The Long and Short of It

Everything is relative. Many people consider a nine or ten hour flight to be long haul. That's because they've never been on an 18 to 24 hour flight. And these days you're worn out just getting through security. While I always look forward to the trip, I can't say I look forward to the flight. Even on those rare occasions when I've flown business class it's not that much more comfortable. You have more leg room, but my legs aren't so long that it benefits me much. First class is more comfortable because you can put your feet up. I just can't bring myself to pay that much for the privilege. However, it is important to try to move around enough to avoid blood clots and in my case, to prevent my feet from swelling up so much I can't get my shoes back on.

I can manage the swelling if I wear these ridiculously horrible (and expensive) compression stockings. Without rehearsing a litany of why these are horrible, starting with ugly, let's just say I don't want to wear them. The other way to control the swelling is walking. But what I've found is that when you're on a plane, you can walk up and down the aisle only so many times. Some people go to sleep with their legs in the aisle. This is harder to spot when the lights are "out" for the night, not to mention the aisles are barely wide enough for those food and beverage carts. (The flight attendants are always banging them into seats.) Power walking is out of the question.

 It's a challenge. But we tried something new this trip. We split the trip up. We drove to Austin and spent the night. Left the car at the hotel and took their shuttle to the airport the following morning. Then we flew to New York. We had to change planes but we had a couple of hours to change terminals and get something to eat. This involved walking! Then we flew on to Dublin where we had about five hours before the flight to Manchester. We checked our bags and went to the museum at the General Post Office. (Museums are great on rainy days!) Again, more walking. Coming home was much the same, we flew from Dublin to Washington D.C. We didn't really have time to eat dinner before the flight back to Austin but we did have some walking to do to get to the right terminal. It was a bit different because we cleared US customs in Dublin - which is kind of like going through security twice, but it did mean that our bags could be checked all the way to Austin. As I understand it, Dublin is the only European airport that does this, so it may not be so convenient if we're flying in from London or Rome. This arrangement did make for longer travel time. (Except that if we'd traveled into London, we'd have spent the entire day driving to Manchester and still wouldn't have arrived as early as we did by spending several hours in Dublin and flying to Manchester.) It didn't seem to make a great deal of difference on the way home. We left Dublin around noon and got into Austin around 8:30 pm. But again, we cleared customs before we ever boarded the plane and did not have to go through that process again in DC. So the time we'd have spent claiming baggage and clearing customs was spent flying instead.

In the past we always opted for the direct flight. After all, every time you change planes, you give the airline another opportunity to lose your luggage. Flying direct is faster overall, but I think good health may be more important than speed. I'm going to compare this method of splitting up the travel to taking the scenic route. The good news is that neither of us felt completely exhausted during this trip even though it took a bit longer and my feet did not swell.

We'll have to try it again to be sure. I'm not certain it saves any money. I think it can save on the number of air miles we need for a free ticket. We just need to be selective about the stopover airports. We tried it several years ago through Chicago and will never do that again. The flight from Chicago was not appreciably shorter than the flight from Dallas. Same thing for Houston - saves you no time but costs you a hotel room and dinner. (The flights to New York, and Washington DC pretty much divide the trip in half.) Normally I don't like to have a stopover in New York or anywhere in the northeast in February. Too many things can go wrong with the weather. On the other hand, they are accustomed to dealing with it and if it's bad enough to shut down the airport, then we'll have an adventure. We are no longer in a hurry to get anywhere.