Global Entry: Another step towards a traveler lifestyle

It took $100 dollars and about 45 minutes of time. Next I get fingerprinted and a criminal background check. After a personal interview with a T.S.A. official, I will get my Global Entry pass.

The pass grants me a “trusted traveler” status at airports. It allows me to by-pass the normal T.S.A. security procedures and lines for all domestic and international flights.

For international flights, it reduces time returning to the US with an expedited customs process.

It’s a small thing, but it means a lot to me. I feel it’s a commitment to travel, to explore, to make more new experiences.

It also means that there is more exploring ahead of me than behind. That is a change of mind for me. I have a realistic – some say morbid – view that there are more days behind me than ahead of me. But in regards to travel, the days ahead will hold more than the past.

My first airline flight was at 15 years of age. We never flew as a family. In fact, I’m pretty sure my parents never flew at all. In high school I stepped on a plane for Alaska to volunteer at a church camp. I was glad to finally have taken the first step.

My first big flight was at 19 when I flew to London to study history. It was 1972 and the charter flight cost $99 one way. (I was too clueless to worry about how I would get home.)

I’ve never lost the magic that occurred on that first flight. Every time I take a long flight I marvel how – in one day – I traveled further than most humans ever traveled – ever.

After that, I went ten years without flying. But at 30, I was operating a profitable broadcast business and decided to be extravagant – book a vacation to Hawaii.

I left Portland at 6 a.m. I can still recall digging my toes into the sands of Hawaii that afternoon. What an amazing thing. Waking up in one place and going to bed in another. It’s a magic I still feel.

As a married guy, I was blessed with a family with extraordinary expertise in travel. Trips to Mexico became so familiar to me, I even took one on my own to Mexico.

But now, the travel planning is mine alone. There is anxiety, even fear with that. But also gratitude for an opportunity in the fourth quarter of my football game to finally call my own plays. And to be prepared to scramble when a play is broken up. It is time for me to live up to my own advice to my children. I always told them as new events unfolded, move yourself emotionally from fear to excitement.