That’s it: I’m flyin’ outta here!

My best way out was by plane, and I’m glad I did that.

I have had five travel experiences during which I arrived by either car, train, bus, or boat, and had intended to make the return journey the same way. But circumstances in each case led me to determine that my best way out of each situation was by plane.

Alaska Highway, Whitehorse to Fairbanks, 1974

During the 1973–1974 school year, having just completed my fourth year of teaching, I decided to take a leave of absence without pay so that I could hitchhike around North America to visit all my friends and family members who had moved around the country.

Shortly after I embarked on the journey, I got it in my head that in the process, I would visit not only every state, but every state capital city, and not only every state capital city but every state capitol.

Towards the end of the journey, with only two states to go (Alaska and Nevada), I was hitchhiking on the Alaska Highway, destination: Fairbanks, which seemed attainable. Attainable, that is, until I reached Whitehorse, the capital of Canada’s Yukon Territory. The talk of the town was the discouraging news that a bridge along the road, between Whitehorse and Fairbanks, had been washed out, thus stopping all traffic in both directions for an indeterminate amount of time.

It was late July of the second summer for this adventure. I was aware that each day brought me closer to the need to wrap up this journey so that I could make my way home to resume teaching for the impending new school year.

How could I manage to achieve my goal of getting to Alaska, my penultimate state? The only way out was to see if there was a way to fly over the problem, and that is exactly what I did, by finding a plane that was scheduled to fly the exact route that I needed. I was one of the lucky ones, in that I didn’t have a car laden with camping equipment so that streamlined the process for me.

I don’t remember many of the details - only that the flight cost about $100, which was a lot of money at the time. But I felt that I had no choice, and I was happy to have a solution.

Madrid to Barcelona, 1986

On my first visit to continental Europe, I spent approximately five weeks in France and five in Spain. I spent three of my five weeks in Spain in Barcelona, where I enrolled in a Spanish language school to improve upon the only Spanish instruction that I had had to date: entry-level Spanish during the fall semester of my freshman year of college, in 1965.

I not only loved Barcelona, but after the pace of my previous two weeks in France, making frequent moves from Paris in the direction of the Spanish border, it felt luxurious to be in one place for such a long period of time.

With two weeks to go after the Spanish classes were over in Barcelona, I decided to spend most of my remaining time in Madrid and in the towns that made a wide circle around it (Toledo, La Granja, Segovia, El Escorial). I took what was then the most logical route to get from Barcelona to Madrid: the train.

Since that time, train service in Spain has improved tremendously. In fact, nowadays, it is possible to make this journey within two and a half to three and a quarter hours, depending on the train.

At the time, however, this trajectory was painfully slow. The trip took eight tedious, long, frustratingly slow hours. When I arrived in Madrid, I began looking around for an alternative. When I walked into an Iberia Airlines office in downtown Madrid, I decided to book a ticket.

This flight exposed me to an experience that still has me scratching my head. In those days, smoking on planes was still allowed. Whereas most airlines delineated the smoking from non-smoking sections at some point between the front and back of the plane, Iberia had an approach that made no sense to me: the center aisle, from fore to aft, was the line of demarcation for these two sections.

Now that I have returned to Spain several times and have observed the way that smoking is enshrined as a fundamental human right, I can see how that came to pass.

In any event, the flight was mercifully short, and I was, therefore, able to avoid the treacherous train trip back to Barcelona.

Jersey, Guernsey, and a return to France, 2002

On one of my trips to France, I got it in my head while looking at a map that I might as well venture into the English Channel so that I could take a firsthand look at the British islands of Jersey and Guernsey. It looked easy and straightforward enough.

The way that it worked was that there were many passenger ships sailing from Saint-Malo in Brittany, to various locations that included Jersey, Guernsey, and several ports on the British mainland.

Since I wanted to see both Jersey and Guernsey, I would need to purchase three tickets: Saint-Malo to Jersey, Jersey to Guernsey, and Guernsey to Saint-Malo with a stop en route in Jersey.

Though the first boat ride began well once we left Saint-Malo, we weren’t more than halfway to Jersey when we hit turbulent waters that sent everyone scrambling for motion sickness bags.

I had been on a few boats where other people got sick, but in all these previous instances, I was fine. I wouldn’t say that I considered myself to be immune from motion sickness, but up to that point, I had managed to avoid it.

This trip became an exception. I have a pretty strong constitution since I have rarely been ill, except for the occasional cold, flu, and a few unpleasant bouts with food poisoning. But I can say that in my 55 years (at the time), that was the absolute sickest feeling that I had ever experienced. I can remember more than I would like to about these moments, but I am going to do you the favor of sparing you the details. I was sad to have lost the delicious breakfast that had once made its home in my stomach.

I stayed in a wonderful bed and breakfast in Jersey. On the morning of my departure for Guernsey, while eating breakfast, I wondered for a few moments if it was wise for me to be filling my stomach before venturing again onto a boat.

Oh, well, I may as well have that full English breakfast. After all, what are the odds that I would get seasick a second time?

As it turned out, the odds were quite good. In fact, they were 100%! Another good breakfast gone to waste!

No doubt about it: I would need to find another means to leave Guernsey!

As the passengers of the ship disembarked, we were not even off of the dock when I spotted the small office of a local travel agency. Ordinarily, I may have made a note of its existence so that I could make a return visit at a later time. But this time, NO. I entered straightaway and asked if there were any flights out of Guernsey to get me back to France.

As luck would have it, the answer was yes. A small airline called Aurigny had flights to Dinard, not too far south of Saint-Malo. I pulled out the plastic without so much as asking how much the flight cost.

I spent a few enjoyable days in Guernsey, which included seeing its most famous tourist attraction: the home where Victor Hugo had spent some time when he was forced into exile for opposing the regime of Napoleon III.

My Channel Islands time over, I was not only ready to head back to France, but delighted that I didn’t have to board a boat in order to do that.

So, there you go: three times when I opted to switch from my original mode of transport — once by car, once by train, and once by boat — so that I could make a getaway by plane.

I’d certainly be curious to know if anyone who reads this has found themselves in a similar situation.

Pokhara to Kathmandu, 2006

There is a variety of bus lines that ply the road between Kathmandu and Pokhara. One could travel on a standard bus taken by the Nepalis, making lots of stops and taking more than eight hours, or go in relative comfort, gaining the advantage of added speed. I opted for the comfort and speed, which meant the Green Line Bus, “fully air conditioned,” with “snack and lunch included.”

Our departure was fairly prompt, only ten minutes later than the 7:30 AM scheduled time. I had purchased my round-trip tickets at the front desk of my hotel, which saved me a trip to the bus station itself and also had the advantage of adding the price to my hotel bill which I was planning to pay with my credit card.

We got into a monumental log jam as we were heading out of town. The flow of traffic in our direction was light, but our passage was made difficult because oncoming traffic was so heavy that drivers started to use our lane to pass each other, which meant that they were parked two abreast on this narrow two-lane road, thus impeding our progress.

Once out of town, though, we were able to move more quickly — not that that was enjoyable. While the road was fairly smooth, the ride was extremely bumpy. I don’t know much about vehicle construction, but I am guessing that the bus’s shock absorbers were kaput, which resulted in my being shot up out of my seat on several occasions. The driver employed a method of speeding up and slamming on his brakes, which propelled me forward. Somehow — inexplicably — several passengers were able to sleep through all the shake, rattle, and roll.

The “snack” was a bottle of water. We had one short break for tea shortly before 10:00. Just before noon, there was a half-hour break for a tasty buffet lunch at an attractive resort. After lunch I had to endure an additional two and a half hours as a human pinball. I not only wanted to get off the bus, but I dreaded the thought of a return to Kathmandu on it — or one like it. We arrived in Pokhara just before 15:00.

The morning after my arrival, I headed onto the main commercial street to have breakfast and to find out about flights to Kathmandu. There was no sense in spending six and a half hours in the torture of rattling around in a bus when I could take the flight and be back in half an hour — hang the cost! I found that wherever I went, all the flights (of the three different airlines) were quoted as costing the same amount. Paying with a credit card incurred a service charge, but I happily paid the $77 in order to avoid a repeat performance of the bus ride.

Off I went on Wednesday, back to Kathmandu.

The airplane was a rather small one — just eighteen seats for passengers, only half of which were full. It was impossible to sit over the wings since they were positioned above the windows. Once we took off, the flight attendant made one short trip down the aisle, offering water, candies, and cotton balls which were to serve as much-needed earplugs, as insulation against the noise. The flight lasted only thirty minutes, and I got to see some gorgeous scenery of hilltops, villages, and terraced farming.

It was well worth it.

Nyaung U to Yangon, 2008

The bus ride from Mandalay to Nyaung U (Myanmar), the modern town outside of the Bagan temple area, was supposed to last eight hours.

As I sat on the bus, in the second row, on the aisle, a woman to my left, in the window seat, began a loud conversation with the woman to my right on the other side of the aisle. If they were going to do that for the entire trip, I would have gone nuts, being in the middle. I offered my seat to the woman on my right.

A bit later on, once we got moving, I looked towards the rear of the bus and noticed that the last several rows were empty. I moved to the back row in the center, with the aisle for stretching out my legs. The seats on the bus were assigned, but if we were going to pick up passengers en route, they would not have assigned seats.

The extra on the bus popped a DVD into the player, much to the delight of the Burmese on the bus. It was Burmese music videos played too loudly. Thank goodness I had the earplugs that my friend Hester gave me! I could still hear the music, but at least it didn’t hurt my ears.

About halfway into the trip, the air vents on the right of the bus started leaking. It’s a good thing nobody was in the area next to me, or s/he would have gotten wet.

The second half of the trip was on a bumpy unpaved road. I was being thrown around the back in a manner unlike I had ever been on a bus before. To say it was uncomfortable is an understatement. I was also feeling the onset of being ill.

By the time I checked into the hotel I was really feeling sick. While I was checking in, the owner asked me where I would be going next. I told him that I wanted to take the night train to Yangon on Thursday. His response was not something that I wanted to hear: “Train is finished.” He informed me that in order to get to Yangon, I would have to take a bus for twelve or thirteen hours to Bago, and then get on another bus for two or three hours to Yangon. Under the best of circumstances this is not a happy proposition, and I knew that I would be feeling better by the time I was going to Yangon, but I wanted to find another way to get there!

I asked about the cost of flying from there to Yangon and found that the fare is $85 and there is no place that accepts credit cards. I had the cash, but if I spent it, I wouldn’t have any cash in Yangon. But the guidebook and word of mouth were helpful in that there is a way to book a room in Yangon via the Internet, even if hotels didn’t take plastic directly. This freed up some cash. There are also hotels in Yangon, I had heard, that gave cash advances on credit cards, for a fee of eight to ten per cent.

These hotels are of the more expensive variety, but “more expensive” is a relative term in this case. In Mandalay my room was $8 a night and here in Nyaung U it is $6 a night. So I was going to be livin’ large at $30 a night!

With that knowledge, I took a calculated risk and laid down $85 in cash for a plane ticket. I had spent more to get out of some places! I then had enough cash now to pay my hotel bill and other expenses, so would be all right once I got to Yangon and replenished that supply.

[Funny note: the three-letter airport designation for Nyaung U is NYU. This place is about as far away from NYU as one could get.]

Everything went smoothly for the flight today. At the airports here, they herd together passengers who are on the same flight. They also keep track of us with color-coded stickers that we are supposed to wear on our clothing; if you and another person have the same sticker, you are on the same flight.

The flight was supposed to leave at 8:40, but left twenty minutes early.