What is the farthest I have ever traveled?

Another one of my Storyworth questions. I could take this question to mean so many things: the farthest I have ever traveled in one plane ride? In one trip over a period of so many days? It’s an interesting and fun question so I have decided to list mileages for the vacation trips that involved air travel. The first flight I ever took was when I was 17, when my dad and I visited my sister who was living just outside New York City. I did that trip several times though so won’t include each individual occurrence. Oh, and I am only going to calculate the outgoing miles; most of the time I returned [smile].

Montreal to Freeport, Bahamas. I think it was in 1972? Flight distance 1342 miles, flight time about 3.5 hours. A week’s beach vacation with a friend, a cheap and cheerful Air Canada sun ‘n fun holiday.

Montreal to Merida, Mexico, maybe 1973 (I am quite fuzzy about dates in the years after I left university full time): 1918 miles but I assume that would mean by direct flight. When I went to Merida, the only flights there went via Mexico City (2317 miles) first. A flight time of about 6 hours. When we arrived, this was in about 1972, we had to wait 3 hours for a flight to Merida (625 miles), and then that flight took about 2 hours. We (a work colleague and I) also took a side trip to Cozumel. We flew over there, very short flight, about 174 miles. It wasn’t the greatest vacation—I found Mexico unfriendly, humid, and my travel partner and I didn’t really get along. I did however very much enjoy seeing the Mayan ruins at Chichen Itza. We stayed at an old hacienda just down the road from the ruins. And Cozumel was very lovely and unspoiled back then; it hadn’t yet been super developed, generators at the hotel cut out at 9:30 pm and the resort would be in total darkness!

Montreal to London, UK, 1976. Flight distance 3249 miles, flight time about 6 and a half hours. Once there I joined a young people’s bus tour through Europe. Would be difficult to figure out how many miles we traveled in 18 days—crossing the channel to Belgium, then rollicking through Belgium, the Netherlands, Germany, Switzerland, Austria, Italy, France and then back to London. It was wonderful though, one of the best vacations of my life.

Montreal to South Africa, 1977. This one is difficult to calculate again because I flew from Montreal to London (3249 miles), stayed in London two days and then flew from London to Johannesburg. Two take offs, one landing actually. The first time we took off one of the engines on the 747 caught fire. The pilot coolly announced on the PA that we were having some engine trouble and, although a 747 can fly with only three engines, with such a long flight ahead, he felt we should turn back to Heathrow. Only we couldn’t land with full tanks so we circled out over the English Channel for a couple of hours, dumping fuel (ugh) and then landed back at Heathrow. Too late to take off again, we were billeted at an airport hotel and flew out the next night.

The current flight path from London to Johannesburg is across the continent of Africa, some 5670 miles and a flight time of 11.5 hours. However, I went to South Africa when it was under apartheid and South African planes were not allowed into African airspace. This meant we had to fly around the continent and then across South Africa. We had to refuel in Abidjan, Ivory Coast (about 3193 miles, 6.5 hours) which was the only place on the African continent that allowed South African Airways to land. We weren’t allowed off the plane, I remember sitting there, with the doors open in the inky blackness, the hot humid air wafting into the cabin.

From Abidjan to Johannesburg is another 6 hours in the plane, another 3060 miles. I remained in South Africa for three weeks and was anxious to leave for reasons I have written about in one of my blogs. I actually barely remember the flight home except that I once again flew through London, this time only waiting there for 4 hours before my flight back to Montreal. I remember that I had enough time to leave Heathrow and go into London, I think I visited Westminster or something. And it was on the flight home to Montreal that I saw an article in a magazine about Canadians living in London. Feeling somewhat brokenhearted that my South African adventure hadn’t ended happily, and not looking forward to returning to friends and family who were expecting an engagement, the idea was born that I would move to London. Which I did a few months later, in May of 1978.

Another trip from Montreal to London, 1978, this time one way.

A Christmas trip from London to New York to visit my sister, 1978, distance about the same as Montreal to London. First time I had the "lost luggage" experience. Ugh.

London to Corfu, Greece, May of 1979: Another cheap and cheerful young singles holiday (I was 4 months’ pregnant but the trip was non-refundable) the distance from London to Corfu was 1300 miles, a little over 3 hours in a good jet. However, there had been a bad accident with the model that usually did the trip so our tour company dusted off an old Comet jet (the world’s first commercial jet airliner) and we flew that to Corfu amidst much discussion on the plane. It was breathtaking (in more ways than one) as we steeply banked to land on the one runway in Corfu. At that time Albania, Corfu’s close geographical neighbor, was considered hostile airspace and airlines had to be very careful not to invade that airspace. Leaving was so much easier. Two weeks in Corfu, beautiful island, I enjoyed the small village we were staying in, the beautiful weather, the island tours, despite spending so much time on my own once the single guys realized I was pregnant.

After Laurie was born at the end of 1979, a friend and I took her to meet my sister in New York in the summer of 1980 and all of us drove up to Montreal to see my father. Then my friend and I took the train to Toronto to visit another friend and we then returned to New York to fly back to London. It was during that trip that I started to feel that it would be better if Laurie and I returned to Canada. Just the germ of an idea but by October of 1980 I decided that it would indeed be the best thing.

November, 1980, one year old Laurie and I said goodbye to our friends in England and flew to Toronto. To make a new life in so many ways.

December 1982, Laurie and I went back to London for a two week holiday over Christmas, to visit friends. It was feeling very nostalgic for England and returned to Canada thinking that perhaps we might be able to move back there.

September 1983, I went back, alone, to England for a week to think through things—would moving back to England make sense. I remember standing outside St. Paul’s Cathedral, watching all of the tourists, watching people who seemed happy and confident. And I realized in that moment how much effort had gone into making a new life in Canada. I was just starting to find my feet as a single mum, I had a good job in Hamilton and good friends. If I were to go back to England it would be the same struggle I’d had when I left two years before. And, somehow in my heart, I knew that I would be more successful in Canada so that, in the future, we could always come back to England to visit. I felt that, were I to go back to England, there’d be no guarantee that I could be economically stable enough to be able to visit Canada. So I went back to Canada and dreams of moving to England ended.

I didn’t go back to England until 2000, when Laurie and I went over for her 21st birthday. In those intervening years—in terms of flying, not counting road trips—I traveled around the US, visiting my sister who had moved to Colorado, and flying to Portland, Oregon, to meet Richard for the first time. And there were various business trips as well. When Laurie turned 21, we went to England, visiting friends and introducing her to the places that had meant a lot to me when I had lived there. We also took a train up to Aberdeen—a night train where we tried to sleep in the chairs—as Laurie was interested in a riding apprenticeship at stables up there. She ended up moving there in the spring of 2001.

September 2001, Richard and I flew from Vancouver to Glasgow (9.5 hours, 4370 miles) for a 2.5-week holiday spent partially with Laurie and friend Sheila at a cottage in Aberfeldy, Scotland and partly at a couple of B & Bs, one in the Highlands and one down by the Scottish borders. And, unexpectedly because of 9/11, in the spare bedroom of a lovely elderly lady in Edinburgh. Flew back from Glasgow to Vancouver, picked our car up from the sleep ‘n fly hotel in Vancouver and returned to our home in Klamath Falls, Oregon.

March 2002, we found a very good airfare from San Francisco to Marseilles via Paris and decided, with just a few weeks’ notice to have a week’s holiday in Provence. Drove from Klamath Falls to San Francisco. San Francisco to Paris flight distance, 5500 miles, about 11.5 hours’ flight time. The holiday was wonderful, ranks up there with one of the best holidays. Provence was off season and quiet, the mas we stayed at was beautiful, food was terrific, driving was easy. Laurie by this time had reconnected with her now-husband, CJ, by email (she was in Scotland, he was at BYU) and, having completed her 1st degree of Horse Masters, decided to come back to the US. We met her in San Francisco, she returned with us to Klamath Falls, CJ drove down from BYU a few days later and an engagement ensued.

I am starting to get fuzzy about trips again. We became interested in crossing the Atlantic on the Queen Mary 2 rather than doing long trips from the West Coast. Between 2003 (?) and this past year we have crossed the Atlantic by ship five times (I think?) including one time where we stayed in Ireland for 10 months. And, apart from that I have flown to London and Dublin a few times. And to Helsinki, Finland, from London, not that long a distance nor flight time. This past year we actually went to the UK twice, once in May and once in December. Still recovering from the latter trip!

But the longest flight I have had, apart from the one to South Africa was a trip I made to Sydney Australia in September of 2010 (could have been 2009.) I flew first from Tucson to Los Angeles (negligible distance) and then From Los Angeles to Sydney, 7488 miles and a duration of 15 hours! I put the exclamation point there because, honestly, I had forgotten how very long that flight was! I remember seeing the sun “go down” and “come up” on the plane, I remember being so exhausted on the return flight that I sat in a still-closed LA airport (the flight from Sydney was one of the first to arrive) totally numb. I am so glad I went, however, because it was the first and only time I met a cousin who I had discovered through genealogy. He was thrilled to bits to meet me, his family was warm and welcoming, I had an absolutely super time in Sydney.

And that completes my travelling history for now. There are several trips that have been omitted, but, considering the original question was simply “what’s the farthest you have traveled” and I only answered it at the very end of this long essay, I will leave it that. Someone might ask "do you plan to travel again?" After the December nightmare trip--well, not a complete nightmare but certainly a cold shower of reality at traveling in these times, at this age--I really don't know. If I do, it will definitely be by business class and minimal ground travel. I just don't have the energy and, if I travel with Richard, he certainly doesn't!!