In the zone

It’s always 5 o’clock somewhere!

I’m not looking to have a beer at 7 in the morning (or anytime really as I don’t drink beer), but I am going to use that line for today.

Today is technically not 21 days to go… that, was yesterday. But, given that you will be reading this in the future, it will not matter when I post this on my blog in a few days and date it yesterday, that I actually wrote it today, as though it was yesterday which by then will be last week.

Are you with me??? Nope, me either…

Anyhow, I had good intentions of writing my thoughts and activities down for each day of the 30 days leading up to our departure on our digital nomad adventure. Last night stopped being last night and started being today before I had time, and then I was too tired. So now, I am writing them down.

The whole thing about time is that it is relative to the moment. It was Einstein (smart fellow) who is quoted to have said…

“Time is relative; its only worth depends upon what we do as it is passing.”?

Part of my time yesterday was spent watching television. I do not often watch tv. I think it may have been the first time in a week that I had planted my butt on the couch and turned it on.

The reason for the occasion…the first two episodes of the new Obi-Wan Kenobi series have been released on Disney Plus.

Sci-fi, space travel and futuristic style shows are some of what I enjoy watching. I think I possibly liked them before I met David, however, since he came into my life, my exposure to them has certainly increased.

Some I enjoy more than others

• I have watched every episode of Star Trek Discovery and hope that they do create Season 5
• The Expanse captured my attention so much that I bought the books and read them as well
• Orville makes me laugh in a way that some other shows of a similar nature do not
• I enjoyed the characters and costumes of the various species in Babylon 5
• Stargate Atlantis is the series that captured my attention first though, many years ago

And, then there is Star Wars. I wonder if George Lucas ever really thought that his idea would become the empire (pun intended) that it is today.

I would not consider myself a ‘fan’. I am likely to get the details wrong about which spaceship belongs in which galaxy and which species is friend or foe. But, with Star Wars, I do know the general storyline pretty well and am almost able to follow the timeline of events.

This…brings me back to time…timelines, time frames, time zones and time travel…keeping track of what day and time it is where I am, where I am going to be and where I am not. For that, I really appreciate Google Calendar, with its world time feature and dual timezone display.?

After watching Ewan McGregor (whom I also really enjoyed following on his Long Way Down and Long Way Round adventures. I haven’t yet watched Long Way Up but will no doubt watch that when we are considering heading to South and Central America) revive his Jedi skills, I decided I would check out some options for flying home at the conclusion of our upcoming adventure.

There is a certain rebellious feeling to having an open-ended adventure. Will we come back, or won’t we…??

The answer this year is, that we will. After all, we already have our apartment at Cabarita Beach booked for a couple of weeks after Christmas.

When I had initially looked at flight options from Agadir in Morocco to Brisbane, the time and cost seemed ridiculously high, well over 48 hours and over $4k. I was sure that with a bit more searching and creativity applied, I would be able to find a faster and cheaper solution.

We had considered that it might be necessary to travel to Marrakech by bus, then fly from there…and while that is certainly an option, by the time I am at the turn and coming home, I usually just want to get home. Dragging it out and adding complexity isn’t really my idea of fun.

Some days, I can get ‘in the zone’ of searching for options. Last night was one of those. I explored several potential routes and many different airlines. It would make life so much easier if you could search for flights where they show the actual price including the baggage configuration you need, with or without your preference for extras like seat and meal selections.?

Having to go through the whole process of putting in all your details and tabbing through several pages of hogwash to get to the point where you know the true price is time-consuming…and let’s not even start the conversation about the user experience on airlines and flight aggregator websites.

One of the things I have to be particularly careful about when booking separate flights on a continuous journey is the timezone and the time required to move through customs, immigration, collect bags, change airports and check-in and bag drop for the next flight.

Allowing too much time means I might end up having to pay for a night’s accommodation in some random place, plus transport to get there and back, or sleep in an airport (which isn’t always bad but sometimes isn’t good).?

Not allowing enough time means I run the risk of missing the flight, and when you have booked them yourself, the airline doesn’t wait for you or bump you to the next flight. You missed it, and that is that.

In this case, I was able to find a flight for a great price at a good time of day, departing Agadir to Paris on Wednesday morning. We will have to collect our bags and change airports, from Orly to CDG, but we have about 7 hours between the expected arrival and the next departure, so we should be fine.

From Paris, we hop our way home on three flights, via Muscat, Oman and Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia to arrive in Brisbane at a convenient time on Friday morning, which lines up pretty well with a bus connection to get us back to Toowoomba…which means we are back home in time for David’s birthday dinner!?

The three flights are all on one itinerary even though they are with different airlines, so we will not have to worry about our checked bags along the way. We will just pray to the baggage gods that they do actually come with us all the way!

In the end, the price to get us both home from Agadir ended up being less than $2k…much better than the original $4k estimate…and about 40 hours, roughly 10 hours less than the first glance.

Feeling like I was in full flow still, I decided to also look for a decent flight option to Agadir, from Budapest. The total duration had been the issue when doing my quick early research. It was going to take us nearly as long to fly from Europe to Northern Africa as it was to fly home to Australia.

The actual flight time isn’t the issue, it is connections and layovers. If you’re happy to drop several thousand you may be able to fly direct. We are not that desperate.

With a pleasant departure time and a convenient arrival time, I managed to find a suitable option, noting we aren’t staying in Agadir so there will be a bit of a drive still once we land. It does mean we will get to visit Geneva for a night and half a day though.?

Geneva wasn’t far away from where we stayed last time we were in Switzerland, though we didn’t manage to get there. So this will be a nice opportunity. If anyone reading this knows someone with a spare room in Geneva, we would welcome an introduction :)?

All that remains now, is to find a good option to make our way from Paris to Budapest. We now have the actual dates from our house-sit hosts in both locations, with invitations to stay another night or arrive a day early, so our transit window is open a bit wider.?

That will remain a task for another day, as the time of being in flow had ended and sleep was demanding my attention.