Sounds Like a No Plan

I recently traveled to New York City to pick up and fly back home with Thing One (The Elder), who was returning from an overseas trip. I love New York. And not because that phrase—on t-shirts, hats, marketing materials, and so much more—commands people to do so. No, I genuinely love the place. I’m pretty certain that I’m a New Yorker trapped in a non-New Yorker’s body.

My stay in the area lasted from my arrival at about 1:00 p.m. into LaGuardia Airport, in Queens, until about 8:00 p.m. the next day, when we flew home out of Newark Airport. So, not much time. 

I travel hacked the trip pretty well by using airline and Chase Ultimate Rewards points to cover most of the cost of the flights, and a free hotel anniversary night to cover the cost of my one-night hotel stay. I’d also decided in advance to spend the afternoon of my arrival just walking around Queens (which I’d long wanted to explore) and maybe Manhattan for a little while. In short, a day that promised to be low-expense and, as far as I was concerned, much fun.  

I left the agenda for our departure date open, knowing that there’d be a good chance that Thing One would want to sleep at least a few hours, or more, following her long day of travel back to the U.S. of A. I figured if she slept, I’d work during the day. If she instead was up for doing something, we’d take the MTA (which I understood to be the greater New York City-area public transportation system) into New York and then to Newark Airport. Where, exactly, we’d go and what we’d do was purposely unplanned to allow for flexibility. But I figured it’d mostly involve walking around and exploring an area we’d not been to.

It’d have seemed that the overall cost of this trip to one of the country’s more expensive metropolitan areas was going to be close to nil.  

I’d thought that I planned this trip in advance as I typically plan a trip: I try to think out the trip in my head, anticipate this or that realistic potential snag or opportunity, and sketch out an outline for each day, with a few anchor activities and places. This often includes basic information as to meals. That is, whether we’ll plan to eat this or that meal at a restaurant, or eat food that we’d brought or planned on cooking.

However, I always build in flexibility so that we can on the fly decide to change course for whatever reason. If we want to stick to the plan, great. If we want to tweak it, great. If we want to junk it for good reason, great.

This approach has worked well for us for years and has helped make all of our trips pretty fantastic. What I didn’t fully appreciate until this weekend trip, however, is quite how much money that planning has likely saved us. 

For you see, Dear Reader, while I thought I’d adequately planned this super short trip, it turned out I’d apparently considered it such a no-brainer that I didn’t sufficiently think things through. That cost me money. Not even close to enough money to cause any particular problems. Far from it. But enough to be highly annoying and provide a sting I won’t soon forget. 

Meal Prep

Knowing that I’d be in Queens—which may be the most ethnically diverse place on earth—upon arrival, I planned to eat at a mom-and-pop restaurant. I settled on a Filipino place I’d discovered from some online research. Spoiler alert: it was great.

But do you know what most people (and especially me) also typically do each day? Eat dinner. That’s what. You know what I didn’t do? Plan what I’d do for dinner. 

Knowing that I’d have to wake up very early for my flight to New York, I’d realized far in advance that there’d be a better than even chance that by dinnertime on my arrival date, I’d be pretty tired. And that there’d be a good chance I’d just want to eat in the hotel room. Had I properly thought things through in advance, I’d have brought food from home to eat for dinner. That’d have been a cheap and, for me, a very good and practical option.

Another option that I thought of in Queens (then having realized that I’d stupidly not brought any food from home for dinner) was to get some fixings for dinner at one of the outstanding mom-and-pop groceries which, I can tell you from my experience, were all fantastic and pretty cheap. But I didn’t do that either, for reasons I can’t explain, other than sheer stupidity.

I also could have stayed in Queens and enjoyed a relatively cheap and very tasty dinner at another mom-and-pop restaurant. But I didn’t do that either. In part because I’d decided to walk all the way to Manhattan (more on that in my next post). Also because of stupidity.

As it was, around dinnertime I found myself in about the worst possible place: Midtown Manhattan. There, many of the food options are: (1) expensive and often overrated higher-end dining, (2) overpriced smaller or chain restaurants offering “meh”-inducing food; (3) overpriced street vendors; and (4) overpriced convenience stores. Are you sensing a theme, Dear Reader?

In the end, I chose the street vendor option, thinking that at least the food would be good street food, which I typically love. That turned out to be a bad bet. Not only was the food overpriced. Not only was there far too little food that came as part of my order. But the food wasn’t very good. That just added to the bad taste in my mouth from the whole experience.

Lesson Number One: Ya gotta eat when you’re travelling. And eating can be expensive, if you let it. Figure you’ll eat three meals a day and make a plan—even a rough one—for all of them. By all means spend all the money you want on good food. But don’t get flat-footed so that you limit your options.

Penn Name

After eating, it was time to get from where I was (Penn Station) to my hotel in Newark. At LaGuardia, I’d bought an MTA transit card (which costs $1) and loaded it with $11, enough for four rides. I’d researched the public transit route from New York City to Newark before leaving home. At least, I thought I had. 

It appeared that I could take the MTA there, even if there might be a transfer or two. As a long-time, seasoned public transportation rider, transfers are little bother for me.

At Penn Station—into and out of which go MTA, Long Island Railroad, New Jersey Path, and Amtrak trains—I went up to the MTA information desk to ask for the best options for getting to Newark. The woman I spoke with replied that I needed to take the New Jersey Path to Newark.

Wait, what?! I couldn’t take the MTA? Had I misunderstood what I’d researched? 

I then worked my way over to the New Jersey Path information counter to ask how to get to Newark. After the woman I spoke with told me the Path line I needed to take, I asked if I taking the MTA to Newark was an option. “Nope,” she replied. “Nuts!,” I yelled to myself in my head. So, I walked over to the Path ticket counter to buy a ticket. That ticket cost not the $2.75 or $5.50 I thought it would, but rather $15.25. Grrr.

Lesson Number Two: Know how you’re gonna get around when you travel, and what your options will cost. Maybe you pay more for speed, and maybe you take a cheaper, slower route. Either way, you’re prepared and you know your options in case you want to make a change on the fly.

Shuttle stay, or shuttle go?

My hotel was near the airport. In fact, as the hotel had “Newark Airport” in the name, I figured that it was all but connected to the airport. Before I left on my trip, I’d briefly researched whether it was physically possible for me to walk to the airport terminals from the hotel. I’d found that walking either wasn’t an option, or wasn’t an easy option. But as the hotel runs a free shuttle to and from the airport, I figured I’d take it if I confirmed upon arrival that walking definitely wasn’t an easy option.

I had to pick up Thing One from the airport at 4:30 a.m. Knowing what I did then about how to get from the hotel to the airport, I planned on taking the shuttle. But at about 4:00 a.m., it dawned on me that maybe the shuttles don’t run 24/7. I called the hotel front desk to ask about this and was informed that no, the shuttles don’t run all day. The first run is at 6:00 a.m. Ugh.

The person at the front desk offered to call me a cab, and I asked how much the ride would cost. Twenty-five dollars was the answer. Another “ugh.” I decided to call a Lyft, which ended up costing about $14. Of course, I had to take a Lyft back to the hotel, too. That was another $14. So, $28 in unanticipated expenses. Worth mentioning is that public transportation wasn’t an easy or logistically realistic option. 

Lesson Number Three: If you have trip plans at odd hours, do research and ask questions with those odd hours in mind so that you know if your plans are doable or if you need to make special accommodations.

We’ve got baggage

Turned out that Thing One did want to sleep after getting to the hotel. She ultimately slept for about three hours. As the area around the hotel wasn’t what one would call tourist-friendly, exploring it wasn’t in the cards. That left us having to decide whether to spend a scant few hours in New York, or several hours in the airport. Thinking that the former might be way more trouble than it was worth given the time and effort it’d take to get to wherever we wanted to explore, and then back to Newark Airport, we reluctantly decided on the latter. 

Thankfully, by this time the hotel shuttles were running, so we took one. Once at the airport, we went to check in. It was then that I discovered that I’d neglected to advance-pay for our checked bag. “Argh!,” I exclaimed. I consequently had to pay on the spot. That cost $35, instead of the $30 it’d have cost if I’d paid further in advance. Just $5 extra, but that was an unforced error of the type I rarely make. So, it bothered me. 

Lesson Number Four: If you’re checking baggage, pay in advance and make sure that at least a day before you leave you check your flight itinerary and that you’ve paid for any checked bags or other extra-fee items. My mistake only cost me $5. Often the price differences between advance and on-the-spot bag-checking are greater.

Thought for food

As for meals on our departure date, I’d purposely booked a place that had a free breakfast buffet. So, breakfast was covered. Had I adequately planned ahead, however, I’d either have taken some packaged items from the buffet or brought food from home to have for lunch. But . . . I did not do that. 

Sometime after arriving at the airport around 2:00 p.m., I got hungry. As one tends to do around mid-day. Then hungrier. Thing One got hungry, too. Due to my poor planning, and now being captive in an airport, our food options were limited to overpriced, mostly low-quality restaurants, which I reflexively avoid. Eventually, however, we capitulated. Thing One ended up getting mediocre pad thai that cost $18 (surely the most expensive pedestrian pad thai we’ve ever had). I used a restaurant gift card to get a far-too-small portion of some wildly overpriced food for free. 

Lesson Number FIve: Never . . ever . . . get boxed into a corner where your only food options are whatever an airport has to offer. Also, see lesson number one, above.

And in the end . . . 

All told, my unanticipated costs on the trip totalled about $50. I know, I know. Not much. Maybe even a pittance in the minds of many people. Regardless, it was more than what I’d anticipated spending. And mostly avoidable, or able to be mitigated by way of pretty basic, simple planning. That’s what bothered me so much.

Also, this was just one day. That’s what got me thinking that my ample planning on past trips must have saved us money. How much, exactly, I can’t know for sure. But I now have little doubt it’s thousands of dollars over the course of about 10 years.

I’m miffed with myself for not planning sufficiently for this trip. But I’m grateful for two things. One being what I now know to be pretty significant savings resulting from my planning for our past trips. And the other being the silver lining of this past weekend’s experience: for about $50 I (re-)learned the huge value of ample advance planning. Man, I love it when a plan comes together.