January 22, 2019 In It For The Long Haul

The Liberty Gazette

January 22, 2019

Ely Air Lines
By Mike Ely and Linda Street-Ely

Mike: Lately, we have made some pretty long trips. Iceland, Southeast Asia, the Balkan states of former Yugoslavia on the east side of the Adriatic. And we just returned from a journey to Germany, Austria, Switzerland and Liechtenstein. The method Linda uses to find tickets at a reasonable price has served us well. Through our travels, we have discovered a few things.

We get up and move about the cabin. We stretch. We lift and lower on our tip-toes. We keep the blood flowing. On long hauls, the flight attendants generally finish up their service duties a couple hours after take-off. That leaves a whole lot of time to get up from our seats and take advantage of open space. Some people do push-ups or full yoga routines in the areas between lavatory and galley or where ever there’s room. Most everyone else sleeps while we exercise to avoid deep vein thrombosis.

Here’s another thing: We wonder why nobody wants to look outside. Day or night, nearly all the shades are closed. We cannot understand this strange phenomenon. Part of the enjoyment of flying is the unique views. On forays to far-off lands, the departures from here are usually during daylight. Flying into the night affords unprecedented views of the heavens, the Aurora Borealis over the poles, and lights the shapes of cities far below. Why not compare the map of where you are with a visual sighting of something on the ground and learn a bit about the land?

Regarding food, some airlines, no matter how much notice you give them, will never get your special diet request right. Carry extra food just in case. In our experience, Asia-based airlines have an incredible level of service and get it right every time. Our longest flight to date was on Eva Air from Bush Intercontinental to Taipei’s “Hello Kitty” airport lasting nearly sixteen and a half hours. Even with a full aircraft, the crew treated us exceptionally well. They not only got our vegan meals right, they had vegan snacks too.

But with the globetrotting capabilities of today’s airliners, it might be best to break things up. Iceland Air offers several days’ stop-over in Iceland on jaunts to Europe at no additional cost. For Far East excursions, Anchorage is a good mid-trip pause. If you have an early morning departure, places such as the Hilton Hotel inside Munich’s terminal make life easier. Staying the night before allowed us to saunter down to the boarding gate without dealing with traffic in a foreign country or dropping off the rental car.

And for clearing customs, there is mobilepassport, the smartphone app that has allowed us to stand in a short, twenty-person-deep line instead of with the hundreds stuck in the one that snakes left and right.

As we travel, we learn more. Then we take that and use it on the next junket to feed our inner gypsy, because we’re in it for the long haul.

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