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Tuesday, January 1, 2008

A whiff of adventure

It's the beginning of a new year and I had a pang of excitement the other day as I realized there's a chance — just a chance, mind — that I might be able to go to England in May after all, and therefore pop along to the Enid Blyton Day!

Let me backtrack a little. You see, it's expensive to fly across the Atlantic at the best of times, and right now the exchange rate is terrible. Well, terrible for those flying to England from the USA anyway. As Fatty can reel off portry without thinking, I can almost reel off the exchange rates since 1995, which was the year I met my wife and started all this to-ing and fro-ing. In 1995 it was around 1.5 dollars to the pound, and it stayed around that mark until 2001 when it dropped to 1.43. This was a nuisance because that was the year I moved across here; when you have a lot saved up from the sale of a house, and you convert all that to another currency... well, I think I "lost out" on about $6000 because of that slight difference in the exchange rate. Grr!

Anyway — as soon as I settled here in Georgia, the exchange rate decided to start an upwards path. It hovered around 1.63 for a few years, and then in 2004 jumped to 1.83 where again it hovered for the next few years. 2007 saw a monumental leap to 1.95+ and reached a full 2.0 at times — that's TWO dollars to the pound, folks.

In terms of spending money in England, that's a BIG difference. If we hired a car for three weeks, that could be something like GBP 350.00, which in 1995 would have cost $525 and today would cost nearly $700. Not to mention fuel, accommodation, and anything else we want to spend money on. And the plane tickets are the worst of the lot. Although we'd buy tickets at this end, airline companies conspire to make sure no one benefits one way or another — so the exchange rate really kicks you in the teeth before you've even left the country. It hurts to be an American (or U.S. resident in my case) traveling to England right now. But if you're living in England and want to travel to the USA, my advice is — don't waste any time, do it now! You'll be able to buy a tank of gas or stay a night in a motel for 15-20 quid.

So anyway, what with one thing or another, visiting good ol' Blighty in 2008 was looking a little doubtful, and we'd written it off. But I have a little, er, bonus on its way that should pay for the lot — assuming I make enough to cover the tax bill this year, otherwise that bonus will have to be used for that. Still, it's a good sign.

There's another hurdle though. My wife is finishing her school work in the first quarter of the year (she's in training to be a sonographer), and at the end of that, around April, she has to take two or three Very Important Exams to get her necessary qualifications. When she passes those, THEN we can discuss going to England. So, assuming she passes first time round and can forget about school once and for all, and assuming I can use that bonus in England instead of on taxes, then Enid Blyton Day 2008 here I come!

(For those who haven't heard of Enid Blyton Day, there's some info about it here.)

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