Unhappy endings: Avoid a sad vacation finale

Don’t cut corners on pet care.
The folks whose turtle burned their house down already know that. And so do I. A few weeks ago, while I was away on assignment, one of my beloved cats was run over by a car. Instead of putting my kitties in a kennel, as I should have, I asked a friend to come by twice a day to feed them. I’m still grieving the loss of my companion. I can’t read the comments on my own blog without losing it. Lesson learned? Make sure your pets are safe before you go on vacation.

Take extra precautions when you see trouble coming.
Remember the 2004 hurricane season? Florida resident Evelyn Fine does. She was having her Orlando home remodeled during the middle of the summer and thought it might be a good time to go on vacation. If you’ll recall that summer, there were storms lined up one after the other at several points, taking aim at the Sunshine State. Wouldn’t you know it, one of them took out her air conditioner and Fine’s irreplaceable wine collection was, in her words, “cooked.”  “Much was corked and the balance was barely drinkable,” she says. It might have been a good time to move them to a nearby wine storage facility, where the bottles could be stored safely.

Stay home.
Back in 1995, when I lived on Long Key, Fla. — a remote island between Islamorada and Marathon in the Florida Keys, I watched Hurricane Opal approaching. I was scheduled to fly to Albuquerque, N.M., for a family reunion. But with the storm on a direct path for the Keys, I decided to call off my trip and take my family to the mainland instead. What made me change my mind? Maybe it was the Monroe County sheriff who stopped by our house and asked for our names and whether or not we were staying in the house. He needed to know how many bodies to look for if the hurricane hit. Fortunately, it didn’t. Sometimes the best way to prevent a vacation tragedy is to not go in the first place.

Not every vacation disaster is avoidable. Karina Lok, a retiree who now lives in San Francisco, was returning to her home in Hawaii from California with her husband several years ago. She couldn’t have known the tragedy that what was about to strike.

“The airline had overbooked our flight by 33 senior citizens who needed to make a Hawaiian cruise departure,” she remembers. “My husband convinced me to give up my seat. He was tempted to as well, but he had an important meeting to make.”

On the flight back, Lok had what she describes as an “uncomfortable” feeling. “Nothing seemed right,” she says.

When she landed, her husband wasn’t there to pick her up. She spent several hours waiting, and finally rented a car and drove home. On her answering machine was a message from the city morgue. “My husband was killed by a red light runner three miles from the airport on his way to pick me up,” she says.

Every Monday, my column takes a close look at what makes the travel business tick. Your comments are always welcome, and if you can’t get enough of my column, drop by my blog for daily insights into the world of travel.