Skyring

Every year I plan a round the world trip to get from my home in Canberra to a convention held in North America. June to March is planning and anticipation, April is travel, and May is recovery.

I also make the trip into a writing project. Last year it was a week in London to visit every square on the British Monoploy board, and this year I decided to try to visit as many significant World War Two sites as I could, with the idea of writing a book about the role of the American serviceman in WW2.

I've been home a week now, but I'm still awash with boarding passes and souvenirs, so in the breaks between writing about the war, I'll write about the travel here. I'm no great traveller yet, and it's still a big thrill for me to feel the first tug of pushback on my way to a new destination, so please excuse a certain amount of starry-eyed enthusiasm.

This report will take me a while to complete, so this post is by way of being a head-up in case anyone wants to read about a round trip (the long way) from Canberra to Canada with my head out of the window as far as it will go.

lucky9876coins

Sounds exciting! Looking forward to it! ^ ^ ^

lucky9876coins

dupe.......

Skyring

Until 2005, I hadn't been further out of Australia than New Zealand twice. A beautiful land, but a three hour trans-Tasman flight doesn't rate anyone as a world traveller.

This changed for me when my sister-in-law showed up with a bottle of champagne one summer evening and the next day I was knocking on the door of my travel agent, saying "I want to fly to Washington. Tomorrow."

How that worked out is told elsewhere, but I gained enough confidence to book a flight to the 2005 BookCrossing Convention in Fort Worth. Via London, and because I had to take three stops to qualify for the ticket, I chose San Francisco on the way home. There's a journal telling the tale of that trip (amongst other things) if anybody is curious enough.

My TA for both trips was Tessa P of Flight Centre in Canberra, who is an absolute angel, and melted my heart with her Celtic charm. Everything went like clockwork on my travels, and I vowed that I'd book everything else through her.

But she disappeared off to Dublin in search of a new life, and I mourned for her, putting off any planning until I could find someone as capable as her.

I didn't find anyone, but I found FlyerTalk and other forums, and became drawn into the tales of travel and frequent flying and the benefits of lounges and platinum cards and so on.

Eventually, about January, I decided that I'd better get down to some solid planning and booking. My best ticket was a oneworld Explorer which could give me up to twenty flights. Why oneWorld? Because if I fly with oneWorld, I get the Qantas flights to and from Canberra included. International air travel to and from Australia pretty much all goes through Sydney, and nobody else but Qantas does the Canberra-Sydney sector. As well as that, oneWorld offers the destinations I need, which cuts out a few of the discount RTW tickets via carriers like KLM.

And of course, the clincher is that I can add the airmiles and status points to those I gained in 2005. My status with Qantas is Silver, which is equivalent to oneWorld Ruby, but I'm grateful for the modest benefits, most useful of which is an increased baggage allowance. I usually travel with a hefty load of books, and maximising the amount I can carry with me is important.

I find an itinerary-planning tool and rough out a trip, not worrying too much about dates, but concentrating on how to get where I want to go. I'm allowed up to twenty flights over four continents, with four flights in each and six in North America. I have to cross the Pacific and Atlantic oceans once each. There's a host of minor restrictions, but by and large it's a good deal. I smile as I check out the projected mileage and status totals. I'll requalify for Silver status by the end of the trip. I note in passing that if I took the trip in Business Class, I'd get enough points to make Platinum. That'd be nice.

I see in the newspaper that Flight Centre is holding a Travel Expo in a building a few blocks away, and one Sunday morning I go in to speak to someone about booking my flights.

Standing in line, I glumly contemplate the travel agent I'm waiting for. I hope she's competent. She doesn't have that sweet smile that Tessa flashes me, but I guess it will work out OK. It's the travel not the travel agent, OK?

And then I see, two or three positions down, a familiar profile. No! It can't be.

But it is. Tessa! I leave my queue, bustle up and she smiles at me as I say "There's only one travel agent I want, and it's YOU!".

I hug her in relief and gratitude when she gets a chance to sit down with me and work out a price. I'm so very glad to see her that I crack and request Business Class. I'm planning a lot more travel, that platinum status will come in handy later on and besides, I'm over the moon to have my travel once again in competent hands. Hang the expense!

Kiwi Flyer

Nice start to the report skyring ^

Skyring

I'm taking lessons from the master here: I like reading your travel blog and long, thoughtful posts.

Skyring

Tessa has returned from Dublin (she doesn't say why, but I get a hint of a failed romance - if so the man must be an idiot to let her slip away) and we arrange a meeting at her office in Kingston to sort out the details of my trip.

I've prepared an itinerary, but there are a few grey areas, most murky being how I'm to get to Charleston in South Carolina given that oneWorld doesn't fly there, and how to get from Paris to London via Normandy and Guernsey. We work out that the Charleston leg can be covered two ways - fly into Raleigh/Durham in North Carolina and take a Greyhound bus or hire a car, or fly to JFK and take the train from there. A quick look at airfares with other carriers dissuades me from even attempting to buy a ticket to cover this leg.

Problems with all solutions, but we settle on the Greyhound bus option for the time being and I will look into it.

I need to get to Charleston because I have a BookCrossing mate living there. In fact she is my immediate "boss" on the BookCrossing volunteer support team, and I can't go to the USA and not visit her. She's offered to put me up for a few nights and I have accepted with pleasure and anticipation.

The Guernsey thing is more problematic. I want to go there because I've been invited to appear on BBC Radio Guernsey by Jenny Kendall-Tobias who presents the mid-morning "Studio One" show. I've become a big fan of hers after listening (on the web) to her interviewing a prominent British BookCrosser and she's tickled pink to have a regular correspondent on the far side of the world, who not only sends her e-mails but has promised to visit Guernsey.

Oneworld doesn't fly into Guernsey, but British Air flies out of nearby Jersey. As I intend to visit the Normandy invasion beaches, I figure that it shouldn't be too difficult to get from there to Guernsey, then to Jersey and from there to London, where I'm scheduled to meet with the local BookCrossers.

The rest of the trip is just a matter of selecting flights from schedules, but Tessa doesn't seem to completely grasp the fact that I want to maximise distance on each of my flights, and that if I can fly from (say) London to Birmingham via Ankara, that's a lot better than simply catching the train up.

But just spending time with Tessa is pleasant enough, and I take comfort in the fact that a Global Explorer ticket is more or less infinitely adjustable after the first flight.

As it happens, I arrange the Charleston leg with a booking on Amtrak to and from JFK. I took a part of that rail trip last January, between Washington and Richmond (when I made a quick trip to see my BookCrossing buddy sparky-redhead) and I don't mind doing the whole lot on the train. I can also make use of those flights elsewhere to criss-cross the USA a bit more and get more points.

Shortly afterwards oneWorld decides to fly into Charleston with an Embraer 145 twice daily service out of DFW and I gratefully accept that option, as it saves a fair amount of time and won't have me wandering the streets of New York in the early hours of the morning.

I arrange ferry tickets for the Guernsey leg, but the ferry leaves from St Malo, and I can't find a way to get to St Malo from Bayeux by train on a Sunday, or at least not get there in time to catch the ferry. So I book a car instead. To save money I select the cheapest possible model, which happens to be a manual. So I'm going to have to face not only driving on the "wrong" side of the road, but driving a manual again, long after I've changed to driving an automatic with both feet: left foot on the brake and right foot on the accelerator. In a panic stop I'll pull into the face of oncoming traffic whilst stamping hard on the clutch. I make the booking anyway, resolving to burn that bridge when I come to it.

All in all it's a bit of a jigsaw puzzle. There are places I need to be and I have to fit in my flights around them. If I change one flight it nearly always affects others, particularly as I try to arrange at least two hour minimum transits. My ideal stopover is two nights in the local youth hostel, but if I do that for every place I want to stop, the trip will stretch out well over a month and I'll blow a fortune on accommodation and transfers and food. So I juggle flights and have a great time planning it all. Anticipation is half the fun, isn't it?

Skyring

I've got two more preliminary posts before we get into the trip itself. Bear with me, because these two aspects are critical to the trip.

The first is BookCrossing, one of my several passions. It's an american thing, and to sum it up, it's a cross between tagging a migratory bird and setting loose a message in a bottle.

It's done with books, and it's the brainchild of an American software engineer named Ron Hornbaker, who conceived the idea in March 2001 and launched the site on 17 April that year.

The idea is that a book is registered on BookCrossing.com, given a registration number (otherwise known as a BCID: a BookCrossing IDentity number) which is marked on the inside along with a brief note asking the finder to log their "catch" on the website, and then "released into the wild".

OK, it's a bit weird, but it works! The three millionth BookCrossing book was registered a few days ago, and there are nearly half a million members, some with over 20 000 books registered.

I joined in January 2003, and I've got about 1 400 books registered and released. I'm about number twelve in Australia in terms of books registered, which gives you some idea of the popularity. Participation can be completely anonymous, with most members electing to use a "screen name". I am Skyring.

It's a lot of fun, as you might expect. After releasing books on park benches, in coffee shops, or other suitable places, a member waits by his email inbox for a note to come in saying that a book has been caught. The finder will have been asked to say where the book was found, how they liked it and to give a brief summary of their experience with the book. An example is "Operation Seadragon", which shows a wild catch, the ability to be anonymous, and someone subverting the system by keeping the book.

Anyway, you never know what you're going to get. To celebrate BookCrossing's second anniversary, I wrapped up a copy of "Blackwater" in two ziploc bags, tossed it into the waters of Lake Burley Griffin at midnight (because I wanted to celebrate before the birthday rolled around to the USA, and the title seemed appropriate) and it washed up in Borneo, believe it or not!

I celebrated the third anniversary by writing a book about releasing books through New Zealand called "BookCrossing Through Middle-Earth" which I mailed out to the first BookCrossing Convention in St Louis in April 2004.

In November 2004 we Australians held our own convention in Sydney, which I liked so much that I resolved to attend as many gatherings as I possibly could. BookCrossers have several characteristics in common. They tend to be well-read, generous, quirky people. The sort of person who thinks it's fun to give away books to strangers. They also tend to be 90% women, and I reckon this is a plus. It's a friendly, funny family, especially when you dive into the community forums and find yourself swapping tales of books released and caught with people all over the world.

I took my wife to a convention in 2005 in Christchurch, and then went to the second North American convention in Fort Worth, Texas. On the way I stopped in London and released a book on every square of the British Monopoly Board.

Some little time after that, I found myself a member of the volunteer support team for BookCrossing, answering emailed questions and helping people sort out problems, such as a jumbled BCID or a lost password. That's a bit of work, but a lot of fun. I like helping people out.

So that's BookCrossing. And the ostensible reason for my trip was to attend the 2006 convention in Toronto.

Skyring

One way I justify these trips is to use them as the basis for another book. I'm not a great or bestselling travel author (yet) and I make a writing project out of each trip, planning them around a theme.

This year's theme is American servicemen in WW2, and I aimed at visiting a few historic locations, such as battlefields, museums and memorials, where I could gather material and release an appropriate book.

(Incidentally, I've selected next year's theme, and I've already begun planning a month-long drive around American Civil War battlefields, commencing in Charleston, where Fort Sumter is located.)

Finding appropriate locations in Australia and the UK, consistent with meeting BookCrossers and extracting as many miles out of my ticket as possible, was a bit of a challenge, but I managed to research a couple. Thank you Mister Google.

In the end it all worked out as a compromise. Given enough time and money I could do anything, but visiting (say) Iwo Jima or Auschwitz was pretty much out of the question, given my limitations. The BookCrossing convention in Toronto pinned me down to at least three days there, and with visits to Guernsey, Shrewsbury and Charleston I was further constrained. In particular, I had to be in Shrewsbury for Jim Hawkins' weekly BookCrossing update at 11 in the morning on a Friday.

But once I'd penned in a few times and places where I had to be, everything else more or less flowed.

It had to. The ticket allowed me to cross the Pacific and Atlantic oceans once each, which effectively meant that I had to choose between flying around the world east to west (with the sun), or the other way. On examining a few west-east timetables, I worked out that this meant I'd be spending a lot of days where I would catch an early-morning flight to arrive in my destination after nightfall.

That held few attractions, so I opted for the other way round, where I could have breakfast, catch a leisurely ride to the airport for a mid-morning flight and arrive some hours further west in mid-afternoon, with ample time to get myself checked in and have a stroll around.

Skyring

The Dunedin BookCrossing Convention was held in mid February, and I put my name down for it. This was to be my fourth visit to Dunedin, a dour little city near the bottom of New Zealand's South Island. There are other far more spectacular places, and I make no doubt that it's a miserable place in the depths of winter, but I love it. Short of Canberra, it's my favorite city in all the world, and that's after seeing some of the world's greatest.

Last time I went to Dunedin it was Sydney to Christchurch and then a long wait for a little prop job down. This time I booked Freedom Air Sydney-Dunedin direct. The sale price of $99 each way for a trans-Tasman flight was too good to resist. The taxes and charges came to about as much as the tickets. I'd have to find some way to get from Canberra to Sydney, but that was OK.

Freedom Air is Air New Zealand's "no-frills" arm, and I had to pay $5 each way additional to select my seats. I picked a good window seat - 6A so that I'd have a different view coming and going.

It would also be a good chance for me to try out some of the travel kit I'd slowly been accumulating since my April 2004 trip.

My base grade Dell laptop did the job, but it was big and heavy, the wireless card sticking out of the side had to be removed each time I stowed it away, and worst of all, if the guy in front reclined his seat, the laptop screen assumed an acute angle and became impossible to read. No matter how I struggled, there just wasn't enough room between my lap and the seatback to extend the thing.

My wife, a tiny woman, carried my laptop overseas once and returned vowing revenge. It was just too massive for her. So we went out and got her employer to pay for a Toshiba Libretto U100, a sweet little computer the approximate size, shape and weight of a trade paperback. It works well for her, but the three-quarter size keyboard is just a bit too dainty for my fingers.

So when I saw a Dell Latitude X1 at a trade fair, I knew I'd found my new love. It's light, just over a kilo, but most of all it's small. About the same size and shape as a copy of National Geographic. It has a wide screen aspect and the keyboard is almost full sized. It can operate in a fraction the space of my old Dell and comes with a bunch of goodies. Main drawbacks are the external optical drive and the short battery life.

I found a bargain on eBay and bought the bigger battery. With both batteries, I could get about six or seven hours out of it, more than enough for anything but a long and frenzied flight. The power adapter was also lightweight. Along with a pack full of cables and connectors, I was set. I liked the retractable cables, ensuring that the bottom of my carryon on pack didn't become a tangle of snakes after a day or two on the road.

My carryon is a Targus backpack. Mindful of disaster stories from other travellers, I've got one which has been designed around laptop padding. It's got its fill of pockets and compartments, but the main thing is to safeguard my laptop. I also keep my documents inside: three plastic sleeves - one for travel documents, reservations and so on. Another for accommodation reservations, so I can front up and show that I've reserved a room and paid for it over the net alrerady. And a third for personal details - addresses, phone numbers of people I'm to meet.

My backpack also doubles as my emergency luggage in case my checked bags are lost or delayed. I've got a light jacket that is wind and waterproof, but can be crushed up small. That will help keep me warm and dry if need be. Not teribly stylish, but practical. There's a Qantas red leather first class amenities kit which I bought off eBay. It's light but tough, and the main reason I got it is for the small can of shave foam - no more trying to lather up with dispenser soap in the gents! I've chucked some of the cosmetics and augmented it with other things, but essentially I can keep myself trim and clean for at least a few days if need be until my luggage catches up.

A water bottle in a mesh pocket. Getting dehydrated on planes is a worry of mine, and I like to take a sip every half hour or so.

Chewing gum so I can keep my Eustachian tubes open during climbout and descent. I've suffered blocked tubes before and my hearing is poor enough at the best of times that I can't afford to have even a temporary loss.

Small first aid kit - bandaids, lip balm, headache tablets and so on.

And odds and ends such as my Moleskine journal, a book for reading and my camera.

I wear cargo pants for travelling. This is so that I can put my Day-Timer in one of the big pockets and have my boarding pass, passport, arrival card and other things available at a moment's notice.

Polo shirt for comfort. Thick socks. As soon as the plane gets solidly into the climb I remove my boots and keep them off until descent. I figure that take off and landing are the most likely times for an emergency exit, and if it happens I'm not going to have time to do up my boots.

Boots are Columbia Razor Ridge. Rugged but comfortable. Almost shoes, but a bit deeper. I'm not going to get into fancy restaurants in these, but I'm not aiming to. I want boots that are equally at home off road and in city streets, and these are great all-round footwear. Comfortable, too.

A cap to cover my bald spot from sun and cold.

I'd put a bit of thought into my cell phone. Tri-band so I can use it overseas. Flip-top so it doesn't need a case and I don't have to lock the keypad. And a small camera built in. As light and inexpensive as possible. Of course it has its own recharger which is more clutter, but there's really no way around this.

My real camera is a Canon S2 IS. Sub-SLR in size, but powerful enough for serious photography. I've got a spare set of rechargable batteries and small memory card in the camera case. Collapsible lightweight tripod for night shooting and panoramas.

Main toiletries bag is a Kathmandu Deluxe: enough room for fullsize containers of shampoo and shaving foam, as well as all the other bits and pieces. Mesh zip compartment for stuff like dental floss. Small mirror for emergency shaving, and best of all, a sturdy hook so I can hang it up next to a handbasin or shower.

An extra-large sized microfibre travel towel. This folds up to a ridiculously small size in its own pouch.

Two mesh laundry bags - one for clean undies, socks and hankies. The other for same but dirty. I keep a few laundry tablets in the clean one so I'm not dependent on cranky hostel vending machines.

A few other things, but those are the essentials. They all work well on my four days in New Zealand. I spot one product I want - thebiblioholic from New York has a big bright yellow rolling duffle bag. This can hold a tonne of stuff, has a sturdy bottom, and rolls along with a telescopic handle. The yellow colour makes it easy to spot on carousels. I order one when I get home and it arrives a few days before I leave.

The big aim is to keep my gear organised, tidy and available. If I don't take care, everything gradually churns itself into one big mess and not only do I lose time in looking for or untangling things, but sometimes I lose things altogether. However the down side in buying lightweight spacesaving kit is that after a while I have so much I can't carry it all around!

Having a hobby which requires me to cart around a lot of books doesn't help.

New Zealand? Yeah, I had a blast! Released lots of books, took lots of photographs, met lots of BookCrossers and my team won the trivia night.

RachelG

Skyring, please tell me you didn't actually take a Greyhound bus. You need to rent a car. I took a few Greyhound buses in my college days---that was a long time ago (late 70's), and they have definitely gone downhill since then. Not like riding a bus in Ireland (which I don't hesitate to do) or some other parts of the world.

Skyring

I knew it would be an interesting experience. But no, I settled on the New York to Charleston train ride. Actually bought the ticket. And then American Eagle decided they'd have a twice daily flight into Charleston from DFW. So I got that instead.

Skyring

I think of my wife when I embrace my new lover. My wife of 25 years dutifully drives me to the airport, kisses me and waves as I disappear through security. Through the gate and up the stairs I bound with unseemly enthusiasm. My lover awaits!

She's behind the counter of the Qantas Club and she barely glances at my boarding pass. This is it! A round the world flight via Business Class and airline lounges - be still, my beating heart! I'm in love with luxury, or at least comfort.

Like all new lovers, we take it easily at first. I've been here once or twice before with my wife, whose government employer pays for her club membership and her Business Class tickets to exotic destinations. But this is coming out of my pocket and it's a new experience of luxury.

In fact my flights to New Zealand and back in February were the first time I'd been seated ahead of the engines on anything bar a 727/DC-9. This time around pretty much the entire journey will be up towards the pointy end.

Coffee, juice and little munchy things. Mmmmm. The poor sods out in the gate area aren't getting freebies.

I camp by the window and sneak a few photographs. Did you know I'm one of those planespotter nerds? Well, I am, and I've always got my camera with me. When I was a lad I could pick a Spitfire from a Hurricane in my plastic Airfix squadrons, nowadays I learn to distinguish a B737 from an A380, and I've got photographs of both where I can point out the small details - an Airbus 380 has two rows of windows against the Boeing 737's one.

I pull out my laptop and try to write something, but I'm too nervous. Surely someone will see me here in luxuryland and kick me out. My wife, perhaps.

Flight time arrives and I start to worry that I might miss the plane while I'm swilling champagne or lukewarm coffee. I camp by the door and study the monitors, and in due course my announcement is made.

Business Class on a 737 isn't all that special, really. The seats are bigger and wider and longer and the food and drinks are better (and more frequent). But to my Economy Class eyes, this is it. I've arrived before I've taken off!

I'm on cloud nine as we lift off from a twilight Canberra. They are working on the main runway here and it's a bit shorter than it is normally, so my plane to Perth will stop for refuelling in Adelaide. Just a half hour sitting at a gate, with nobody able to get off, but I'm happy to get another landing and takeoff.

Skyring

Reporting live.

The sunset is a thin bright orange band in the west. With a fingernail shaving of a new moon just above it, fresh from an eclipse which missed Australia. I'll be chasing the sun this evening and for the rest of the trip as I fly continually into the west until I come all the way around again in thirty days. And home to a new moon and the Southern Cross rising over my horizon once more.

I wish I could take a photograph of the sunset over a dark land. But all I'd get would be reflections from the bright cabin, and I must hold the image in my mind. Chasing the sun into the west.

Western Australia will be a new place for me. The first of many this trip. It's our biggest State and our most sparsely populated. Most of the few inhabitants are concentrated in the fertile southwest corner and the rest is pretty much desert, apart from a mine and a cattle station here and there. I'm looking forward to it as I sit here racing through the sky at ten miles a minute and smiling up at a pretty cabin attendant hands me a glass of spiced tomato juice, its deep red colour reflecting the lignt of the fading sun.

Skyring

Reporting live:

Here I am in Perth. Predawn after an evening chasing the sunset from Canberra to Adelaide and then into a very black and empty west. Most of that must have been over water - the Great Australian Bight, to be precise - but I couldn't see anything. The moon, the fingernail sliver of a moon had held the sun's tale down under the horizon, and there was nothing outside. How the pilots navigated us through that vast blackness is a mystery.

Inside I was happy, so long as they kept the spiced tomato juice coming. One of the music channels was playing every San Francisco song ever written and I was happy to listen. Qantas now flies into SF three times a week and this was one of their ways of marking the occasion.

Me, I was happy to relax and listen and remember that lovely city.

Spent a half hour in the wrong spot with other wrong-spotters waiting for the shuttle, and by the time I eventually made my hostel it was eleven o'clock, and that's early morning to my Canberra body, so I rolled into bed and began snoring.

Today I look into the art gallery a few blocks away, meet the local BookCrossers for lunch and then have a shufti at Fremantle. Tomorrow is a day of travel back across the continent - daylight this time - and a few minutes shy of midnight I'll be catching Cathay Pacific for the redeye to Hong Kong.

Later:
Pardon the waxing lyrical. Feed me spiced tomato juice ten kilometres up and this big goofy grin spreads over my face. I love it.

I gave the movie a miss and concentrated on the sound channels. To celebrate Qantas returning to San Francisco, Glenn Baker had been conscripted to find an hour's worth of San Francisco songs, and when I hear Judy Garland belting out "San Francisco, open your Golden Gate, I can no longer wait, I'm coming home!" I smile happily, because San Francisco is on my itinerary and I'm looking forward to enjoying that beautiful city once more.

All too soon we're gliding into Perth. The priority tags on the luggage work their magic and I'm outside waiting for a shuttle into the city. Unfortunately the signs point to a waiting area that the shuttle drivers don't seem to know about and I waste a half hour of increasingly chilly evening before I trudge off to the correct area.

I checked into the YHA in Perth, a brand new hostel in the old St John Ambulance building, and after all too brief a sleep, I'm up in the dawn looking for a shower, freebie wifi, newspaper, breakfast...

To my shame, I can't find anything open when I poke my nose out. Nothing but a Macdonalds, and I read the local paper over a Big McBreakfast. My aim is to lose weight on this trip, and I'm not making a good start!

But I have a packed day today and I need to get a solid basis for exploration.

Why Perth, I can hear you saying? Well, I can get four flights within Australia and I'm only allowed one Sydney-Perth or Melbourne-Perth sector. But whoever wrote the rules didn't include Canberra, so I can fly Canberra to Perth, and Perth to Melbourne, two long transcontinental legs giving me piles of miles.