In a few minutes the funeral mass for Senator Edward M. Kennedy will begin. I am blogging while listening and occasionally watching the TV coverage of this event, this end of an era, a time that many of us mark our years by the joys and tragedies that befell the Kennedy family.

 

Chris Matthews attributed a quote to Tim Russert, "Why go to other people's funerals? They won't come to yours." I Googled that comment and the closest one I found (the subject line of this post) was attributed to Clarence Day, who authored Life with Father, and a variation to Yogi Berra.

 

The next Clarence Day quote on the site I visited was: "Information's pretty thin stuff, unless mixed with experience."

 

That quote describes one of the reasons I created Great Getaways. I'll explain:

 

My father, an importer of screws, nuts and bolts, began traveling around the world in the early 1950's. He found a way to combine a career and an avocation, his love of travel. In fact, my parents' honeymoon was a cruise---in 1939---wow! Back to my story: Dad and Mom often took my brother, sister, and me on family vacations, thus passing the wanderlust from parents to children.

 

As a toddler I had been to Wisconsin and Florida; as a preschooler, back to Florida, Wisconsin, and add a dash of California; in elementary school, I added many other US States, a freighter cruise from Toronto to Montreal, and a two week cruise to the Caribbean. Junior High years saw the addition of more US states and Washington, DC, London, Paris, Rome, and Israel. High school included lots more travel--more cruises, 2 weeks in Hawaii, many more visits to Florida and California, and a month and 1/2 in Israel.

 

I won't bore you with a laundry list of all the places I've visited since then. Suffice to say, I loved to travel---it was escape, it was adventure, it was living history---the stuff that made my life complete.

 

Over the years as I sought advice on planning my next adventure, I found that the best advice received was not by people who claimed to know about a destination, but from those who had EXPERIENCED the destination. Please don't read to me from a glossy brochure or fancy website---that only proves that your first grade teacher taught you to read. Talk to me, relate with me, discuss with me your personal experience---what you discovered, what you recommend to do as well as what to avoid.

 

17 years ago armed with a wealth of travel experience and no knowledge about how to operate this type of business, I began my company, Great Getaways. What I quickly learned (aside from the awkward DOS programs of airline software) was that as much as I had traveled, it was but a small dent in the many options available in the world. So, how to I keep to my belief that experience always trumps information?

 

Call it luck (when preparation meets opportunity), I was invited to become a member of Virtuoso (www.virtuoso.com), "a network of the world’s finest travel agencies with knowledgeable advisors who draw upon first-hand experience to craft the perfect vacation for you." Now, I have partners around the world who can offer you EXPERIENCE about any place in the world---and even in Space (you do know I'm an Accredited Space Agent for Virgin Galactic, don't you?)

 

So, who knew that one of the gifts I would receive today as I watch the final tribute to Teddy Kennedy would be validation by Clarence Day of the foundation of my company, that "Information's pretty thin stuff, unless mixed with experience."