Earlier this week I mentioned how my wife and two of our kids traveled to Brazil in late May. It was a wonderful experience, and I'm glad we had the opportunity to go.
The part I enjoyed the least is the part I enjoy least every time I travel to other countries, which is the actual travel.
Getting to Rio de Janeiro required a flight from Cleveland to Houston...easy enough as domestic flights go. But then we had a 10-hour jaunt from Houston down to Rio. It was an overnight flight that we experienced in the most cost-effective way possible: sitting in Basic Economy.
Maybe I'm just getting on in years, but those Basic Economy seats simply aren't designed for restful sleep or even basic human anatomy. It's the truest example of "you get what you pay for," a feeling you experience as you're walking through the Business Class section of the plane on the way back to your pathetic accommodations in steerage.
I've flown Business Class internationally before, and let me tell you, once you do it, you have no desire to go back to a regular seat.
You have oodles and oodles of room in Business Class, a couple of shelves for storage, and even a tiny, gnome-sized closet that doesn't hold much but to me symbolizes the power and prestige of sitting among the privileged. You can lay flat with a pillow and warm blanket that allow you to sleep comfortably for hours at a time.
You will note that on those occasions I've flown Business Class, it has always been because my company paid for it. I would never spring for it personally, which is why we sat in the cheap-but-decidedly-cramped economy sections of the Boeing 767-300 aircraft that took us to and from Brazil.
By the way, I feel like there was a time when you could find daytime flights to Europe and South America, but they seem to be far less available these days. My first trip outside of North America in 1999 was an Air Canada flight from Toronto to London that left early in the morning and got us to the UK a little past dinner time. No sleep required.
Nowadays, though, it's all about overnight flights. I'm not one to try and experience a new country on zero hours of rest, so I feel obligated to get some sleep even though I'm sitting on a hard "cushion" in a sky chair barely wider than the diameter of my hips.
Terry supplied me with a Tylenol PM to knock me out on the way to Rio, and while this helped, it didn't solve my #1 issue when it comes to airplane sleep. No matter how hard I try, I have to switch positions roughly 437 times a night because my butt inevitably starts hurting if I don't shift around.
Which means that even with the help of the Tylenol PM capsule, the sleep I get comes in fits and starts and is punctuated by strange dreams and long periods in that weird state between wakefulness and slumber.
After a while, my legs start to hurt, too, largely because I don't get up and walk around as often as I should.
By the time we land, I have experienced a combined 2-3 hours of low-quality sleep, which is enough to survive on but not nearly enough to feel well-rested and ready to experience customs, travel from the airport, and whatever we have planned for Day #1 of our vacation.
Someday, when I win the lottery (which I never actually play), I'm going to start taking all of my flights in First/Business Class. Each time I fly, I'll do it lying on a bed of goose feathers covered in sheets with an absurdly high thread count while a flight attendant feeds me grapes and tells jokes.
In the meantime, it's sore butt muscles and lack-of-sleep-induced colds after every international trip for me.
Oh, the price we pay to experience the world.
