Travel

He has been very busy workwise over the summer. He had a job which meant that he was away quite a bit and in a six week period he visited Colombia, USA, Canada, South Africa and Kenya. Whilst in the USA he visited nine different places and crisscrossed the country. He flew on several different airlines and in every class of travel; economy, premium economy, business and even first! He seemed to really enjoy it although he was very tired and said he’d seen enough airports to last him a while. He’s found a clever site on the internet thingy which will plot his travels. I’ve had a sneak look at it and I found out that this year he has made 25 flights, covered a total of 41,500 miles, spent 92 hours in the air and his carbon footprint has produced over 8 tonnes of CO2 and, worryingly, 0.45kg of methane!

He’s told me some stories. When he arrived in Colombia he noticed that the taxi driver from the airport kept crossing himself at every road junction. The traffic was horrendous and the next day he saw firsthand how dangerous it was when the taxi he was in ran into a motor cyclist knocking him off is bike. Fortunately nobody was hurt and it seemed to be just an everyday occurrence in Bogota.

He had a day off in California one weekend. He was staying in Burbank which is quite pleasant as it has a small pedestrian friendly city centre which is nice to walk in – quite unusual for the US. He spent his day off going to Universal Studios California which was close by where he enjoyed, on his own, lots of great rides, back lot tours of the studios and the like. He seemed to have a good time!

There was one particular event which he told me about which made me chuckle. He was travelling from Fort Lauderdale to Phoenix and whilst waiting at FLL airport he went to the “men’s room”, came out of the cubicle and noticed a man wearing a ladies camisole top, high heels and a blue thong. He felt slightly uneasy as he followed this man out into the main concourse and walked behind him thinking I bet this guy is on my flight. Well guess what? He was!

Here’s a picture of the man in question;

Now the serious question is, would someone (male or female) have been allowed to board an aircraft dressed like this in Europe? I wonder. Indeed only the week before a young man in California had been denied boarding to a US Airways flight (the same airline) because his sagging trousers revealed his Boxer Shorts and this was deemed inappropriate attire. There seems to be a case of double standards here. The general feeling amongst other passengers was, after an initial laugh, that this overstepped the mark and he was probably doing it for a bet but a quick internet search shows that he is a regular traveller in similar attire. The airline is reported a saying that they don’t have a dress code as such so what’s the difference; well in one case the passenger was a white mature male travelling in First and in the other it was a black youth travelling in coach/economy. Maybe we should draw our own conclusions. Glad I wasn’t there – I wouldn’t have wanted to be thrown off for the bear faced wearing of a fur coat!

Following the American trip He also went to South Africa and Kenya before going back to the USA and Canada. Busy boy!