I’ve mentioned continuing professional education in past pieces. Many of these programs consist of a home study/class room phase followed by field study.

These field study trips are designed to make the seller of travel more knowledgeable about a product or destination.

One of the major benefits is that the travel seller can tell their customer that they’ve been there, done that. And I believe that as travel buyers you are looking for this 1st hand knowledge and reassurance.

Working on a couple of destination specialist programs myself I recently tried to arrange some flights to various Caribbean islands and Mexican beach destinations and discovered the impact of the reduced flight schedules to the warm weather places.

The published fares were in the range that I expected to find but there were already a lot of zero seats available for the dates that I searched.

Airline published low price versus available price is a whole other story which I’ll cover in a future post. This area of price versus availability takes up one class period so it is worthy of a least a separate piece or two.

My advice to you snow birds that head to warm weather climes in the winter months is you had better start checking, reserving and paying for your air travel arrangements now. Most of the carriers work 330 days in the future for bookings and many key dates are gone, sold out. Do not wait like you have in past years, as reduced lift into popular places will drive up the price.

I have what I call a price threshold-a price range-that I’m willing to pay between my origin and destination. I believe that most of us have a similar philosophy concerning prices so when a trip drops into your range buy it.

Fare watcher tools on websites like Travelocity.com or Expedia.com is what the Travel Professor uses to track prices. When alerted about a fare and ready to act I either contact my travel agent or book the space directly on the airline’s website. Yes I’m just using the mega on-line agencies.

Hang on gang as I am shifting gears and traveling back 146 years to September 1862.

The Civil War rages on and the recent battle of Antietam was just fought on September 17th.

After 12 hours of savage brutal combat over 23,000 American soldiers were either killed, wounded or missing making September 17th 1862 the bloodiest one day battle in American history.

The battle of Antietam also led to Abraham Lincoln’s issuance of the preliminary Emancipation Proclamation. The Emancipation Proclamation consists of two executive orders issued by United States President Abraham Lincoln during the American Civil War. The first one, issued September 22, 1862, declared the freedom of all slaves in any state of the Confederate States of America that did not return to Union control by January 1, 1863. The second order, issued January 1, 1863, named the specific states where it applied.

Join us at noon Monday and hear renowned re enactor Jim Getty (www.jimgetty.com) portray President Lincoln and deliver “The Emancipation Proclamation”. Rain or shine the event is being held on the lawn of the Lawrence County Courthouse in Ironton.