Yes, we have many fond travel memories. You are going to read about every damned one of them. Also, we may decide to make you look at the color slides we took of our trip to the Virgin Islands, featuring nearly two dozen shots of the airplane wing alone.
But mostly this book is intended to help you, the modern traveler, plan and carry out your business and vacation travel adventures with a minimum of unpleasantness and death. Throughout this effort, we will try to remember the famous thirteenth century tourist Marco Polo, who, having managed against all odds and with great effort to cross Persia, the plateau of the Pamir, the forbidden regions of Kashgar, Yarkand, and Khotan, and the Gobi Desert, finally arrived at the legendary Kublai Khan’s palace at Shang-tu, where he uttered the words that have served as an inspiration for travelers ever since: “What do you mean, you don’t have my reservation?”
Chapter One. Planning Your “Trip To Paradise,” Or Possibly Beirut
Planning is a very important part of travel. Just ask Amelia Earhart, the famous woman aviatrix (“Aviatrix” means “deceased person”) who in 1937
attempted to fly around the world in a twin-engine Lockheed and disappeared somewhere in the South Pacific and was never heard from again. This kind of thing can really put a damper on your vacation, yet it can easily be prevented if you do a little advance research by asking some basic travel questions, such as:
1. Will you be flying on a twin-engine Lock—heed?
2. Will you ever be heard from again?
3. Will there be meal service?
Oh, I realize that not everybody likes to plan every step of a vacation. Some people would rather just grab a backpack and a sleeping bag, stick out their thumbs and start hitchhiking down the highway, enjoying the fun and adventure of not knowing “what’s around the bend.” Most of these people are dead within hours. So planning is definitely the way to go.