Dan
Contributor
I slept as much as I could during the 20-hour flights with the help of Benadryl!
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Everybody is approaching it differently, but what I am doing is scheduling all the "far" trips for late 2022-2023 and doing what I consider to be "close" trips now and through this time next year. That has less to do with my own tolerance for travel/masks, etc. and more to do with my fear that I might not be able to get where I am going reliably and end up missing a trip or something due to airline clusterfudgery. I did Turks last month and that was fine and am doing Socorro in Dec. Chuuk I scheduled for fall of 2023. I don't even want to think about trying to get there right now.I was perusing a thread in which someone expressed interest in Indonesia and it got me wondering, how many people are even braving 24-hour air journeys with multiple connections and all the masking, testing, etc.? I'm sure some inveterate travelers are, but I don't think I could hack it. I just returned from a long-delayed visit to European in-laws and felt it was a lot harder on me than in pre-covid times. For the most part, the mask(s) stayed on for the whole 18-hour journey, from getting into the Uber to the airport to being dropped off by another at my home. Every airport, every lounge, except for the brief respites afforded by eating/drinking. I believe masks are a great tool and generally don't mind putting up with them locally, but I think on this trip I found the limits of my tolerance.
I have a Bonaire group trip coming up--first major dive trip in two years--and am feeling a weird mix of elation and dread, even though the flight time is "only" 4-5 hours and no connections.
I'm impressed you kept your mask on for that whole trip minus eating and drinking, but I wonder how effective it was given you must've had to eat and drink several times during those 18 hours. I just took my first flight since COVID. It was only 2.5 hours each way, yet they felt it was necessary to have drink and snack service. Some passengers even brought their own meals, so there was pretty much at least one unmasked person around at all times during that flight. I'm not super confident the masks provided any meaningful protection, given the degree to which the exception swallowed the rule.I was perusing a thread in which someone expressed interest in Indonesia and it got me wondering, how many people are even braving 24-hour air journeys with multiple connections and all the masking, testing, etc.? I'm sure some inveterate travelers are, but I don't think I could hack it. I just returned from a long-delayed visit to European in-laws and felt it was a lot harder on me than in pre-covid times. For the most part, the mask(s) stayed on for the whole 18-hour journey, from getting into the Uber to the airport to being dropped off by another at my home. Every airport, every lounge, except for the brief respites afforded by eating/drinking. I believe masks are a great tool and generally don't mind putting up with them locally, but I think on this trip I found the limits of my tolerance.
I have a Bonaire group trip coming up--first major dive trip in two years--and am feeling a weird mix of elation and dread, even though the flight time is "only" 4-5 hours and no connections.
I'm impressed you kept your mask on for that whole trip minus eating and drinking, but I wonder how effective it was given you must've had to eat and drink several times during those 18 hours. I just took my first flight since COVID. It was only 2.5 hours each way, yet they felt it was necessary to have drink and snack service. Some passengers even brought their own meals, so there was pretty much at least one unmasked person around at all times during that flight. I'm not super confident the masks provided any meaningful protection, given the degree to which the exception swallowed the rule.
I had similar thoughts. I flew to Seattle, and my next flight is to Hawaii. Those seem like relatively safe places compared to, say, Florida.
What's your source on this?Florida which is below the national average