On the Road: First Cosmos Tour

The following blog was written on three separate days over the course of the tour:

It is day number 9, and I have a moment to write, an hour to breathe. And lots of stories to tell. With the first couple of days of my first solo over-the-road tour, it could only get better, especially if I maintain a good attitude and work hard, even though most of what went terribly wrong was not under my control.

Day number 1 is a relatively easy day. I meet and greet my passengers (referred to as PAX, an abbreviation I will use) either as they arrive in New York or, as in many cases, as I catch them in the hotel lobby on their second or third day. A couple of the PAX have just completed another COSMOS tour; their TD (tour director) even took the time to send me an e-mail to tell me how delightful they were. I enjoy meeting my PAX, and all goes well. Then Joanna comes to tak to me; she and her traveling companion have been in NY for a couple of days, and it seems that her passport has disappeared along with some other belongings. She has an appointment with the Australian consulate in an hour, but it looks like the temporary passport they will issue her will not allow her to leave the county and return. She has two options: not to travel with us to Canada and meet up with us back in the states or come to Canada and fly home from there. That seems strange to me, although I learn that it is accurate. Joanna would be forced to leave us in Boston and meet us again in Lancaster.

I stop checking in people around 6:30 even though 4 couples haven't arrived. They could arrive at any time, so I leave their packets at the desk and head to bed with a quick phone call later in the evening.

We pull the bags at 6:30 the next morning, although my driver doesn't arrive until about 7:20. He should have been there at 7; this would be the beginning of a difficult relationship. I was told to expect Marty, but there was Chris. And he doesn't smile. And he doesn't really talk. And that becomes very difficult to change. By 8:10 or so I am giving the safety talk, and our city guide, Eddie, takes us on a wonderful journey through Manhattan. He is witty, animated, funny, and knowledgeable. And a consummate New Yorker. About halfway through the tour he directs Chris to make a right when an impatient driver attempts to pass us on the right; we take off his mirror and his silver car has remnants of our bright red coach. Although we are in front of a police station, it is not the "correct" one; they call the appropriate precinct (the 5th) and we wait. And we wait. I make a few phone calls, and, luckily, we are right in front of a public park with bathrooms. After about an hour, I talk Eddie into taking our PAX for a walk; they get to see the steps of the court house on which Law and Order is filmed. When they return we still have a wait for the police followed by an additional wait for them to finish their report when they finally get there. After about an hour and a half, we are able to continue our tour, and with only one or two little rumblings.

We don't miss a thing, and we finish our morning in New York with a tour of Grand Central Terminal, one of my new favorite places after taking an extensive tour with guide extraordinaire, Justin Ferrate followed by lunch. I meet up with Joanna who has some hope that she might be able to find another solution, one that would later be dashed by the fact that the Australian consulate deemed her marriage certificate not the appropriate "state" document. Chris meets us on time, and we are off on our coach to our hotel in Brookline, or at least that is where I thought we were going.

My first lesson in communicating with my bus driver is making sure we are on the same page. We talked about the hotel. What I didn't realize is he had an old technical with a hotel that has since closed. About 30 minutes into Boston traffic I began to wonder where we were going only to learn we were heading to Braintree rather than Brookline, and after turning around and heading back into traffic, we finally arrived at the hotel an hour and a half late -- 7:30 p.m. And I still had to sell the optionals.

I canceled the "get-to-know" each other activity, and most PAX sat in the lobby restaurant for dinner and a chance to purchase the excursions for the tour. It was suggested that we might have pictures of the excursions to help our PAX make the decision about what they wanted to purchase, so I put together a book of pictures from my training tour and passed it around the coach after I gave a brief introduction to each of the choices. And it worked! I made a very nice commission on the optionals, and I am confident that my PAX's holiday will be enhanced by all of these experiences. I totally undersold the Oh Canada, Eh? show, a corny tourist evening that brought lots of complaints on my training tour. I would rather the people be happy. Ironically, the 11 people who went were thrilled and told me that I shouldn't undersell it so much!

As I was writing the above, time demanded a return to my PAX, and now, 5 days later I am finally getting to continue to blog about this experience. I am utterly, unbelievably exhausted. I give so much credit to people who do this on a full-time basis; my mind doesn't work too well ,anymore and I cannot imagine doing this for another 2 weeks, but I will.

I must have been tired when I began writing again since all I wrote were the above two sentences. The tour ended today, and the evaluations and notes in the tip envelope have put a different perspective on things. I was trying to talk myself into the fact that the driver wasn't ruining the trip -- that his consistent talking on the phone, isolation from the pax, turning in circles lost wasn't as obvious to the PAX, but that turns out not to be accurate. Most everyone recognized my friendliness and effort to please and work things out, but they also said I needed to be more communicative with Chris.

I need to reflect on the requirements of this job and see if I might have what it takes. But I also did have so many fabulous experiences with the group and met some tremendously smart, fun, and easy-going people. I promise a blog with some of those stories -- once I can "think" again.

Training Tour with Cosmos/Archers Direct

My trainers: Brenda Brooks, our tour director and Henry Horton, bus driver extraordinaire


14 days over the road training for my first adult tour, and I haven't written a thing. They were long days filled with touring, studying, 2370 miles, and a lot of fun but very little time to write on my blog. I suppose, like many people who keep a blog, I write for introspection, analysis, and the opportunity to share experiences, so now that I have a few hours to myself without anything that must be done right now, it's time to reflect on this extraordinary experience.




The first thing I say when asked about the tour is that there is a tremendous amount of paper work, but imagine this: I am on a helicopter flying over Niagara Falls. I didn't pay the $118 the excursion cost, and I got paid for taking the ride! As trainees we had to take all of the excursions so that we can sell them to the passengers on our own tours. As tour directors, we also escort our guests on all of the excursions, although we only ride the helicopter if there is room; on top of that, it is no secret that tour directors get a percentage of the sales of the excursions, so the more we sell, the more we make. As the cliche goes, a picture is worth a thousand words, so I took pictures on the training tour -- lots of them on the excursions. I created a book with greater in-depth descriptions of each of the activities with pictures of each, including the helicopter ride over the falls.







Helicopter ride over Niagara Falls

There are many challenges providing commentary and information on the road. I am not funny -- at all (ask my family, especially my brother-in-law, Ronny). I did tell a joke to an individual passenger (PAX) who laughed so hard, adding that I needed to tell her husband, that she gave me a little hope. It's an old joke -- What do we call someone who speaks two languages? bilingual. What do we call someone who speaks more than two languages? multilingual. What do we call someone who speaks one language? American. But I really cannot rely on my humor. My training tour director (TD) showed a lot of videos. Most of the videos were great for the first 15 - 20 minutes and then became boring. I thought I wouldn't do the same, but with 2,500 miles on the road and at least one deadly ride from Niagara Falls to Lancaster, PA, I relented. It also seems to be common on Cosmos Tours. The purchase of the DVD's (and music) is our responsibility, so I ordered a bunch from Amazon -- Destination Quebec, Destination Montreal, the CN Tower (how they built it -- my favorite shown) and more. But I also decided it might be good to entertain while educating, so I bought one movie for two of the long trips -- 1776 on the way up to Boston and Witness on the way to Lancaster.

Most of the people on Cosmos/Archers Direct tours are from Australia, New Zealand, and Great Britain. My first tour has 33 Aussies. Although, my second tour has 27 Japanese-Americans from Hawaii. Just like I don't know much about Australian or New Zealand history, most of the PAX (except for the history professor) didn't know much about American history. I could see that they were confused by Brenda's attempt, so I decided to try a "fun" way to give them at least some understanding of the founding of America with 1776. It may be a musical comedy, but it is relatively accurate, certainly enough to understand the accomplishments of Ben Franklin, John Adams, and Thomas Jefferson and to give them a little humanity.

One of my challenges on my tour that starts tomorrow is knowing when to talk and when to shut up and when to give out games and when to mingle with the PAX. I want to mingle more and get to know individual guests. But they also want to talk to each other and to rest, so you have to read them, just like we have to read our students. I also know that you cannot please everyone. I thought our tour director in Costa Rica was fabulous, but others thought he talked too much. He never did give us quiet time, but I loved learning so much about the country. I have learned that not everyone cares about the local government. But everyone cares about the food; I am going to talk a lot about food.





Cooking demonstration at Hershey Farm:
shoo-fly pie and whoopie pies










There is so much to remember -- so many details that need to be attended to along the way and closed out within 12 hours of the end of the trip; my next tour starts 22 hours later. I drop my PAX off around 3:00 on Sunday, September 26th and meet the next group at 1:00 on the 27th. To do that I have to create loads of documents, copy them, organize them into welcome packets, print my vouchers, make confirmation calls, and more. But I am doing all of that doing what I love to do more than anything else (well, almost anything else) -- traveling, meeting new people, learning.

It's time to pack for 48 days on the road.