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?