The Long Read

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We didn’t travel much when I was growing up. Vacation trips meant going to visit Grandma. I can count the actual “trips” we took on one hand: Acadia National Park; Orlando, with side trips to Cape Canaveral and Tampa; Virginia Beach; a week in a beach rental in Rhode Island.

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Upon entering high school, an opportunity presented itself. The choir director, George Boyer, led an annual summer trip to Europe with a select choral group. I had sung in choral groups from an early age, so, from the first day of high school, it became my dream to a) be accepted into the elite Allen Chorale and b) go on that trip to Europe at the end of my senior year. My parents were fine with both ideas however they also said flat out, they had no money to pay for such a trip so I’d have to work for the next three years to earn the money to pay for the travel expenses and spending money. (They did, however, pay for a year of voice lessons.) As anyone who sang under Mr. Boyer’s direction will tell you, both experiences changed my life.

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From that first experience on tour through England, The Netherlands, Belgium and France, singing on stages, community centers and even the altar of Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris, my next goal was to figure out how to get back to Europe as soon as possible. During my freshman year of college, I found a study abroad program that accepted sophomores, and that got me to Paris to live and study for the next year.

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When my parents told me that they couldn’t afford to pay for my return to Boston University, I had to find another way to complete my college education. Quirky turns of fate led to an extension of my leave of absence from B.U., my junior year directly enrolled in the University of Nice French Language and Culture Studies for Foreign Students (which no longer exists) and the eventual transfer of all of two years’ study abroad into credits back at Boston University. I was able to complete my studies and graduate in four years: The first and last years at B.U., a year in Paris, a year in Nice equaled a B.A. in French Language and Literature.

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What I really learned during those two years of study abroad was how to travel in Europe, usually alone and always on a very tight budget. (Coming someday, the funny story about how I did that.) Having graduated from college with a love of exploring the world, a degree in French and no idea of what to do with any of that, I began to wander the meandering path of life.

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It must be noted that back in the early 80s, there were no formal degree programs or training for Tourism in the USA. There were no well-known travel industry jobs that I’d ever heard of that would inspire me to say, “When I grow up, I want to be a Tour Director.”

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Yet that was exactly what I wanted to be, I just didn’t know what it was called nor how to find it. So from one job to the next, I stumbled upon it by a great deal of searching and a little bit of luck, getting closer little by little: Sales and customer service in a travel company for high school groups, operations staff in Paris for a charter vacation company, driver-guide for French tourists on camping tours around the USA. Finally one day, I hit the jackpot via a little ad in the Sunday newspaper classifieds: Get Paid to Travel - A training course for Tour Management. I graduated from that course and finally pulled together all the threads that I had been weaving into a beautiful career as a Tour Director.

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For more than a decade, I built a reputation and a full-time, free-lance schedule leading tours that covered every continent and almost every mode of transportation for a variety of travel companies. Being a Tour Director isn’t just a job. It’s a vocation, a way of life. You live your work every day because even on the unpaid days while not on tour, you are learning and preparing for the next one. Every day on tour is a different day and it demands that you be your best version of yourself. Every. Single. Day – even when not on tour because what if that rude person in the grocery store turns up as a passenger on a future tour?

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The Tour Director is a key component of any group tour operation. Successful tour management means that the majority of the tour leader’s efforts go completely unnoticed by the tour members, yet when all is said and done, they’ve had one of the most memorable trips of their life. It is also incredibly rewarding to share the world with people and constantly see places as new, through their wonder and delight.

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By the time I was looking at turning forty, having spent the better part of twenty years traveling around the world, it was time to come off the road and settle into a more traditional life. Being on tour - working full-time, approximately 220 days per year – especially before cell-phones, the Internet, Face Time, etc. - meant being completely isolated from home, family and friends. Even while constantly surrounded by people, I was alone. I used to joke about it, saying as I stared at the stars in the African sky, or watched another incredible sunset on the beach in Fiji, “Here I am in the most beautiful place on earth. Alone.”

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Although I still truly loved my life and job, I knew that it was time to make a change. I did not want to become the person sitting alone at a hotel bar every night who could not “settle down”, could not maintain long-term relationships, becoming cynical and bitter. I knew I had to force myself to transition before I couldn’t. I also needed to get going on my retirement savings, think about having health insurance and start seeing a stable income that would ensure I could someday own a home and have some financial security as I grew older – aka “Full-Time Job.”

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So, for the next couple of stops on my tour of life, I moved to in-house jobs at travel companies. Over yet another couple of decades – until the COVID-19 pandemic put a full stop on the travel industry – I worked in many of the various tasks that make up the business of group travel. I learned that an even greater impact than leading the tours of people’s dreams, is to source the transformational experiences and craft the journeys that both educate and tantalize the traveler but as well, enrich the lives of the people who live in, and are in fact, an integral part of each destination.

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Along the road of this ongoing “Journey of a Lifetime,” I’ve collected lifelong friends, some insider knowledge and a lot of useless trivia, a ton of memorabilia, a zillion mediocre photos and a few stories both funny and tragic. They are presented herein.

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Transparency note as of August 20, 2020: The links on this page are intended as resources. There are no affiliate links on this page. As of this writing, I am not affiliated with any travel company.

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