A Trip Not Taken

Just before Thanksgiving of 2024

I discovered a new iPhone app, flighty, tracks commercial airline flights. It provides real time updates and alerts and as delay predictions. The Pro version also allows you to store past flights as someone who has been a very frequent flyer for over 20 years, I wanted to import as much data as I could, and did that obsessively over a few days, I was able to find records for 657, flights and Friday then generated interesting stats.

But there was one flight that I did not take that was special. In the summer of 2008 I was a professor at the University of Minnesota, and one of my students was taking a study abroad trip. I was due to receive $1,000 as a stipend for supervising her project. One problem though, the student did not have enough money to make the trip, I plan to use a stipend to take my own international trip that summer, who realized that I could easily do that later and postpone the trip a year, I donated the stipend to the student, and she was able to make the Journey to South Africa.

Thestudent and I are still in touch today. I'm happy that my trip not taken helped her to have an amazing experience.