He was standing in line at the airport in New Delhi, India, a few weeks ago when the big announcement came.
“Are you Mr. Edward Reynolds from Woodland Hills, California?” asked the airport manager. Reynolds nodded, yes, he was.
“Would you please step out of line? We’ve been waiting for you.”
Uh, oh, he thought. What’d they find in my luggage now?
“Congratulations,” the airport manager said. “You just went over two million miles flying with United Airlines! Can I get a picture with you?”
Meet Ed Reynolds, a retired United States Air Force Lt. Col., who has visited all 193 member states in the United Nations. This last visit to Sikkim and Darjeeling raised the total of land based and small island countries he’s stepped foot in to 322.
There are a few islands off Norway he’s eyeing next, but they’re hard to get to so it’s going to be a challenge.
He’s a young 88. He has time.
This travel lust began when he was 10 and his stepfather took out the back seats of the family Kaiser automobile so Ed, his younger brother and the family dog had a place to bounce around while his stepfather and mom sat up front as they drove from Connecticut across Canada all the way down to Mexico on vacation.
“Every other night we stayed in a motel; the other nights we pitched a tent, but if we thought there were snakes around we’d tie jungle hammocks to the trees and sleep in them.”
Not exactly 5-star accommodations, but to a kid venturing out to see the world for the first time, it was fascinating.
When his stepfather’s job required the family to move to Irving, Texas, he piled them into an Airstream and drove to a little farm he and his wife had bought.
“My mom turned the farm into a trailer park,” Ed said. “Instead of selling the Airstream, she rented it out. We kept adding more trailers and she converted the stalls in the barn into little guest rooms for friends visiting the people with trailers. I was driving at 13, picking up all the trash in the trailer park.”
At 16, he was sharing driving duties on family vacations in an old 1937 Woodie station wagon, and he still has the 1953 MG sports car he won as a freshman at SMU.
“In 25 words or less, you had to say why you liked your Paper Mate pen,” Ed said. “You had the choice of the car or a year’s scholarship. I took the car and hit the road.”
It wasn’t until he became a navigator in the Air Force after World War II that Ed hit his travel stride. He would hitch rides on cargo planes going all over the world — Spain, Saudi Arabia, the Philippines, Singapore, Bangkok and Vietnam.
He served 22 years in the service, and then went to work as a computer manager at United Airlines. None of the flying he did for business counted toward the two million miles, nor did the miles he earned on his United Visa card.
“The two million miles were accumulated by purchasing a ticket for myself and my wife when we went on vacation,” Ed said.
They also took vacations to Greece, Wales and many to Hawaii when there was space available on United flights.
Then there were the trips he took with travel groups to Iran, Iraq, Libya and North Korea, countries on the U.S. “do not travel to” list. Ed couldn’t resist seeing them.
“Our tour bus broke down in North Korea, and while they were fixing it, we just wandered around by ourselves checking out the little village and people living there. Imagine an American walking around North Korea by himself today.”
After his wife couldn’t travel anymore they made a deal. None of the household money would be spent on Ed’s traveling. It all came from the sale of the house his mother left him in Lompoc in the early 2000s.
Three years later, he had traveled his way through another $100,000.
Now his challenge is how to keep traveling and still being around to lead the weekly Monday morning meetings of the veterans group Wings Over Wendy’s?
“I think I can leave on a Tuesday, fly to Finland and take a ferry over to the Aland Islands located in a Finnish archipelago, spend a day or two, and fly back Sunday,” Ed says.
He knows it’s a challenge, but he’s only 88. He has time.
Dennis McCarthy’s column runs on Sunday. He can be reached at [email protected].