Nothing Ventured, Nothing Gained

I have a new venture!

In December, I joined Travel Best Bets as a ‘Connected Agent’, one who works from home instead of in the office.  I hope that in a few years I will be able to transition out of supervising assistants in providing speech therapy. I will probably continue to see a few of my own clients,  because I really do love helping adults whose first language is not English, learn to pronounce English better so that their accent doesn’t hold them back in their careers.

When this opportunity came up, I took it because I was so frustrated at not being able to cancel my flights when I had to cancel my 3 month Australia trip in 2019 because I couldn’t get through to them, and because I booked my own flights, I didn’t have access to the agent phone lines to cancel. So I was just a ‘no show’. (I did eventually get my money back though, because everything was booked on a credit card that has trip insurance as one of its benefits.) Along the line, I do hope to make some money on commissions by building a clientele, but my main motivation was to get access to deals and booking engines as my own agent so that I am never left hanging again.

For the last few months I have been taking a number of training courses on the things one needs to know to be a travel consultant. It is very interesting and there certainly is a lot to learn! So, I rebooked my friend Linda’s and my Baltic cruise for the end of August 2022 with the agency it had originally been booked through (I had to go with them to access all my future cruise credits from the cancellation), and then I did my own booking for a repositioning transatlantic trip to the US, on the same ship immediately following.

Last week a great looking opportunity came in to my email from MSC for a 20 night repo cruise from Dubai to Italy through the Suez Canal in the spring of 2022. One of the other agents at Travel Best Bets has a group block of cabins on this cruise and is willing to let me work with her to fill the block. This is my first opportunity to be an agent for others in coordinating not just someone’s vacation, but jumping in with both feet into organizing a group booking.

This is all very energizing and just the boost I need, after almost a year of living alone in a new city during Covid!

On The Road Again!

I am finally getting away for a while. Yay! 

It’s not a far away trip, it is local, but it is to an area of BC that I have never been to, even though I have lived half my life here. On Thursday Sept. 3rd, I drove up to Woss, on the northern part of Vancouver Island, using the old highway along the coast to visit my sister there for a couple of nights.

What a relaxing time with my sister. We took a couple of walks: one with the purpose of picking some of the late blackberries; the other was just a walk but on our route we found many huckleberry bushes still in berry! Both walks were very tasty!  We also drove up Mount Cain and explored some of the logging roads on the way, looking at the views and taking pictures. 

On Saturday, I drove back down to Comox and took a ferry over to Powell River, on the mainland. The area from there to Gibsons, near West Vancouver, is known as the Sunshine Coast and I have not visited it before. I’ll spend about a week exploring the small communities along the coast before taking a ferry to West Vancouver and another to Nanaimo, on the island before returning to Parksville. I have often heard of this circle route and others have told me how lovely a trip it is. A bonus is that the weather forecast is for hot sunny days for at least that long, possibly even longer. How fortunate!

I am very impressed with BC Ferries management of this virus. If you leave your car for any reason, on land or at sea a mask is required. And when there were a few people walking in the lot waiting to board, without masks, they made an announcement on the intercom to remind them. I did go up through the main deck to the outside ares to take some photos and everything was well organized and signed for distancing.