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Travel by the numbers

March 28, 2008 By Travel

Traffic at YVR

Today I was scheduled to make a short flight from Vancouver to Nanaimo. It is early spring here on the southwest Pacific coast of Canada, which means blossoming trees, fresh spring flowers and, to everyone’s surprise, a blizzard in Nanaimo, which meant my flight was cancelled. So I high tailed it out to Horseshoe Bay and jumped n the new Coastal Rennaissance ferry and headed to Vancouver Island by slow boat. Revelling in my new found free time, and fresh from adding up the contents of my suitcase, I decided to crunch the numbers and see what my travel schedule has really been like. Here it is:

  • Number of days from January 1 to March 31: 91
  • Number of those nights I spent in my own bed: 28
  • Days in which I did nothing at all related to work: 25
  • Number of those days that were in Maui starting New Year’s Day:10
  • Number of flight segments: 25
  • Number of airlines travelled: 4
  • Number of train rides from Vancouver to Seattle: 3
  • Number of cars rented: 0
  • Number of flights cancelled for snow: 3
  • Days of work missed as a result: 1
  • Temperature with windchill in Celsius that Regina experienced on that day: -56
  • Number of flights taken from Vancouver to Toronto: 2
  • Percentage of those flights on which the on board computer needed rebooting before we could leave: 100%
  • Number of US Border crossings: 6
  • Number of US Customs and Border Protection officers encountered: 10
  • Number who wished me well, thanked me, welcomed me or said nice things: 2
  • Number who admitted me to the United States without a single word exchanged between us: 1
  • Number of clients: 14
  • Trips in which I worked with three or more clients in person without going home: 3
  • Trips during which my family came with me: 3
  • Meals which I have cooked for my family: 3
  • Weeks in a row I am taking off from work between June and September: 10
  • Consecutive days I get to spend in my own bed starting Sunday: 15

That last stat: luxury.
The funnest moment, by a long way, was surprising my father on his 70th birthday. We flew to Ontario, drove with my mother through a raging blizzard for three hours, arrived at my parent’s house as my dad was going to sleep, and crept up the stairs singing “Happy Birthday.” The look on his face was beautiful, have asleep and full of love and delight. Nothing compares.