Personal Milestone

On a trip a few years ago my daughter asked how many times I had been to Europe. I wasn’t sure. When we returned home, I got out my old calendars and expired passports and tried to chronicle all my trips. Counting domestics trips and those to Canada, Mexico and the Caribbean was impossible. I focused on Europe, Asia and South America.

I’m writing this aboard an American Airlines flight from London, bound for home, CLT. If my accounting is accurate, and I will admit it may be off by at most one, I am about to complete my one hundredth trip across the Atlantic! That sounds like a lot to me, way beyond what I might have imagined on my first flight over was when I was twenty-four, forty-five years ago. That means I had to average more than two trips to Europe per year since. There may have been a year when I didn’t go at all, but I can’t remember it. There were many years during my business career working with German and Swiss companies when I went three or four or even five times in a year.

One of those crossings was by ship, the Queen Elizabeth II. That was with our whole family and was glorious fun. One was on a private jet. Two of the flights were on the Concorde. It’s amazing to me that we could once fly at twice the speed of sound, going from New York to London in 3 hours, yet now we can’t. Can technological progress be reversed? Only by economics. It’s no wonder to me that I remain fascinated by the Concorde, so much so that I featured it in one of my novels.

In the early years of my travels, there was some glamor, even fun to the flying. It was mostly done in first class in those days. We dressed—coats and ties—to fly. The meals were extravagant affairs, with caviar and champagne, served on china and drunk from crystal. Actual celebrities might be sitting beside you. Those days are gone. Now the flying is just the getting there, something that must be endured. I miss those days when the journey--not just the destination--itself was something to get excited about.

So many memories of these trips. Awesome places seen. Amazing people met. Wonderful friendships formed. Unforgettable experiences shared with loved ones. I’m so looking forward to the next one hundred!