Travel Monkeys » Pre-Trip

Let it Begin – Somewhere over the Atlantic

Chris — Wed, 30 Aug 2006 00:00:00 +0000

I am on a plane. To where? TO EUROPE!!!!! WHOOOO ARRRR!! Who can believe it. I am sleep deprived. Screaming tearing pained red eyes. Joyously giddy. Totally cramped. In route for 20 plus hours with a raw bum (as the English say). Normally its about a 12 hours to get to Europe but we saved $600 bucks to have an 8 hours layover in Philadelphia. Silly. Try to sleep for a 6â€™2â€ in a space that feels like a Chinese take carton out with a fried chicken stuff in it. Now I cant sleep, I have been up for over 36 hours and here I write err blog for the upcoming weblog for our travelmonkeys website. I am suppose to be sleeping to sync up my body to the 6 hours later European time or so says Rick Steveâ€™s that old badger of a world traveler guru. But what the old coot does not happen to mention is how nutty and exited and completely crazy I feel. From quitting my job to make this trip possible. Trip! Ha what a shallow word. One syllable is way too short. Has to go. Does not compute. Inadequate for this lifelong dream of mine. I like the aussie term â€œwalk-aboutâ€. Itâ€™s from the Australian outback meaning a journey to find oneself similar to a rite of passage.

Well da plane is about to land and the 3^rd in flight movie has ended. Looking at the crap fold down in flight movie screen I can see that the dude got the chick and are riding on horses in the setting sun. No joke. How classic eh? I donâ€™t even know the title of the film. I didnâ€™t really watch so it does not really matter. Total chick flick me thinks. Speaking of chicks leaning on my left shoulder I can see that Beckyâ€™s drool is slowing down. What an angel. Soon I shall wake her by removing my shoulder. I just ate a yummy buttermilk biscuit and orange juice that the flight attendants are serving for ummm I guess breakfast.. It tasted like a donut. I am so tried. I think I am writing nonsense. I am ready for Spain and the world largest food fight La Tomatina.

Somewhere crossing the Atlantic

Becky — Tue, 29 Aug 2006 07:10:37 +0000

I am always amazed at how cold it is above the clouds at 36,000ft. I mean I understand the physics, don’t get me wrong. But, what I don’t understand is how the airline industry keeps the heat so darned low on these flights. Is it an effort to save money? I would gladly give up my meal and pop if it means I don’t have to shiver. At the moment, I am wearing long pants, socks, a short sleeve top, a fleece hoodie (and the hoodie is on my head thank you very much) and an overcoat of fleece that is water and wind resistant! Oh yes, and on top of that I have added a very thin airline blanket to my lap that was on my seat when I arrived. Yet despite all these maneuvers, I am wishing very hard for a thicker blanket right now and perhaps some gloves so that when I touch my boyfriend he doesn’t scream the word “COLD”. I suppose though that I should be thankful. At least in the plane it is a hell of a lot warmer than in the terminal where after awhile my appendages were numb and my lips turned blue. I guess I just need to be more positive. Maybe numb is something I can live with, as long as I don’t have to touch anyone?

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Donde Esta Tickets!!!

Chris — Tue, 29 Aug 2006 06:00:00 +0000

Who forgets their plane tickets for a three month trip overseas? Who??? Come on take a guess. Itâ€™s like some comedy scene in a movie.

We are all ready on the road the house is abandoned and locked up tight with the keys given away. Then one moment driving away in the car it hit. BAM!!! Like the 10 ton ACME weight falling down on Wild E. Coyote. Twice. Donde esta the bleepâ€™n TICKETs. Itâ€™s laughable. Hahah. Really it was not so bad. I mean we knew only 10 minutes away from the house and we called the Beckyâ€™s friends near midnight with house keys sayingâ€¦â€ummm we forgot the ticketsâ€ and Scotts response in the most deadpan tired disbelief voice said slowly â€œyou forgot your tickets?….pauseâ€¦.all righty then we shall be over with the keysâ€. Good friends are the one that donâ€™t tease at a moment of crisis, I am sure it will come later. On top of all that Becky could not speak since she lost her voice and sounded like a squeaky downed rat not to mentioned she has been stress for the past 8 hours or so getting ready.

So how you forgot them you ask? Itâ€™s simple really. The international tickets are real physical paper tickets not your typical tickets. They are on the little table next to the door in a bright red envelope. I asked Becky a few times while getting ready did she have the tickets and she said yes. I asked â€œthe paper ticketsâ€. She said yep. Then finally in the car near midnight on the way to the airport I asked to see the tickets and Becky pulled out some random email she printed. I am like oh my gosh we didnâ€™t just forget the tickets. We did. The funny thing was on the email it stated they were â€œpaperâ€ tickets not e-tickets. Silly girl. I love her.

Tickets? We don’t need no stinkin’ tickets!

Becky — Mon, 28 Aug 2006 07:00:00 +0000

The first time I heard that we had paper tickets for our flight to Barcelona was about 20 minutes after we left for the airport. It was near midnight. The house was locked up tight and the security system was armed. This may not seem like a problem until you realize that I had assumed that the tickets were paperless and had printed what I thought was a boarding pass from off the Internet. It wasn’t until my boyfriend asked about the tickets in the car that we realized that we were quickly going to have to turn around and have to break into my house. He swears he told me when the tickets arrived in the mail, I rejected that notion. He of course blamed me for my semi-ADD inattention, and I of course blamed him for not telling me and hiding them. I think he won though, cause I had laryngitis and could not yell. Thank God for a great friend who got up at after midnight to drive over a spare key, and Chris’s great sister-in-law who surprisingly took it all well even though it added about 40 extra minutes to her airport drop off journey (which was already going to take about 3 hours – eek). She secretly did not hold it against me though because she knew that it was all Chris’s fault! Apparently she has seen what he is capable of in these situations. He is the type that my father would say that “he would forget his head if it wasn’t screwed on so tight”. OK, maybe that was a bit bad. Bad Becky! Very bad Becky! In the end did it really matter? Nah. We still got little sleep and were frantic to the very end packing, but at least I figured that out they still make paper tickets and that boyfriends are good at hiding them, before standing in line at the U.S. Airways ticket counter at 4 A.M. and being denied a flight.

Plastic clothes

Becky — Thu, 24 Aug 2006 22:04:30 +0000

There are more preparations that have gone into this trip than you can imagine. But, one of the most frustrating to my hips and thighs have been “travel clothes”. Travel clothes come in various colors but are usually shapeless. The have belts attached to them that snap closed and sometimes have velcro instead of buttons. Some have detachable legs and others have an SPF rating. One of the things they hold universal though is the wrinkle-free/quick-dry plastic feel. Hence the title “plastic clothes”. They are the type of things that would make you nervous if you were wearing them and got too close to a fire, fearing they could melt to your skin. They are made more of synthetic materials than natural. My friend in Tucson recently told me after shopping with me for this trip that only lesbians wear plastic travel clothes. Now before you all get riled up, she has nothing against lesbians and neither do I (as I have friends who are), and although I am not exactly sure what she meant, I interpreted it to mean that perhaps she thinks this apparel looks like lesbian-wear simply beacuse lesbians are smarter than she and I and like to wear comfortable clothes! (Plug to our lesbian friends!) Despite being very comfortable and stretchy though, my problem is that plastic clothes hang wrong and they bunch up and they make my hips and ass look 5 times their natural size. They also make travelers who wear them all look the same and I am sure stand out like zebras. So, am I the only one with this problem? Are there other full-figured woman out there proudly wearing their plastic clothes? If so, perhaps they are more carefree and full of self-esteem. I then will try to strive for that ideal. I will lace up my Merrell’s, slip on my REI quick drip shirt, zip up my Columbia vest, and velcro and latch my Cabella’s skirt and face this European trip with my eyes wide open!!! (Just as long as I don’t have to look at pictures of my hips or ass in the mean time!)

Oh the Places You Will Go!

Becky — Tue, 30 Nov 1999 07:00:00 +0000

So you quit your job, now what? Well, if you are similar to my Boyfriend, Chris, and I, you say â€œscrew-itâ€ and decide to travel the world. Sound exciting, yep! Sound scary â€“ yep! But you still have to do it or else the next thing you know you will be old and grey and kicking yourself in the ass with regrets. So with the whole world out there, where do you go? Well there were several major factors to consider. One of the biggest was that I had never really done this before and didnâ€™t know if I could mentally do a trip this long. Another important factor was the fact that I hate cold weather. So after much debating, we chose Europe. We plan to hit northern Europe first and then head south, trying to stay in the 60-80 degree Fahrenheit range. It seems a good place to get my traveling â€œlegsâ€ wet and not have to go through as much culture shock. We shall see. Ask me if it was the right choice in December. If it was, and we donâ€™t go broke in Europe, then we will be planning for the next leg of our trip to Australia, New Zealand and Southeast Asia. Yippie!!! Let the planning, reading, researching, going freakinâ€™ crazy etc. begin!