early, but my wife handles those. She, as previously established, is built for this.

Family is where the policy gets complicated, mostly because family comes with feelings attached to it. There is an ongoing negotiation in our house about whether saving forty dollars on an early flight is worth what it costs in parental sleep and the general goodwill that holds a family together. I have opinions on this. I keep most of them to myself.

The honest truth is that family members (not our kids) who visit us for weddings usually have rental cars. Which means I can say, with complete sincerity, “Too bad you’ve got the rental — I would have been happy to run you.” And I might even mean it. I just don’t have to specify that my happy shuttle service has operating hours, and those hours start at 6.

The OKC airport, for what it’s worth, is a genuinely pleasant experience. Easy drive, easy TSA, more marijuana dispensaries along the route than I remember from DFW but fewer traffic lights, so it probably evens out. The only real drawback is that flights out of here tend to leave early. If you’re connecting through Dallas or Denver to get somewhere real, your day starts at an hour that tests people.

It tests me, anyway.

My wife is fine.

I Like A Better Ratio

A couple of weekends ago, most of my family made a quick trip to North Carolina to celebrate my in-laws post-50 anniversary. We were grateful we could go. We squeezed in a college graduation before returning to our home briefly, and then driving to the airport for the North Carolina flight. With waiting on flights, layovers, and time in the air, we had over 10 hours involved with transportation. Even including the two nights we spent there, we had less than 40 hours in North Carolina. It is travel:to:non-travel ratio I want to discuss.

I don’t know where “whirlwind” begins on the travel spectrum. If you are absent from your house for 48 hours and 20% of that time is spent in the “there” and returning from “there,” it may not qualify as a tornado, but maybe a “tree-bending breeze” or something like that. When we fly to Europe with a roundtrip travel time of over a day, I like to have at least 7 days between the flights. (Notice the greater than 4:1 ratio.) If you will travel great distances for a few hours at the destination before beginning the return trip, we are unlikely to be travel buddies.

Whatever your ratio is, your “whirlwind trip” will look different. If you hate traveling with no upside, there is unlikely to be any ratio of “travel-to-non-travel”. As a medium-ish homebody, I tolerate but accept brief periods with disruptive travel schedules…as long as I have a few months to prepare for the flurry of activity taking place within the compressed time. I may not be the most fun to travel with. Fortunately, my wife doesn’t complain…much.