From Our Readers: One Grandparent’s Opinion On Travel
By Terry Dwyer
Grandparents who complain about the tiresome drive of a few hours just to see their grandkids force me to chuckle at least. My journey to play the role of “Grandpa” with my daughter and grandsons requires traversing our country just to get to a flight going to Australia, this journey includes 17 time zones, 2 oceans, an equator, then about 16 hours or so non-stop on a very large aircraft usually in crowded conditions, and the loss of those hours plus flight time and fitful sleep if you’re lucky.
Having a business-class seat (much more cost) enables you to have a nice reclining seat or suffer through the whole ordeal as if you’re training for an iron man contest in a cramped seat in “cattle car class”. Now we’re talking about how we bargain hunters find a way to get there without requiring a cosigner for the airfare cost. Now please tell me more about your grueling 3-hour drive to visit your youngest generation.
Where’s the consideration for grandparent syndrome so our aging bodies can survive this experience without using walkers and other handy devices around airport transfers. Anybody yet promoting time traveling (yet to be solved by science!) would help my peers in the older generation, don’t you think? ….and me, too. We’ve become a mobile society, but sometimes that stretches the limits of our physical and financial abilities. Do I hear any comments yet about “help is on the way”?
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