International travel in Basic Economy is the ultimate test of endurance and old personhood

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.

In the mood for some joyous chaos? Try a Brazilian soccer match

My daughter Elissa, my wife Terry, and me before the match enjoying some Brahma Chopp beers, which I would describe as Brazilian Bud Lite.

Last month, four of us (my wife, our kids Elissa and Jack, and me) took a one-week vacation to Rio de Janiero, Brazil. It was the first time any of us had been to South America, and the trip lived up to our every expectation.

Rio is a wonderful place with a rhythm and vibe all its own. I highly recommend it to anyone anxious to experience Brazilian culture and the friendly Brazilian people, though it does present some minor obstacles for the American traveler.

For one thing, while there are English words on signs all over the city, relatively few people there speak our language well. I wouldn't expect them to (it's THEIR country, after all), but we tend to get spoiled traveling to many popular destinations in Europe and Asia where you can find English speakers on almost every corner.

We learned the words you need to be polite in Brazilian Portuguese, including "hello," "goodbye," "please," "thank you," and "I request that you not steal my iPhone." Beyond that, we relied on hand gestures and the godsend of an app known as Google Translate.

Fluminense supporters waving flags
and screaming at the top of their lungs.

There's also quite a bit of traffic in Rio, so don't expect to get anywhere quickly. The locals accept this as a fact of life and make up for it by driving like suicidal maniacs.

That's an exaggeration, of course, but not by much. We got around via Uber, and we found the Uber drivers to be somewhat aggressive in their driving. By "somewhat aggressive" I mean changing lanes on a whim without really looking, not bothering to even tap the brakes at stop signs, and seemingly targeting pedestrians for no other reason than the sheer sport of it.

While the Uber rides provided enough thrills to last us a long while, so did my favorite part of the trip, which was the chance to attend a soccer match between Rio-based teams Fluminense and Vasco de Gama.

We did this through a tour company that specializes in bringing foreigners to Brazilian soccer games. Buying tickets directly as a non-Brazilian is a difficult experience – perhaps intentionally so – so you have to do it through an accredited agent.

Our tour guide Leo was outstanding. He was effortlessly trilingual (Portuguese, Spanish and English) and did a good job preparing us all for the experience.

Because Brazilian soccer is an experience. From the pregame festivities outside historic Maracanã Stadium to the match itself, rare is the time you can even hear yourself think. Everything about it is loud. All the time.

A small portion of the pregame crowd near Maracanã Stadium.

The streets around Maracanã were filled with people sporting Fluminense and Vasco de Gama colors. While it was technically a home match for Fluminense, the Vasco supporters seemed to be out in greater numbers.

We were told that Vasco fans generally draw from the region's working classes, while Fluminense fans are somewhat more affluent.

Regardless, we didn't overtly root for either team. We just tried to soak in the atmosphere. Outside the stadium there were fireworks aplenty (M-80s and bottle rockets mostly) and people yelling specific chants/cheers for their team. Europeans and North Americans mingled freely and happily with Brazilians and other South Americans, giving the whole thing an air of intense but friendly rivalry more than dark menace.

Once inside, we were struck by a few things that differed greatly from American sporting events:

• The only reason we knew the Brazilian national anthem was playing was because the players stood at attention and the words appeared on the video boards. The fans continued cheering loudly as if nothing important was going on. We couldn't hear the song at all.
  
  
• Once the match began, everybody stood. Everybody. The whole time. There was virtually no sitting.
  
  
• On a related note, people clogged the aisles of our section rather than just staying close to their seats. If you wanted to go get a beer or visit the restroom during the match, you had to wade through a dense sea of screaming fans standing in your way.
  
  
• I say "their seats," but there is no assigned seating in Maracanã Stadium. You just claim a seat and sit in it. If you leave, the seat is fair game for anyone else.
  
  

That's me and my son Jack before the start of the match.

Each side's supporters seemed to have an arsenal of chants and songs they would shout together in large groups. These were obviously in Portuguese (as were all game announcements and video board messages), and Leo tried to teach me one for Fluminense.

When the Fluminense fans launched into this particular chant, Leo turned around and looked at me like a teacher quizzing a pupil, but I immediately forgot almost everything I had learned. Instead I just sort of yelled along using nonsense words that somewhat approximated what I heard from the fans around me.

No matter, though. It was still a lot of fun.

In fact, the whole thing was a lot of fun...loud, crazy, and carried out in a beautiful language I will never be able to learn no matter how hard I try. But in the end, Fluminense's 2-1 victory (even including the shower of beer that hit us when Vasco scored the first goal of the match) was undeniably enjoyable.

I will not, however, be trying out anything I learned in Brazil at, say, the next Cleveland Guardians game. Between standing in someone's line of sight the whole game and claiming seats for which I don't own a ticket, something tells me I would be in a lot more danger at Progressive Field than I ever was at Maracanã.

I am now vaccinated against yellow fever and never thought I would have to say that

Very soon, I'll be headed to Brazil with my wife, my oldest daughter, and my youngest son. We're looking forward to nearly a week in sunny Rio de Janeiro, home of the world-famous Christ the Redeemer statue as well as, apparently, various exotic tropical diseases.

Well, to be fair, there's really only one main disease they warn you about, and that's yellow fever. And even that is more of a thing if you venture into rural areas, rather than Rio itself.

Still, if you're going to Brazil, the U.S. Department of State and the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) make it pretty clear that you should consider being vaccinated against yellow fever.

Both entities take a decidedly passive-aggressive approach to this warning. Read what each has to say about traveling to Brazil and you walk away with a message along the lines of, "Look, you don't have to get the yellow fever vaccination, but if it were me..."

So we got it. All four of us.

Let me say two things about that:

• We had the vaccine administered at a place in Willoughby Hills, Ohio, very near our home. I found it on a list of approved yellow fever vaccination sites, but it was only after Elissa went that we learned it's less of a medical clinic and more of a beauty/wellness center that also happens to stock some vaccines. This was somewhat disconcerting.
  
  
• Guess how much the yellow fever vaccine costs. Go ahead, just take a guess...If you said $400, you were correct. Now guess whether anyone's insurance actually covers this cost. I will give you only one hint, which is that the answer is not, as I had hoped, "yes."
  

To that second point, the vaccination was just one of many unexpected costs and hassles we incurred getting ready for this trip.

Another was the Brazilian tourist visa, something that only just became a thing last month. If we had taken this trip in say, January, we would not have had to worry about it. But now travelers to Brazil have to apply for a visa.

The visa itself is $80 per person which, eh, isn't so bad, I guess. But the Brazilian government's frustratingly exacting standards when it comes to uploading your passport bio page, submitting a precisely edited and cropped head shot, and answering questions written by someone who likely did well in English classes at school but still lacks that real-world touch when it comes to getting across their true meaning, made the whole process more difficult than it should have been.

One good thing in all of this is that our travel itinerary and reservations were completed early on by Elissa, our oldest child and top-notch travel planner. At least that part of it hasn't been difficult.

What could be difficult, though, is getting back from this trip in one piece, given the list of other diseases besides yellow fever the State Department says can sometimes be found in Brazil. Those include chagas, chikungunya, dengue, zika, leishmaniasis, rabies, tuberculosis, schistosomiasis, and the always-festive traveler's diarrhea.

Why didn't they just throw cholera. diphtheria, beriberi, rickets and the vapors in there to complete the cavalcade of 19th-century maladies we could theoretically contract?

Despite all of that, though, I'm very excited to go. It's going to be like the Oregon Trail of international vacations.

I give more thought to scheduling my vacation days than NASA gives to manned space missions

When you add up my vacation, personal days and floating holidays, I have something like 19 days of leisure to play with in 2025.

That's probably fairly typical of a white-collar professional of my age. Some people (particularly those with many years of tenure at their companies) have much more, others have much less. But that's what I have.

While I find it to be pretty generous, I realize I'm looking at this through very American eyes. Those in other countries tend to have more off time – often considerably more – than we do. I'm so conditioned to our system here that if you gave me the Scandinavian treatment and granted me six weeks off a year, I wouldn't know what to do with myself.

In any case, those 19 days are what I have, and I give careful thought as to how I use them.

And to be clear, I do use them. All of them. As I've written before, I don't understand those who leave paid holidays on the table.

• Right off the bat I know I'll burn a week's worth in late July for our church's annual Bible school/retreat at Slippery Rock University. It's a highlight of the year for us and a non-negotiable expenditure of off time (even the recovery day I'll take after we get back).

• As I mentioned last week, we just recently scheduled a trip to Brazil. It's a Wednesday-to-Wednesday thing, but one of those days is a holiday, which means I only have to use five off days. Good deal.

• I also burn a day every spring on high school track PA announcing gigs. I'm announcing five meets this spring over six days in April and May. Some of those are weekdays, with meet start times all in the range of 4pm. That means I have to leave the office around 3pm to make it to the track and get myself prepared before the announcements and event calls begin. Total those early departures across the spring and it means I need to burn a personal day to ensure the company and I are square. Again, that's fine.

I already used one vacation day this year when Terry and I went to Florida in early February to visit Jared and Lyndsey. Add up that day, plus the track announcing day, plus five days for Brazil, plus the six days I take for Slippery Rock, and we're down to just six days to use throughout the rest of the year.

Here's where you have to have a strategy. Do I hold onto them just in case something happens? Like, when Chloe's baby is born, will it be during the week, and will I want to burn a day or two to spend with her and my grandchild at the hospital? Maybe.

Do I want to take off 5-6 days in late December so I don't have to work at all over Christmas and New Year's? Possibly.

Or, rather than using most of it at one time, do I instead enjoy a series of three- or four-day weekends in the summer and fall, as I wrote last August?

These are all legitimate questions, and while I've certainly given them due consideration, I've not yet reached any decisions.

I've said this before, but I think the planning and anticipation of vacations is as much (or more) fun than the vacations themselves. I can't wait to see how this all goes.

Having an adventurous daughter means you end up in some exotic places

 

One day several weeks ago, Elissa sent me the text above.

The minute I read it, I knew my fate was sealed. There was no way I was saying no to an invitation to visit Brazil.

Thus, next month, Elissa, Terry, Jack and I are hopping on a plane and heading south for five days in Rio de Janeiro.

It would never have occurred to me to travel to Brazil. I simply wouldn't have thought of it on my own.

But Elissa thought of it because she is a traveler (and travel planner) par excellence. One time she went to Sweden by herself and attended a Kendrick Lamar concert in Stockholm.

Again, by herself. Who does that?

Elissa and her boyfriend Mark will have just returned from Scotland by the time we take this Brazil trip, so Mark opted to sit this one out. I don't blame him. International travel, while always a thrill, is also exhausting.

You may recall that my last overseas trip was to Paris to attend the 2024 Olympics. I came home with a head full of memories and a body full of COVID.

You take the good with the bad, I guess.

One of the great things about Rio for American travelers is that the time difference is negligible. The city is just one hour ahead of Cleveland this time of year, which is great.

On the other hand, getting there is going to be a bit arduous. We take an afternoon flight down to Houston, stay there a few hours, then board another plane for an overnight flight to our destination.

I don't sleep particularly well on planes when I'm not in business class, so I'm expecting that first full day in Brazil to be a tiring one.

Still, it's Brazil, and who knows whether we'll ever have the chance to get back? So off we go.

We have somewhat of a personal connection to the country in that we hosted two Brazilian students in our home for a week back in 2012. Paula and Luiz were wonderful young people, and we still occasionally connect with them on Facebook.

(Click here to read a 13-year-old blog post about that experience.)

I'm looking forward to meeting new Brazilian people on this next adventure. They are, as a rule, outgoing, generous and very hug-oriented people.

I just wish we could get to them without the whole overnight flying thing.

The ins and outs of kid-bragging

There are a lot of great stories about my dad. Usually they're about things he would say or habits of his that would make us all laugh.

The one that comes to mind a lot these days is the way he would claim ownership of us as his children if, and only if, we did something good. If not, we belonged solely to our mom. For example, I played five years of football and was a running back. If I did something wrong, like fumble the ball, he would always lean over to someone and say, "Did you see what Kathryn's kid just did?" But if I scored a touchdown, well then I was clearly Bob Tennant's Kid.

He was just messing around, I know, but that kind of thing was SO him. It was his joking way of dealing with what I've come to realize were intense feelings of pride and love for his kids. He didn't grow up in a situation where he received a lot of love from his parents, so I suppose he wasn't sure how to deal with and/or show it to his own kids.

One of the fun things about being a parent is when your children do something great. We may not admit it, but I think deep down we all feel that any accomplishment of theirs is in some way ours, too. After all, we raised the kid, right? We taught them everything they know. That child is MY creation. (This, of course, leaves God embarrasingly out of the equation. I imagine He tends to be a little bemused when we think that way.)

In the 21st century, many parents use Facebook as a way to tout their kids' achievements. Some people are annoyed by this, but I absolutely love it. Seriously, I enjoy reading about what my friends' kids are doing, especially if I've known the kids since they were babies. And it's not only what the young ones themselves have done, but also how intensely proud I know their parents are.

Of course, it's also possible to abuse this privilege, or for it to just plain backfire. If you post something like "So proud that little Johnny managed to pass two of his five classes this semester! His parole officer will be pleased," then I'm going to mock you. Openly. You have asked for this sort of treatment.

On the other end of the spectrum, don't gloat too much, either. If your kid is offered a full ride to Harvard, there are two ways to announce this news:

THE RIGHT WAY: "Mary will be attending Harvard University in the fall on a full academic scholarship. Congratulations to my wonderful daughter!"

THE WRONG WAY: "Mary's going to Harvard and I want you losers to guess how much it's going to cost us...NOTHING! That's right, NOTHING! WOO HOO! While your little simpleton is struggling at community college, my kid will be soaking up a FREE Ivy League education. WHO'S THE MAN? WHO'S THE MAN? That's right, me! ME! In your face!"

I don't often get to sit in the stands with other parents at my kids' sporting events because I'm usually on the field coaching. But when I do get the opportunity to spectate, I find there's an interesting passive-aggressive dynamic among, say, the soccer parents. Our team will score a goal and everyone will clap, especially the parents of the kid who got the goal. But I can almost see the little thought bubbles over some of the other parents' heads as they think to themselves, "Well, YEAH, of course your kid scored a goal. That's what happens when you NEVER PASS THE **** BALL."

We're intensely protective of our kids, aren't we? And that's good. It's your job to be that way. But when it results in you denegrating the ball-sharing habits of a 10-year-old, then maybe you're taking it too far...

Anyway, the point is, there's a fine line between taking pride in your child's accomplishments and becoming That Parent. You don't ever want to become That Parent, the one who constantly brags about their own kid while subtly putting down everyone else's children. Once you become That Parent, you can never go back. You will be branded forever.

Oh, and before I forget, Elissa is getting a whole pile of college scholarship offers, Chloe is a finalist to be picked for a three-week trip to Brazil, Jared led his indoor soccer team in goals, Melanie was awesome in the middle school play, and Jack is a genius who has been reading since he was in the womb. But I don't want to brag...