12/26/07

Thoughts \ Developed Thoughts \ Rants \ Raves \ Writing

23/12/2007 05:40:04 -0600 GMT

Travel, 2008

This morning I spent over six hours searching the internet for the best price for travel to an from Zambia. From an alarming price of $8,800 on British Airways, I arrived at a concluding price of $2,221, also on British Airways. I used Travelocity, and BA. I considered Air France and Lufthansa and South African Airways and Royal Dutch Airlines. I checked out Orbitz. I saw prices for airlines originating in the United States, like Delta and United, but I disregarded them - they sell an inferior air travel product. I looked at Priceline, and even sent a few "Name Your Own Price" requests for ridiculous amounts - $199.99 per round-trip ticket to London, where the taxes are greater than the price of the fare. (The best they could do was not good enough, and the uncertain possibility of being placed on a Delta flight instead of a British Airways flight was enough for me to decline Priceline's best offer.)

In the end, British Airways won out, and I'm glad.

There are caveats:

It used to be that I could travel for $1,200 for the same routes. It used to be that bags could weigh 70 Lbs each. It used to be that if I said I was traveling for the purposes of AIDS work, BA would waive the fees for excess baggage. I've carried up to twelve trunks with me on this same route. There's something fun about the struggles that come with that excess baggage, a phrase that puts a smile on my face as I think of it's literal and symbolic implications.

It all changed after September 11th, 2001.

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My wanderlust will be sated with this trip. Every two years, I need to get out of my comfortable environment and see a slice of the world. I don't know if it's an addiction or a compulsion or the character of a stray who constantly seeks a new home. The demands of my calling bring me to a home away from home. Over the last ten years Lusaka has become as comfortable to me as any place on the planet. Rival locations would be Laguna Beach, and surrounding parts of the O.C., Paris, and to a lesser extent, London. I guess Birmingham and Boston would also be on that list, but both still have a slightly foreign feel. That is less true for Boston than for Birmingham.

Berkeley breathed and made me feel at home. I can't say that I know S.F., but it is a beautiful city. Seattle reminds me of it, but S.F. is better.

Atlanta, despite my several excursions there, leaves me lost.

Cairo lost me and kept me there, but it was worth it just to see the majesty of the Pyramids.

In Delhi I was guided by others, free to observe without responsibility.

Montreal...a lovely city, and foreign, in the best sense of that meaning. Quebec...Edmonton...two other guided tours.

It's interesting that places I've walked alone are the places that are most comforting to me. Cape Town comes to mind, with it's beautiful Three 1/2 Beach, reminded me so much of Laguna.

Rome Rocks; New York is a memory of traffic and swaying Twin Towers nearly 25 years ago.

Venezia and Praha are fraternal twins in my memory banks - romantic, vibrant, and associated with at least two past lives.

There's Nice and Tijuana and Cabo and Dallas and Houston and Salt Lake City. There's Portland and Providence, Chicago and Cincinnati and Costa Mesa, Newport Beach and Monarch Beach, Dana Point and San Juan Capistrano, Laguna Niguel, Mission Viejo, El Toro, San Clemente, and parts unnamed.

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I didn't mean for this to become a city listing.

I have never before felt the oncoming transition that I feel now, from wealth to poverty. I have undertaken an enormously expensive proposition in order to make this transition. That is true both in the short term, as evidenced by laying out $2,500 in advance of my current travel as well as in the long term, by committing well over $150,000 for my medical education and concomitant living expenses. This calling to help those who I have seen fighting the enormous struggle against AIDS and poverty is a powerful mistress. 

She calls me in the night, on my fancy cellular phone, and weeps into the speaker, wondering if I hear her.

I do.

So what, in my leisure time before three months of emotionally expensive clinical rotations in Zambia, will I do? My first thought was of Amsterdam. There's a "Rail and Sail" option, where I can go from London to Amsterdam, in the wintry off-season and see the second city of canals where I have never been. The luggage and the transfers between Gatwick, London, and Heathrow make it a complicated idea.

My second idea is to see how The Chunnel is. London to Paris in under three hours. Comfort zone to comfort zone, and there is a Left Luggage office in London.