Kindness of Strangers

Round-the-world travel is a complete subculture.  It even has its own name:  RTW.  In our research, we discovered that there exists a whole brand of travel agents who specialize in RTW airline tickets.  Like, seriously, that’s all they do all day:  book tickets for people like us.  Being a career counselor I find this fascinating, and can’t help but wonder who ends up pursuing that line of work.  As someone who can barely use Orbitz to find a simple airfare from Albuquerque to Phoenix, this job is my worst nightmare.  I imagine ex-backpackers, hopped up on caffeine, furiously chewing gum and typing madly, smoke whisping from their fingers.  They know all the airline abbreviations.  They know the quickest way to get from Brisbane to Timbuktu, and can list, in alphabetical order, the airlines that serve the Kathmandu airport.  They are the gurus of the RTW world.

After last Sunday’s disappointing call to the airlines, we decided to investigate the options available with RTW agents.  There are a number of outfits out there, most of them located in major metropolitan centers (read: not Albuquerque), so we sent out a slew of emails detailing our itinerary.  Within a few days we received our first response from Charlie, an agent with a brokerage firm in London.  Because we learned it’s dramatically cheaper to begin from Europe, we decided to research the option of beginning our RTW ticket there, and Charlie put together a pretty good itinerary.  The next day we received another response, which Maikael forwarded me.  “This is from the place in San Francisco,” he wrote.  The agent?  Charlie. 

I was confused.  Charlie isn’t a name you hear every day.  In fact, I know only one Charlie, and he goes by the name Charles.  What were the odds that there were two RTW travel agents named Charlie?  Convinced I had read the email wrong — it must have been another email from London Charlie — I scrolled back up to the top.  But no, it was definitely a different Charlie.  Or, as I now call him, San Francisco Charlie. 

San Francisco Charlie is from AirTreks, one of the largest firms in the RTW biz.  He offered us a pretty good itinerary, too, and I can’t help but wonder if, in a few weeks, there will be a bidding war between the two Charlies.  We will pit them against one other, Charlie to Charlie, driving the price of our RTW ticket down to cost.  I can hear the phone conversation now:  “Well, San Francisco Charlie said he could do it for $4,000.  Can you do any better, London Charlie?”  Maybe they will someday meet and write a travel book together, offering tips of the trade.  The title, of course, will be, “A Tale of Two Charlies.”  I am beginning to wonder if being named Charlie is a prerequisite for this job, the advertisment reading, ”Seeking RTW travel agent.  Must type 800+ WPM.  Those not named Charlie need not apply.” 

A few days later we receive a response from another San Francisco-based agent.  He says our itinerary is too complicated, and that he can’t do any better than the OneWorld Alliance.  I scroll down to the bottom of the email.  His name is Chris.  It never would have worked out anyway.