PERSPECTIVE FROM THE 19^TH HOLE: This is the title I chose for my personal blog, which is meant to give me an outlet for one of my favorite crafts – writing – plus use an image from my favorite sport, golf. Out of college, my first job was as a reporter for the Daily Astorian in Astoria, Oregon, and I went on from there to practice writing in all of my professional positions, including as a Congressional press secretary in Washington, D.C., an Oregon state government manager in Salem and Portland, press secretary for Oregon’s last Republican governor (Vic Atiyeh), and a private sector lobbyist. This blog also allows me to link another favorite pastime – politics and the art of developing public policy – to what I write.

Most days, we hear new sad stories about international air travel, which it could be said by this old person, is getting more and more difficult.

My wife and I just returned from a cruise in the Mediterranean from Barcelona to Barcelona and, while the cruise was wonderful on the Oceania ship, the Riviera, the trip there and back was a nightmare.

Here’s how it went.

We started out by diving to the Portland Airport for a quick flight to Seattle. No problem, right?

But then, after we left the departure gate in Seattle, there was a mechanical problem on the airplace, so, obviously, it had to be fixed. Our plane wandered around on the ground trying to find an open gate, eventually finding a berth and the problem was fixed after about half an hour, allowing us to head off to Philadelphia.

We barely made our connection there – one reason we did was that the captain was late and that helped us — and then we were the 20th plane in line to take off — yes 20th!  That took an hour sitting on the tarmac.

But, we made it over the Atlantic and it was good to be on our ship in our stateroom where, finally, we could stretch and sleep.

Then, more bad news. We left Barcelona on Monday this week for an eight-and-an-hour flight to Newark.  Plus, the night before I got a very bad cold, so it was a tough trip all around for me and wife Nancy who had to sit next to me enduring my coughing bouts.  We got to Newark on time, then had to wait for a couple hours to catch our flight to Seattle — yes, Seattle again, not Portland.

That went okay, too, I guess, but it was more than six hours from Newark to Seattle and I was coughing all the way.

Once in Seattle at about 7:30 p.m., we hoped to be able to catch a Horizon flight down to Portland, but all of them were full until ours at 10:05 p.m.  Plus, once we boarded that plane, we had to wait a half hour for the pilot to arrive, again sitting on the tarmac with nothing to do but twiddle our thumbs.

We made it home at about 1 p.m., more than 24 hours after leaving Barcelona.

When I relayed this situation to one of my friends, he said I should count my lucky stars that I was not booted off the plane on one of these trips. Point made!

Another friend said that, given all of these problems with international air travel and others like them, he was not interesting in heading overseas anytime soon.

After being home for a couple days, still recovering from being sick, I agree – no more overseas trips for me. We’ll see if I make good on the pledge.