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.