The U.S. air industry might not see the massive delays we are all fearing under sequestration, experts say.

Pack your patience — the sequester appears to be a reality.

Across-the-board spending cuts impacting almost every corner of the federal government will almost inevitably kick in on March 1, and the U.S. air travel system won’t get a reprieve. As every federal agency cries uncle over the cuts, some have even sounded the alarm. Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood last week painted a dismal picture of how air travel will be affected, warning of long delays, canceled flights and shuttered control towers.

“Flights to major cities like New York, Chicago and San Francisco and others could experience delays of up to 90 minutes during peak hours,” he said in comments to reporters at the White House. “Delays in these major airports will ripple across the country.”

For many of us, hour-long delays have become the norm over the past five or 10 years, but LaHood’s aim was clear: Stoke passenger panic about massive systemic problems to try and convince Congress to realign the some $85 billion in cuts set to kick in this week.

But how bad will the worst reality be for U.S. air travel? Should you cancel your travel plans or hold off on buying tickets for that big trip based on the unknown?

According to one travel expert, it’s way too soon to tell how dire the situation might become. He also indicated that it’s way too soon to panic.

“The situation is a bit confusing right now, especially because it’s so politically charged,” said Tom Meyers, founder of EuropCheapo.com, a website that reviews hotels in Europe for the discerning, and budget-conscious, traveler.

“While the cuts could mean that 10% of air traffic controllers would be furloughed and 100 control towers could be closed, others argue that those towers should have already been closed and that we have too many air traffic controllers in the first place,” he told OTR.

Meyers echoed what other travel experts say: The cuts, set to kick in early March, won’t show their bite until later in the month or even the spring. “By then, we’ll certainly know a lot more,” he said.

So don’t let your hopes of a great spring break be dashed by partisan politics or budget wrangling. Even top lawmakers suspect that the severe cuts will be rolled back after reality kicks in.

“Hopefully, by the end of March, people will see the light and understand that we’re not standing for this,” House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif said Thursday.

Meyers also pointed out that worst-case furloughs and layoffs will also come with a 30 day notice, giving travelers a chance to amend plans. Price spikes linked to sequestration should not happen right away, if at all.

The severe cuts actually have a silver lining, as well. Just like taking a hit to your income, the sequestration might also help us rethink how we travel on limited time and limited resources.

Vice President Biden, always a fan of Amtrak, said he was now going to forgo the military flights he’d gotten used to taking from Washington back to his home state of Delaware.

“I was able to say, ‘Look guys, I’ve got to take the train now — it’s cheaper than flying.’ So I get to take the train again,” Biden said.

Cool.

-VC

There are loads of places I’m sheepish about never having visited. You’ve heard me bemoan these gaps in my map all over this blog. New Orleans (!), Mexico (!!), Montana (yes,). But there’s one place–a place so vast, so significant and well, (despite my fear of ever using this word to describe people, places or things) important–that it is more than a “gap”, it’s a deficiency.

I have never been to Asia. Any part of it. I have Asia Deficiency Syndrome.

Anywhere?

Now, in and of itself, that admission isn’t a bad thing. But there are a couple reasons why it’s especially shameful to me: 1.) my former college roommate and friend of 15 years lives in Thailand. And this friend isn’t just shacking up on a beach somewhere until he figures out where to go next. He has a house. He has dogs. He has a long-term job and a long-term relationship. In other words, he lives there, lives there. He could show me around. He could drive me around. He’s lived there for more than 7 years. I’ve never visited and it’s shameful. 2.) I am a budget traveler. More than a budget traveler–a budget travel advocate! Isn’t Asia mandatory for budget travelers? Like, isn’t a party on a Thai beach your very first stop on the road to cheap trips? Maybe I’ve convinced myself that it’s too easy, too frequented by other budget travelers, too obvious. Maybe, because I never backpacked around the world after college, it was just an honest mistake. Or, maybe I wanted the challenge of traveling on a shoestring in Eastern Europe. Maybe I wanted to swim in the Adriatic first.

Whatever my excuse, it’s time to go.

Of course, I have big Asia dreams. Yes, I’d love to see Thailand and China. Sure, Tokyo’s been at the top of my list (below Berlin and Lisbon, which we did this summer) for years. But I want to start obscure. Or, obscure to Americans. I want Myanmar. In fact, I’ve got the destination all picked out: the Mergui Archipelago. Now, word is things are a little looser getting into that country these days. But the Times still calls it “unwelcoming.” Ah ha! Just the place for OTR. Your “unwelcoming” is our top choice.

The Mergui Archipelago, Myanmar

So, since everyone we know has already been to Asia, school us. Where do we start? Cast your vote for the top Asia destination. We want to hear from you.

-KC

Far, far away. Or at least that’s how it feels.

Planning a trip has never been my strong point. I’m better at the going part of the equation. Usually, I rely on my far more organized friends and loved ones to take care of stuff like tickets, itineraries and hotels. I’m good at stepping back, voicing a few  budgetary constraints and then showing up for the plane.

But I just got back from a trip to Costa Rica where I had to take on most of the major planning and research…and it was an uncomfortable position, indeed. I had to split the difference between responsibility and personality. My beloved travel companion’s only request for our Central American journey: Completely remote.

Desperate and unsure of my own abilities, I enlisted the help of a couple of friends who had spent time in Costa Rica and then I did the bare minimum of Internet research. I saw a few key words about the region, and town, I had pinpointed for our travels. I saw phrases like “downscale jungle paradise” and “inviting and unassuming surf Mecca.” Perfect. Now for hotels. “Amicable,” “clean” and “great mojitos by the pool” got my credit card deposit.

Without the time, nor the inclination, to really do more research…Well, we won the Lotto on this minimally planned trip.

Nosara, Cost Rica, is definitely remote. The paved road to Nosara ends, giving way to a rutted, bumpy dirt trail, a good 45 minutes  before you even hit the town. There, a handful of lovely stores and restaurants, owned by expats and locals, pepper the thick jungle path until you hit the beach. And the beach isn’t blue, frothy Caribbean. It’s commanding Pacific glory….The Alpha of all oceans laps along a soft, sandy beach break and a few progressively challenging wave sets until going glassy and flat, stretching endlessly west. Watching just one sunset, glowing red and orange as the orb drops under the curve of the world, was reason enough to make the trip. The little six hour trip.

The town’s perfection was punctuated by an almost seamless mix of local-meets-hippy.  There’s a huge yoga Ashram.  It’s a surf town.  A lot of dudes living there are from Cornwall, England.  Most the other visitors are Californians or New Yorkers.  Costa Ricans rue the price spike of their land, yet appreciate the other economic and infrastructure boosts that followed. And because it’s a place that draws the **same ** kind of people, it feels…like a biosphere project.  Insulated and ephemeral.

Of course, I might have just gotten lucky.  My lax and slightly lame research abilities also cost us a bit of precious time…and money. We flew into the capital, San Jose, then took a very pricey 4 hour private taxi shuttle to our town (the teeny puddle jumper caught at an air strip 20 miles away was booked). Had I just spent a little more time looking at maps and routes, I would have found that flying to a northern town called Liberia would have saved us a lot of trouble. JetBlue, among other airlines, now has direct flights to Liberia, and from there, many of these incredible Pacific coastal towns are just an hour or so away.  We might have even saved some time and money flying into Managua, Nicaragua.

Procrastinating on our hotel reservations also meant that our room at our tiny and amicable hotel  (let me expand that review… it was the friendliest place on Earth) was, well, the only room they had left. And it was the room left behind as the rest of the stucco structure had undergone a revamp.

But I argue this: Having few expectations and maximum freedom on a trip that is simply about doing a 180 from your current life is an amazing adventure in itself. Had we been dissatisfied with our lovely town, our lovely abode or our lovely new friends…we could have moved on. No problemo.

So next time you get ready to take a trip that’s all about relaxing, unplugging, unwinding.. I urge you to start with the planning.

-VC

There’s your personality and then there’s your travel personality.

I propose the two are connected but not identical. The person you are on a day-to-day basis, commuting, working, socializing, might represent a large part of your person, but when thrown into the unknown, presented with new experiences, languages and cultures, a whole new you might emerge.

My normal schedule in New York leaves me booked to an inch of my life. It’s one thing to the next, and it’s not entirely good (I realize). But it is what it is.  Even when I’m at home, I find myself pattering about, making lists, returning emails, organizing my sock drawer.  I have to try to s-t-o-p.

When I travel, I simply can’t stand to be on a tight schedule.  I need to know that every minute can be dictated by discovery and whim. I’m happy to do whatever my travel companion(s) want to do, as long as they don’t want to put me on a rigid plan.

Attempting (but not reaching) travel bliss at home.

It’s interesting to think about. How you live your life and how you travel. I find that I like myself more when I’m on the road. Somehow I get a little more understanding of life’s inevitable snafus. I pay more attention to my surroundings. To people. I become more open and take more risks. The chatter turns off and I can just totally be in the moment, whether it’s staring at the sea or a priceless work of art in a museum.

There’s not a travel Enneagram that I know of, but let me propose a shell. Some of the questions would look like this.

1)Do you like to plan trips way in advance or can you wait until the last minute?

2) How much do you plan for the unknown, be it weather, flight cancellations, illness?

3) When things go wrong when you travel, is it more or less disappointing than in regular life?

4) Do you find yourself more optimistic when on vacation?

5) Are you ok with large chunks of unplanned time or do you need a detailed daily itinerary?

6) Do you become more outgoing?

7) Are you more of a risk taker?

8) Do you sweat the small stuff?

9) Do you fight the urge to control others timing, plans or desires?

10) Do you relish being the “planner” or do you prefer to sit back and let someone else take the helm?

Take a minute and think about it. Answer yes, no, maybe to the above questions and then pose them in your normal life. How much do they match up?

Send thoughts…

-VC

Christmas, as it were, just isn’t what it was. For this year’s holiday hassle, I’ll fly my sister to New York to celebrate Christmas-on-Christmas, then back to Denver to celebrate Christmas-post-Christmas-in-law-style, while my husband spends Christmas-on-Christmas-with-blood-family in Omaha and then post-Christmas-with-married-family in Queens. It reminds me of all the Christmases my elementary school friends used to spend with their divorced parents: several hours at one home, several hours at another. I used to think it was glamorous. Now I drink. And my family, like me, staggers in wonder at how we became a multi-domicile, micro-issue, mega-obligation festivity machine and, like me, copes with it mostly by drinking clear alcohol continuously from October through March, but also by crying often and sending many abbreviated logistical emails en mass back and forth between members of our special, agitated tribe.

In January, I’ll fly to Denver for post-Christmas-Christmas. After the high-altitude waffles, after soy nog and sinusitis and after I-70 traffic jams, I’ll stand alone on my parent’s porch and listen to the quiet fall in icy crystal flakes onto their patchy buffalo grass. I’ll draw in a sharp, cold breath and remember how I stood on that same porch the first Christmas after I’d moved to New York and rehearsed my new found urban philosophies. I was overwhelmed by liberation, sure I’d made the wrong choices at every opportunity, but confident that anything is possible if you can master the art of self-reinvention. I used to wear “The City” back to Denver on the plane at Christmas time like a dirty leather jacket, smoking Camel Lights outside the baggage claim with a head full of glass and cement. I was only nineteen and New York was trying to shake the mountains out of me.

In the beginning I would plan the Christmas trip for months and then spend two weeks at home. That was when my heart still lived in two places, before things in New York felt so permanent. Now our family ties have been melted and solidified by marriage, divorce, death and progress. Membership in other families, with all their various arms and branches, has made things more complicated. So these days Christmas is just, well, harder. My sister and I can no longer fall asleep watching Matlock on Christmas Eve after staying up too late drunk-wrapping batteries for my father. She’s married now to a scientist our family loves. His family melted in to ours, too.

I don’t spend Christmas with my family at home in Colorado. I spend it with my family at home in New York. Neither feels right. New York is marriage, our two small rooms, my writing, our dog. It’s the funky, corroded dinghy I’ve built to sail the world in and it’s all mine.  But the western sky of my memory is its opposing front. I miss my Colorado home as it was — as I was in it, soft and green and full of open spaces. And I miss people. I miss honey-skinned people who can breathe in thin air and drive in the snow.

For the last few years I’ve broken the holiday season down into a useful grid system for easy travel booking: Pre-Christmas and Yuletide, Christmas Proper, Post-Christmas (or Doldrums), New Years and After.  This year I’ll be celebrating an urban Yuletide and Pre-Christmas, an urban Christmas Proper and Doldrums and, as per my one and only real tradition, a Midtown-office-based, anxious and depressing New Years and After.

Sometime around January 20th, when the emotional hangover has worn off and I’ve come to, I’ll be wondering where it all went. Where we went.  I’ll remember a time before cell phones and email, when my parents and I would agree the night before where to meet at the airport–this was back when that might mean “at the gate.” I’ll remember listening to A Prairie Home Companion in the car as we drove over the mountains, my grandmother’s holiday gold utensils and the year we didn’t decorate the tree because my mother left. I’ll stop at some later point in this dead New York City January to recall driving back to my parents’ house from a dance club during another Christmas visit years ago, stoned and homesick for clean Rocky Mountain snow but clutching my newly-minted Manhattan truth: anything is possible.

I hope these memories can seem as precious in this coming exhausted January as they should have then. Things never do when they are supposed to. Not parents, not trees, not snowflakes or siblings, and never mountains. Especially not mountains.

-KC

Can I speak for us all right now when I say I need a vacation?

I make this fairly luxurious statement with a heavy heart after the past couple of weeks, especially living among people who have literally lost everything in a hurricane. We’ve all been vibrating on level 9 of anxiety through a costly and rancorous election, and for those of us in the Northeast, tonight we are crippled by another storm that is proving to add insult to injury. And it’s just all too much.

It seems almost frivolous to talk about a getaway at this point. Yet at 2 a.m. Wednesday, as our president concluded his second and final acceptance speech, and after months of daily micro-upheaval followed by two weeks of sustained shock, drinking from a coconut is about all my psyche has room to process.

Early this morning it was time to see the light of the (self) tunnel, and that glow is a trip to Costa Rica later this month. It is surfboards and mosquito nets, sand and waves. It is a different world that melts away this particular reality. At least for a week.

I don’t suspect I’m alone in feeling simply spent, even if many of us don’t have the time yet to quantify our personal and collective fatigue. My office was essentially destroyed in Sandy. Others lost homes. Their children lost schools. They are depending on everything from family to charity to government to stay warm and get back on track. To rebuild lives where the idea of vacation seems very luxurious, indeed.

But let me propose that travel, vacation — both the idea and the reality– actually becomes essential during the hardest moments of life.

Vacation can be what makes the rest of life doable…it’s the tonic, even if it’s an hour getaway (to the mall, to the mountains). The prism shifts a little and we’re able to dive back in and finish the gritty tasks left behind.

So dream away and take any moment to do something different. Book that crazy dream trip. Tell the people you love that’s how it is. Apologize, too, if that’s required.

If there’s anything a devastating act of nature should teach us, it is that someday is just too late.

-VC

Here’s something that’s been on my mind a lot recently, and I’m hoping for feedback. Where’s the friendliest place you’ve ever traveled? Is there one place that really sticks out as the most warm or generous? Is this an impossible question to answer without a set of tools and set values to measure friendliness? And do you think there’s a correlation between happy and friendly? The Netherlands, for example. Definitely a friendly place and apparently a very happy populace, to boot.

I’m still mulling my abroad answer, but in the US, I’m going with Seattle and central California as friendliest places. Though I did notice that even in the Emerald City, the uber-touristy places like Pike Place Market had some testy people. Does dealing with tourists and crowds make you a little harder? I got clucked at a few times in Lisbon this summer by busy people who weren’t into my map reading and slow walking. Sadly, I’ll admit that I’ve clucked at more than a few tourists doing touristy things on the Brooklyn Bridge, the subway, Midtown. So are friendly places also the least trafficked by people wielding Lonely Planets and fanny packs? I just don’t know.

-VC

What a difference a year makes.

Exactly twelve months ago I was in Panama, celebrating the end of a very, very, very bad job, and subsequently, a very bad period of life. The trip was completely spur-of-the moment. Last-minute ticket, zero planning, total shoestring…propelled by a long burning desire to see (and surf) Panama. And the getaway did everything I hoped. It delivered on beauty and culture and adventure and marked a massive turning-point where I learned to be happy again. Panama was like six months of therapy rolled up into one glorious week.

I love the NYT’s slideshow “Why We Travel,” because the photos and personal narratives give a peek into what spurs people to all corners of the globe, seeking out the stunning, the unusual, the scary. In this week’s gallery, my favorite photo (it’s hard to choose) is of a young woman swinging from a cable in the devastatingly beautiful Telluride, Colorado. Her mother, who snapped the pic, writes of the aerial adventure “You don’t contemplate, you just go.” I suppose that’s my new motto on everything, from travel to opportunities, jobs to relationships. Sometimes, the scariest ride (trip, vacation, adventure) is also the one that requires you to go ahead and jump with the most faith.

My perfect year had a bumpy end in June when the powers-that-be shut down the wire service where I was freelancing on a regular basis. I had loved the job, and freelance life, even the non-stop cycle of pitch, silence, rejection, and occasional acceptance. The wire service, like Panama, had put me back together and gave me a taste of the good life — love your work,your friends and family, and then travel wide-and-far, as often as you can.

Me. Panama Canal. See it. It will change your life (or at least how you buy things).

I had one foot out the door (or out of New York, more specifically) after we lost our jobs…but life stepped in again with an offer I couldn’t ignore. Now, I’m looking forward to my next big trip far, far way to help digest all the changes of the past 12 months and to internally map where they’ve left me. Meantime, I’ll practice what Kate and I preach: Take the big chances as the come and never miss an adventure. Or, in other words don’t contemplate, just go.