The Visual Science Lab : Getting ready to travel for fun, with someone else, is always an anxiety sport for me.

Thursday, September 25, 2025

Getting ready to travel for fun, with someone else, is always an anxiety sport for me.

Are you old enough to remember when traveling was fun? Before the TSA? Before online check-ins? Before restrictions on carry-ons and personal items? Before "getting to the airport two hours before your flight leaves? Before everyone got fat and spilled over the arm rest and into your space? Before crazy Red Staters tried to open the emergency exits at 30,000 feet? Before drunken fistfights in coach? Before cellphones used on speaker phone at full volume so everyone can hear? Yeah. It WAS better back then, in the golden age. Lots of room, lots of time and lots of fun.

I'm about to go on vacation. Just a long weekend. But I'm sweating bullets. And here's why: If you didn't marry someone EXACTLY like yourself you most probably have different attitudes about airline travel. And hotels. And transfers from the airport to the hotels. The differences can be rampant. And contentious.

I grew up with a military officer as a father. If he declared that we were leaving on a "family vacation" then you'd better be buckled into the back seat of the station wagon with a juice box in your hand at 5:30 a.m. so you can "beat the rush hour traffic." And if the departure time was scheduled for 5:30 am you needed to know that would be the exact time the transmission would move from park to reverse and the car would start to roll out of the driveway.

I married someone who grew up differently. She has fond memories of leisurely car rides, late departures after a calm and enjoyable breakfast, and memories of real vacations to places like DisneyLand and not just a twelve hour drive (non-stop) to see an ancient aunt and uncle pairing that you personally didn't know from Adam.

If we look at history it's all so revealing. Spouse never really had to travel for work. The beauty of working in a large ad agency was that her job was graphic design and art direction, after that she'd trust one of the many in-house producers to go on location; if necessary. On the other hand I flew so much in the 1990s, and even up to through 2018, that I think I might have spent almost as much time on planes as I did in the pool. And always, or nearly always, with tight schedules and expensive gear in tow.

Those were times when missing a flight could have profound financial consequences. And a domino effect on each subsequent part of a tightly scheduled, multi-day project.

If the airline says be there two hours before the flight I'm never quite sure exactly how to manage it. So I make it three hours. I have no idea how bad morning traffic will be. Maybe someone will wreck their pick-up truck and snarl traffic. No idea of how difficult it will be to find parking. There is always the persistent memory of how painful it is to move multiple, heavy cases of gear of delicate gear from car to check-in. And again, no idea of whether TSA will be fully staffed and reasonably quick or if there will be lines so long you'd think people were waiting for free money to be given away. It's all stressful. And once you get through the security lines and through the magnetometers and through the slow moving folks stopping in the middle of the corridor in order to slowly and carefully put their shoes back on, you then have to deal with the stress of knowing that this time you screwed yourself on the timing and you have a couple hours to cool your heels in one of the horrible chairs at the gate. Or to spend time in the Platinum Lounge listening to chubby sales guys lie to each other about how well business is going.... And, of course, delays. Always delays.

Nothing beats the frustration of a four or five hour delay on your first leg in your own hometown...

Spouse, on the other hand, is immune to the lingering travel PTSD I've accumulated. She has faith that traffic to the airport will always be light and efficient, and that there will always be a perfect parking spot just across from the terminal. She sees the "two hour before the departure " edict as either being a clever joke or a very flexible suggestion. She is certain that if we are running late the gate agents WILL re-open the doors for us. The weather on her travel days is always perfect whereas my leisure travel seems to occur just as the category 7 hurricane hurries on shore.

While she will get upgraded to first class the airlines will reintroduce a smoking section at the back of the plane and that's where I'll end up. As part of an airline "equipment substitution clause." And my bag full of lenses and cameras which I was careful to size for carry-on compliance will be gate-checked and lost but then found and, upon opening, will present a wonderful puzzle/mosaic of broken glass and fractured titanium alloy camera bodies, rent as through subject to violent, stratospheric re-entry.

I spent today upgrading our airline seats. And reserving parking in advance at the private, covered parking lot at the fringe of the airport. And reserving a town car transfer at the other end of the journey. And sending a note, which I am sure will be ignored, or provide fuel for the recipient, to go in the opposite direction, innocently asking to be roomed on a quiet floor at the hotel. It won't work. The room next door will be filled with quadruplets; all teething. Which will cause their parents to clash. Loudly.

But I try to be optimistic because my spouse is optimistic. We'll see which of us wins in the morning: The 5 am wake up for the 9:45 flight or the 7:55 am wake up for the 9:45 flight....

What camera did I finally decide to bring with me? It hardly matters. It's a family vacation and not a real job with a paycheck at the end. But, since you asked... My three top contenders were the Leica DLUX8, the Leica M240 (with a 50mm) or the Leica Q2. I charged batteries for all of them. I took each one out for a walk this week to audition them with the trip in mind. I fumbled around with them.

The DLUX 8 seemed to be the logical choice because it's the smallest and has a nice range of focal lengths. But then the M240 appealed to my "rugged individualist/Garry Winogrand/Lee Friedlander/Josef Koudelka masochism. You know, a hard-to-use camera with no functional assistance for those laboring under the emotional angst of hellish, modern travel. And no IBIS or OIS. I finally decided on the Q2 after a long process of evaluation. It's pretty small, works well. Has image stabilization. I have three of those bigger SCL-6 batteries for it (I may not even bring a charger for the first time in my adult life... if the batteries run out I'll pretend I always wanted to be a writer anyway...). The lens is fantastic and I need to use the Q2 a lot more than I have. Especially when it comes time to rationalize an upgrade.

Batteries go in the carry on. And all I'm taking for the long weekend is...carry on. Which is kind is a disturbing choice for words about luggage because it always makes me think of carrion. And the idea of "Vulture Luggage" is, in itself, cringey.

My idea of a perfect vacation? It goes one of two ways. Minimize the travel trauma by finding some place interesting to visit for about a month. Get there. Stay put and explore the area. Or stay home, stock in delicious treats, make it to every swim practice imaginable, go out to eat at my favorite places, read good, fun books, finish up vacation with a few selfies shot into plate glass windows of chic shops with mannequins on the opposite side of the glass. So much less stress.

I can rationalize travel stress pretty well when it's for work. And profit. But it's a whole different equation if it's just to, you know, go some place different and spend money on "experiences." But I bow to modern pressure. Seems everyone thinks vacations are a good thing. Now that I've effectively retired I have to ask: "What, exactly am I taking a vacation from?"