We travel stand-by. That is, I stand by while Shirley labors intensely for weeks before we actually get to an airport. When I can’t remain in a state of unknowing any longer, (about three weeks before we fly out), Shirley makes a good guess about the number of days we’ll need to fly ahead of the time we are committed to arriving. In our case, we must be in Florence next Wednesday, so we set the departure day as Sunday. By a week and a half ago, it became questionable whether we could get out on Sunday—the flights Shirley was tracking showed a full plane, or in some cases a flight was oversold. 

An end run called for, we advanced our departure to Saturday and Shirley began tracking Saturday flight data. Not much better. Shirley looked for additional options. We could fly to Rome OR Milan, but we would still have to leave from the New York area. Both showed open seats for Saturday and Sunday. Our difficulty lay at the beginning, not at the end of our journey.

We are now at Friday and Shirley is exploring our options for leaving from other cities within a five hundred mile radius. Eighteen hours before the time we scheduled ourselves to depart, we have booked no flight to anywhere. Experienced stand-by-ers know this is what to expect. The rest of us swallow—hard.

So should anyone be of the opinion, as I was before I watched Shirley at work, that a pass rider just STOOD BY, correct your perception. It takes a master gamer to work all the options and come up with the winner. I have married one of the best, and I have no doubt that when the last paying customer has boarded the aircraft—whichever aircraft that may be--and the pass-rider list is brought into final play, at the last possible second, we’ll be Florence bound.