I don’t travel a whole lot. Normally, “travel” to me means a 3,000 mile trip to see my family in New York for a few days once or twice a year. The last time I did this was in November 2006 for my nephew’s first birthday. (D and I didn’t even go to either of our families back east for Thanksgiving or Christmas last year.) We also normally take one to three road trips a year, usually to Vegas.

But now … well, I’m in dire need of a vacation. As I left the office yesterday, even our HR guy mentioned that I needed to take a vacation. (Apparently, I have more vacation days than I realized, which really shouldn’t be surprising since my last official day off was taken on said trip to New York last November.) So my vacation plan currently consists of a trip to Dublin and London in August. I’ve just booked the hotels, and I’ve got the flights saved in my itinerary. And yes, I’m feeling the guilt for all those miles I’ll be flying. That’s approximately 14,652 miles of air travel (or somewhere around 5,882 lbs of CO2 according to TerraPass’ calculators). I’ll most likely purchase a TerraPass for this trip to help ease the guilt, but beyond that, I think I just need to be more diligent about my carbon footprint, and reduce, reuse, and recycle as much as I can starting … uh, today.

Filed by Maria in environment, travel