While I do not intend to make this a travel blog, I do have a lot of travel tips that I would like to share.
Paper, especially printouts of your reservations, is something I never travel without.
Whenever I am going on a trip, especially a long or international trip, I always carry paper copies of my flight and hotel reservations. These are separated into ‘transportation’ (airplanes, rental cars, trains, etc) and ‘lodging’ (hotels, campgrounds, etc). They are then placed, in order, into a holder with 2 clear pouches on each side.
As the trip progresses, I move the paper – by placing them into another bag or discarding them. For anything with personal information (airplane reservations often have your frequent flyer number, address, e-mail), these I save and shred when I get home.
If the trip is very long, with many transfers, I may print out 2 copies of my flight and place one on the top and one on the bottom of my ‘transportation’ pile.
This is something I have done for years and have even shown to others. While most people think it is a bit silly or over the top at first, once they try the method, they keep using it. I’ve even been told that it is unusually organized for my personality. Thanks, I think.
All of this has saved me a few times. The most recent was a few years ago when I was traveling to New Zealand from Australia. As I was flying in one airline and out on another, immigration didn’t have a record of me leaving the country. Since I had the printout of my departing flight, the situation was resolved very quickly.
Paper print outs can be handy. Mobile devices can have batteries die, or have limited service. You don’t want to be in a situation where you need evidence that you have a connecting flight, and you have a dead battery in your phone.
I always like to put a technical look into the year before and try to summarize it in the first 3 months of the following year.
The Technical Stuff
In 2019, I created 21,940 photos and about 48 videos. This makes 2019 my 2nd most prolific year, behind #1, 2016 (the year where I went skiing for New Years, visited the Big Sur coast in California, spent 5 days rafting down the Grand Canyon, went to the Olympic Peninsula, and spend a month in Australia and New Zealand). 2019 is the first year where my photos used more than 1 TB.
So many photos…
2019 was defined by 3 large photo events. #1, like 2018, was the National Cherry Blossom Festival in Washington DC. #2 was a 2-week trip to the Faroe Islands and Norway in August. #3 was a trip over New Years to Banff, AB, Canada. #3 will show up on the 2020 year in review as well.
2019 has some smaller events as well. This included a trip to several historic rail roads in Pennsylvania (Jim Thorpe, Strasburg), several trips to the beach, and a Hot Air Balloon Festival in Lancaster.
Unfortunately, I was unable to visit Longwood Gardens for the Christmas Lights this year. Oh well, maybe in 2020.
Not shown, a GoPro, because LightRoom cannot open the video files
In terms of cameras used per year, this is the first year my D850/D800 won. In 2019, I clearly preferred my newest camera over the D750 for 2016-2018. These results surprised me, because I thought they would be closer together. I think there is a reason for this, which is revealed in the next section. For the first time since 2009, my D300 is not on the list. Guess it might be time to get rid of it.
Lenses per year gives some insight into the camera per year
Wait a minute, my most used lens was a 200-500mm? Where did that even come from?
The 200-500mm lens was a new purchase for 2019. It was primarily purchased for the previously mentioned Faroe Islands trip in order to chase puffins. This is also the reason the D850 had more photos in 2019 – the autofocus on the D850 is just better, and puffins are notoriously obnoxious to try to shoot. The majority of those 6471 images are of puffins. The rest are, mostly, me attempting to shoot images of the moon.
My second most used lens was last year’s most used lens, the 24-120 f/4. What can I say, it is a really good lens for when I want to save some weight. The third most used lens was last year’s number 2, the 24-70 f/2.8. Guess I really like this focal range.
Everything else was about in line with the usage in 2018.
The breakdown of Camera:Lens Combination is:
D850/D800
D750
I don’t usually look at these results before writing this post. This actually surprises me. The really surprising part is how little I used the D750 last year.
The Good Stuff – New Stuff
As previously mentioned, in 2019, I aquired the Nikon 200-500mm f/5.6 lens and a GoPro Hero 7. And yeah, I now own a selfie stick too.
The Good Stuff – Travels
I mentioned this above, but, 2019 was a lot of smaller weekend trips, with a really big trip to the Faroe Islands and another one to Banff.
The Bad Stuff – Gear Repairs
For the first time ever, I had a non-warantee repair on a camera lens. My camera bag, unfortunately, fell out of my car. The 14-24 lens was damaged and needed to be serviced at a Nikon repair center. It was quite expensive, but the service center did a really good job and the insides work like it was new.
The Bad Stuff – Missed Goals for 2019
I was not able to meet my goal of learning how to produce videos better nor generating an income from photography. While I realize it is a poor craftsman who blames his tools, one of the reasons I’ve struggled with video is because my laptop, which is a now-3 year old Lenovo, simply struggles too much to make videos consistently.
2020
For 2020, my plans are this:
1 trip currently being planned – Cherry Blossoms in DC in the March-April timeframe.
Goal: Actually start to make some money, whether it is stock photos or something else.
Goal: Update the blog more often. Learn how to use Gutenberg, which has replaced the old WordPress post editing system.
Goal: Work on learning how to make videos, maybe even launching a YouTube channel.
Stretch Goal: Work with a brand to showcase their gear in amazing locations.
For a Thursday, here is a quick travel tip: When in a new city, always carry the business card of your hotel.
This is a travel trip that I have never seen elsewhere. Everyone who uses this tip always thanks me.
If you have the business card, it has the address where you are staying, and just as importantly, it has the phone number of the front desk. If you are in a place that is new, and doubly so if you are in a place where you cannot speak the language, this is all you need to get to your bed. If there are any questions, the driver can call the front desk. This is also helpful if you do not have a roaming plan.
The inspiration for this post comes from my father. In a recent conversation, my father said that he would never visit Australia, simply because he never wanted another 15 hour flight. I showed him how you can get to Australia without any flight over 8 hours.
The secret for USA to Australia and New Zealand? Hawaii. From anywhere in the USA, you can get a ~6 hour flight to the West Coast (LA, San Fran, Seattle, etc), where it is a ~6 hour flight to Honolulu (HNL) Hawaii. Auckland, New Zealand (AKL) or Sydney, Australia (SYD) are a relatively inexpensive 7-8 hr flight from HNL. Or if you’d prefer, Denver (DEN) to Honolulu (HNL) is about 8 hours.
Alternatively, HNL to Japan’s Tokyo Narita (NRT) is about 8 hours as well. Although this is probably not worth the effort, as NYC (JFK) to NRT is about 12 hours and Seattle (SEA) to NRT is about 10 hours.
On the other side of things, a person living in Sydney Australia can get to Europe without any flight over 8 hours. This person would go SYD to HNL (many airlines, including QANTAS, Jet Star, Hawaiian), HNL to SEA (Hawaiian or Alaskan), SEA to KEF (Keflavik, Iceland on Icelandair), then finally KEF to anywhere in Europe.
This tip likely works best for Americans. Due to flight schedules, there may be a 24-48 hour layover in Hawaii, which is such a terrible thing. I am aware that most non-Americans do not like doing international transfers through the USA. But no matter who you are, it is an option. And if you do not like the long haul flights, this is an option to avoid them for a large portion of the world.
I recently traveled on American Airlines and I discovered something interesting.
I live in Seattle, and as a result, I have a Frequent Flyer card for Alaska Airlines. Alaska and American have a new partnership.
As a result of this partnership, having an Alaska Airlines MVP number, grants you early boarding on American Airlines. I have the base status on Alaska, but, I was still able to board the plane before about half of the rest of the plane. American boarded their higher tier frequent flyer, high tier people in the OneWorld frequent flyer plans, and First/Business class before me, but I boarded before the people who purchased regular tickets, with the AAdvantage ‘Gold’ status members or OneWorld ‘Ruby’ status members. See here – https://www.aa.com/i18n/travel-info/boarding-process.jsp
So, if you are traveling in coach, do not otherwise have any airline status, do not intend to build miles on American or OneWorld airlines, and are not flying in business/first, you can sign up for the Alaska MVP program and board before most people. It doesn’t cost anything, and it does not even require you to have ever flown on Alaska Airlines.
