8/3/24

Howdy,

Side note: Olivia and I are heading to Florence/Tuscany in a week. If you have any tips, lmk!

Photo:

Guinness World Records

I took my parents to the Maritime Museum in Lisbon last week and they had the jet ski on display that had been used to set the record above in 2013. Reading the sign, I was like “600 miles?!?, I could do that”.

Come to find out, that record was crushed 5 years later, extended to 4600.62 miles.

So I won’t be adding a jet ski Guinness record to my two truths and lie intro anytime soon, but I have added it to my bucket list to find one to break at some point in my life. What would yours be?

Idea:

Flying on a private jet may not be in reach yet (or ever), but I’ve recently spent more time thinking about how to make the experiences around travel less of a hassle.

So, here’s my latest idea: a website that shows the most enjoyable experience for any given airport route.

You’d plug in, for example, Lisbon to Luton (that’s one of London’s many airports) round trip, xyz dates, and it spits out the best experience.

Would include something like:

LIS>LUT

• Airport transfer (options)

  • Uber reserved - schedule pickup at 8:00am ~XX€

  • Alternative, Blacklane - schedule pickup at 8:00am. ~XX€

• Lisbon Airport

  • FastTrack passes- (link)

  • Lounge options - only 1 past customs

    • TAP lounge - XX€

• Luton Airport -

  • Signature Class Elite service - XXX€

• Luton to final destination

  • Signature Class Elite service

LUT>LIS

• Airport transfer (options)

  • Train - X€

  • Uber reserved - schedule pickup at 8:00am ~XX€

  • Alternative, Blacklane - schedule pickup at 8:00am. ~XX€

• Luton Airport -

  • Signature Class Elite service

• Airport Transfer

  • Uber pickup

  • Driver pickup

You get the gist. At the core, it’d be a database of services/perks/etc that would be tagged by location and could be surfaced with a search.

Actually the best experience would be for you to put in your home and final destination address, and it would even recommend the best flights based on convenience of travel.

While I was recommended it after our last trip to London, apparently this Signature Class Elite service whisks you away off of your Easyjet landing in Luton and speeds up customs and baggage through the private airline terminal. That avoids 90% of the traditional hassle of flying.

There have got to be services like this at different airports as well. Let the crowdsourcing begin!

Thought:

Sunset Times

So we all know that in the summer it stays lighter longer the farther north you go, right?

Yes, but not always. Turns out there’s another factor at play.

If I were to tell you that sunset in Panama City, FL was 7:53pm on June 20th (summer solstice 2024), could you guess Austin’s and Tallahassee’s? It should be the same right?

Not exactly. Where a place is in its local time zone can also play a pretty big role in determining its sunset. This is also the case for sunrises, but for the purposes of this post I’m sticking with sunsets.

The actual sunsets for each of the 3 cities on June 20th, 2024.

Panama City, FL: 7:53 PM CDT

Austin, TX: 8:35 PM CDT​

Tallahassee, FL: 8:42 PM EDT​

At first this might not make sense, until you start to look at where the cities are in relation to their local time zone.

Tallahassee is on the western edge of its local time zone, Eastern Daylight Time in this case. Panama City is on the eastern edge of its, Central Daylight Time.

Austin is much farther west in the Central time zone. This is why Tallahassee and Austin have a more similar sunset.

The map above is from this blog post and for a much larger world map, click here.

Now that you know all this, it may not break your brain when I tell you that, even in the summer, Tallahassee’s sunset time is later than New York City’s (some 700 miles north).

See ya next month!

-Troy