For a small fortune, you can escape winter blahs
You are so over this winter. You feel this disgust festering deep in the nearly hypothermic core of your being, from the base of your aching back to the tips of your frozen toes.
Staring out the nearest window, you mutter about career and life paths not taken that might have led you to magical places with names like Fort Myers or Tucson. With more snow and cold in the forecast, your standards are slipping. You’re starting to feel the subtle pull of a paradise known as Paducah.
What you need is a distraction. Something to look forward to. Something to take your mind off of the fact that you shouldn’t be inside reading this beside the fire you’ve kindled from kitchen chairs, but outside chiseling the ice off of your front stoop.
You need something to take you away, and not that empty promise of Calgon
that you fell for back in the late 1980s. A warm bath served only to direct your gaze toward the ceiling, and a water spot caused by ice dams in the gutters.
If you graduated from Ohio State University, the alumni association has provided some travel opportunities to cheer you up.
Book now for “Around the World
— A Private Jet Expedition,” which puts you on a “custom private jet, flying direct from one remote location to the next so you can make the most of every destination.” Checkbook ready? It’s a bargain at $82,950.
Per person. Yeah.
The sales pitch reads like a lover’s whisper — as it should for a four-week vacation with a cost that exceeds Franklin County’s median household income by $30,000.
“Explore nine of the world’s most iconic destinations. ... This 24-day itinerary is truly a journey of a lifetime. Witness the wonders of nature on the Serengeti Plain and while snorkeling the Great Barrier Reef. Walk ancient corridors in the Lost City of Petra and discover the majestic work of the Inca at Machu Picchu. Gaze at humankind’s greatest monument to love — the Taj Mahal — and wonder at the enigmatic moai of Easter Island.”
Now that you’ve finished Googling “Lost City of Petra,” you should know that the trip, which runs from Sept. 27 through Oct. 20, also includes stops in Cambodia and Morocco, and a chance to visit the Ngorongoro Crater in Tanzania, an enormous volcanic caldera teeming with lions and elephants.
The alumni association offers less extravagant trips, too. There are still seats for the Iceland Expedition next fall, although $998 seems steep considering that you make the trip to Iceland every time you wobble and slide your way to the car or bus stop.
Yes, the around-theworld trip seems like the way to go, the very best option to relieve the stress brought on by this crummy weather, spiking utility bills, and crippling student loan debt.
If you’ve never packed for a monthlong trip around the world — but really, who hasn’t? — you can find packing tips online from the tour’s operator, TCS World Travel of Seattle.
“Most of the day, you’re sightseeing, but at night you might want to dress up,” an experienced world traveler shares on the TCS site. “A scarf can make the outfit you’re wearing dressier.”
That sounds nice. In Ohio, you wear a scarf to prevent your nose from freezing and falling off.
For such a once-ina-lifetime experience (the trip, not the nasal amputation), it would be wise to set aside cash starting right away. Just a little each day, mind you, to ease the financial sting.
If you start today, you’ll need to tuck $324 in the cookie jar, and then do it again tomorrow, and again and again, every day until Sept. 27.
This might be a good time to earn some extra money.
Pop an Aleve and pull on those boots. Grab that shovel and start knocking on doors. You’ll need to move a mountain of snow if you ever hope to stand on the rim of the Ngorongoro Crater.