where I was when Covid-19 really started to impact travel. It was March 2020: I was in the UK, watching a news broadcast about how the country was shutting down all travel while simultaneously reading a notification on my phone that my flight back to the United States the following day was canceled.
That UK trip had been my first solo trip abroad, and it gave me a taste for travel that I hadn’t felt since the family trips of my youth, when my father would schlep us kids through airports and across oceans on journeys of discovery. As an adult, I craved adventure again, so once the world began to adjust to Covid-19 and travel became easier, I went back on the move.
This was especially helpful when my checked bags were left behind on a flight from the US to Australia; I could see the bags on a map still sitting at my home airport, I could see when they arrived at my airport in Australia, and I could show the baggage agents that my bags were nearby when I went looking for them in the terminal.