Insurance Air Travel Center

The determination of whether you should purchase travel insurance is a determination of whether you want to assume nothing bad can happen during your travels, or whether should something bad happen you can adequately resolve these unforeseen events.

None of us think something bad will happen. We assume incorrectly that fire, flood, earthquake and terrorism will happen to others. We assume we won’t have a heart attack or stroke, we won’t be felled by illness. We assume wrong.

The question, “should you purchase travel insurance” is perhaps answered by asking yourself why you purchased homeowners insurance, or medical insurance or life insurance. You purchased them so that your consistent small payments would assure you of having someone else provide help in case of a catastrophic event for which you are unprepared. Purchasing travel insurance, just like purchasing any other insurance, is not just about receiving the funds to recover. It’s also about having the professional assistance of those who know what has to happen for you and your family to recover, and who do make that happen. It’s about cooler heads prevailing.

Should you purchase travel insurance? Well, let’s look at a few things that could, and do happen, to overseas and even domestic travelers. Then, you decide if you should purchase travel insurance.

You’re from Minnesota. You’ve never been to the ocean. You book a hotel room in Florida for a week but you are then ordered to evacuate due to an expected hurricane. But you have non-refundable airline tickets, and your hotel and rental car are already paid for. How do you replace the airline tickets and get reimbursed for your stay? If you had known this was going to happen, what would your answer have been to the question, “Should you purchase travel insurance?”

You’re on an island in the Caribbean, ready for your cruise back home. You find out that the cruise ship company has gone bankrupt and there will be no return cruise. What do you do? How do you get your money back? Most importantly, how do you get back home? If you had known this was going to happen, what would your answer have been to the question, “Should you purchase travel insurance?”

You’re ready to take your family on a much-needed vacation to Hawaii. Your daughter is felled by an attack of appendicitis and must have immediate surgery. But your airline tickets are non-refundable. How do you get your money back? If you had known this was going to happen, what would your answer have been to the question, “Should you purchase travel insurance?”

Steve Cogger, an active traveler, has developed the 1 Happy Traveller website for your convenience. Visit today for all of your travel insurance needs.

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What does Canon City have to offer? Well how about the worlds highest suspension bridge. This bridge spans the Royal Gorge, built in 1929 the views from this bridge of the gorge below are breath taking.

But before you think it is only standing on a bridge for a few minutes looking down at the Arkansas River, you have another thing coming. How about a breath taking plunge off the Royal Rush Skycoaster, you will be free falling at 50 mph out over 1200 feet above the Arkansas River.

Of course you would want to take a ride on the world’s steepest Incline Railway at 45 degrees. Here you go to the bottom of the gorge and see the rushing river and wave to the rafters going by. Rafting, you want to go rafting? Just see one of the may rafting companies in the area. Also you can ride across the gorge on a high wire, if you dare.

Don’t forget to take the kids and kids at heart to the petting zoo, there you will see elk, bison, including a unique white bison, big horn sheep and more. They also offer free burro rides.

Then there is shopping, plenty of places to get something good to eat, everything from ice cream, cotton candy, funnel cakes to BBQ and hotdogs.

If you are into camping, there are plenty of places in the area to camp or park your RV.

This is defiantly a Five Star Family trip worth taking.

HotShotTravel.com hopes that you enjoy visiting Canon City as much as we did. Please email us and let us know what you think.

JC Smith writes travel articles about the United States. She is also the creator of http://www.HotShotTravel.com where they specialize in “What Do You DO When You Get There?”

Feel free to reprint this article in its entirety in your newsletter or on your website so long as you leave all active links in place, do not modify the content and include our resource box as listed here.

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The second person I had a chance to get to know at the Servas Conference was Gilbert Sherr, a communications professional from Atlanta where he was born and raised.

Until college Gilbert had only been to 5 different states and had never really gone on vacation. That changed radically after college when he travelled all throughout the US, followed by a long trip to Europe about 4 years later. He found, however, that travelling, visiting buildings and museums and marvelling at natural wonders simply wasn’t enough - one thing was absent, and that was meeting the people.

That changed when Gilbert learned about Servas in 1981. He said he had tears in his eyes when he realized that there existed a group of people who were willing to share their lives and invite strangers into their homes. In total Gilbert has spent about four and a half years of his life travelling around the world.

As Gilbert travelled more through the Servas network he found that he wanted to give something back. So he started to make meals for his hosts, babysat their children and truly became a part of their family, just like a long-lost relative. That’s when he had an idea for a book “Dishwashing through Europe”, a project that hasn’t come to fruition yet, but I found the title just delightful.

With his sociology background, Gilbert has a true interest in understanding the societies that he travels to. So what he normally does is he stays with 3 types of Servas hosts: an elderly couple or individual, adult couples with children and a younger adult. This gives him a chance to get a much more authentic, complete picture of the society he is travelling to, and to understand the specific issues that are facing each demographic group.

Similar to me, he also ponders which political / economic system might actually work best, and he has had a chance to spend significant amounts of time in countries with completely different economic systems. He has had the opportunity to study different variations of Western-style capitalism, socialism as well as communism, and he has developed his own insights as to which societal systems might work best for the greatest portion of the population.

He also found that the more he immersed himself in foreign cultures, the more he started to understand his own culture, he described this experience with the saying “When a fish jumps out of water, it doesn’t discover air, it discovers water” - a very interesting statement indeed.

Travelling also taught Gilbert that truth is not absolute, that current events are covered from completely different angles in different countries, and that local media can sometimes present a very biased one-sided perspective on issues.

By hosting other Servas travellers, Gilbert found that he is able to bring the world home, and hosting allows him to give back to this organization. Hosting gives him the opportunity to learn about other cultures from the travellers, and it enables him to share his culture. As a result of close to 25 years of travelling with Servas, Gilbert now has a network of family and friends around the world.

In the upcoming interview Gilbert will share his travel experiences, his insights on different cultures and socio-political systems as well as some of the decision-making and sacrifices that enabled him to spend so much time exploring the world. He will also touch on issues such as culture shock when reentering into his native US culture whenever he returns from an extended trip. Last but not least, he will share the insights of insider who has had a chance to discover his own culture through the eyes of outsiders.

Susanne Pacher is the publisher of a website called Travel and Transitions(http://www.travelandtransitions.com). Travel and Transitions deals with unconventional travel and is chock full of advice, tips, real life travel experiences, interviews with travellers and travel experts, insights and reflections, cross-cultural issues, contests and many other features. You will also find stories about life and the transitions that we face as we go through our own personal life-long journeys.

Submit your own travel stories in our first travel story contest(http://www.travelandtransitions.com/contests.htm) and have a chance to win an amazing adventure cruise on the Amazon River.

“Life is a Journey

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