You may not be able to finagle yourself a free ticket to London, Rio or across the US, but you can get almost free tickets if you are a little flexible and willing to do a little work. You can travel as an air courier and transport merchandise to other countries or states while the company that needs the items moved pays for most of your airline ticket. Not even an Internet travel dealer or consolidator can beat these prices.

If you know where you want to go and can leave when the company needs you to, and can travel lightly, air courier travel might be for you. It’s not hard to be an air courier but is a little more involved than paying for a ticket and walking through the gate.

So why travel as an air courier? One word money. You’ll save lots of it by traveling as the agent of a company that hires you. It’s not uncommon for air couriers to fly, round trip to London, for $100. Or Rio for $150. Or Mexico for free. You will have to pay for your stay once you reach your destination and your trip may not last for weeks but you’ll save many hundreds of dollars off getting to and from your vacation spot.

A courier is essentially a delivery person. You check your baggage allowance, your bags filled with cargo of some sort that the delivery company needs you to escort to the destination. You don’t get additional compensation beyond the discounted or free airline ticket.

Once you reach your destination, you will often be met at the airport by the person or company that is to take possession of your cargo. You may have paperwork instructions from the hiring company to ensure you actually completed your end of the deal and transferred the goods to the right person.

Are pictures of dark figures in back alleys and accusations of working for the mafia or a drug ring running through your mind? Don’t worry most couriers transport small parcels or paperwork. Being a courier is completely legal and you can always say “no” if you don’t trust that the parcel(s) are on the up-and-up.

To be an air courier, you must be 18 or older and hold a US or European Union passport that is valid for the next six months or more. Many courier companies require a criminal record free of any felony convictions and a clean drug test, others are more lax. Either way, you should adhere to a business-casual dress code during all activities when you are representing the company and escorting their cargo.

The types of companies that use air couriers are varied. Some are looking for one-time freelancers, others are seeking a regular courier to travel between set cities. To find a company looking for a courier job that you’d be interested in, you should begin looking for air courier booking agencies. These “middle men” introduce companies with a need to freelancers looking for a nearly free ticket. Once you’ve provided safe passage of goods for a company, they may request you again through the booking agent or simply contact you for future jobs. There may be a small fee when working with a booking agent but you should never pay until the contract has been signed. The fee and the supplemental airfare should still be far less than any airline ticket you could purchase.

Flexibility is very important when considering the time you’ll have to spend at your destination. Some return tickets will find you above the Earth heading back home after just a day or two, others might permit for a week’s vacation and still others will be open ended, allowing you to choose when you are ready to return. Once the return reservation has been booked, though, you are responsible for catching your flight. If you miss the plane home, you must find your own means of transportation home, whether that means paying full fare for a ticket or renting a car or what have you.

Once you have found a courier company you’d like to consider working for, you will need to tell them which dates and destinations you are available to travel. The more flexible you are here, the more likely you are to be offered the chance to fly nearly free. Should your schedule clear up unexpectedly, you can always call the booking agent and ask for a job over the weekend or week.

The booking agent will either offer you a job when you call in or phone you when one becomes available. At that time, you can inquire about return dates and ticket price. You can then accept or decline the job.

Upon acceptance of the job, you are under a legally binding verbal contract. Many booking agents will require you to sign and fax a written contract soon thereafter, others will ask you to sign one at the airport when you meet.

Check in with the booking or delivery company a few days before your departure. Make sure you know who you’ll meet, when and where you’ll meet and specific instructions about delivery at your destination.

Prior to checking in, meet with the representative and pick up the parcels or documents, as well as your ticket. Check your luggage and keep all paperwork. Should the cargo become lost in transit you may have to prove you did everything you were supposed to do to secure its safe delivery.

Upon arrival at your destination, find the receiving agent at the pre-appointed meeting area. Once you turn over the goods or documents, it’s time to start enjoying your vacation. The rest of the time, until your scheduled departure, is all yours.

Jawahn Thompson
http://www.articlesbase.com/travel-articles/nearly-free-flying-company-travel-75806.html

A brief look at some of the reasons and concerns surrounding the technical aspects of the sport parachute repair

Powered parachuting is a reasonably new form of aerodynamic sport.It has progressed very quickly over a short period of time to become one the most technically evolved air sports practiced today.

Because of this evolution repair. training. maintenance and understanding of equipment is paramount to the success of the sport.

Powered parachutes (PPC) were first developed in the early 80s.Since then they have become the ultimate personal flying contraptions.You don’t need a license to fly a PPC; you can comfortably fly low over the treetops or soar to heights of up to 10.000 ft.A PPC is the ideal way to experience glorious scenery and peaceful ascendancy.Owners can store their PPCs in the garage and they are easy to tow to an airstrip for take off.

The beauty of a contraption like this is that any one can own and operate a PPC.You can learn all you need to know about flying on in as little as an afternoon.Powered parachute repair and maintenance is simple and with basic understanding of the components you can maintain and repair your powered parachute yourself.

Powered parachutes are more than just personal flying machines. They have been used for photography and crop dusting as an inexpensive substitute for a helicopter.Because of the versatility in altitude and the slow speed of travel it is ideal for these sorts of activities.Aside from its practical applications it is also a serious adventure sport that is gaining momentum in the mainstream.

In terms of powered parachute troubleshooting you have a wider scope to consider when .This includes the maintenance and any possible repairs you might need with your engine.Some possible areas of concern when it comes to powered parachutes include:

Cylinders

Crank aligning

Carburetor repair and rebuilding

Gear box

Engine over-hauls

One other area that is of concern in the powered parachute industry is that of engine stall.It is widely acknowledged that this can occur during flights.It is unlikely that the latest new model powered parachutes will stall.However if there are problems with rigging. steering lines or bad weather conditions you increase the chances of stalling.

John Ewing
http://www.articlesbase.com/sports-and-fitness-articles/a-look-at-skydiving-equipment-84077.html

I live in a small suburban area, also known as a suburbanite or â??â??burbâ?. These areas are all over America, in the outskirts typically of major metropolitan areas. People commute for about an hour to work with their daily morning cup of Joe in the cup holder as they listen to traffic news on the radio. At the end of the day , they drive an hour back home to their spouses, kids, and their pet golden retriever.

When youâ??re single like me, and live in such an area, letâ??s just say you have to watch your back in the grocery or bookstore before approaching an attractive 30-something year old single woman sitting by herself reading a book or looking at melons in the produce section of the supermarket. Chances are, her husband or long time significant other will be a couple isles down, and youâ??d probably want to save yourself the trouble of approaching a woman who has been spoken for since she was I her early 20â??s, after all this homemaker probably married the high school prom king. At the most, at least wait around or linger (not obviously) to see if a man comes into her presence at the coffee table to join her along with a couple of children to boot.

Now, Iâ??m not here to talk about the ideal nuclear family or those lovely â??white-picket fenceâ? scenarios that some of us single people sometimes dream about. I am here to talk about small town online dating.

You could say, prior to the internet and online dating and online dating matchmaking services which was almost a decade ago, single people in these small towns who perhaps missed the boat when it came to the opportunity to marry their high school sweethearts or perhaps were too young to know what love is, went on with their lives, while their friends married their high school girlfriends or boyfriends, why? Because probably there were no other options in a low populated area.

But with the internet, those of us flying solo would think that we could actually FIND those other singles that are in a â??cellâ? portion of the county that we could actually say, â??Wow, I finally found someone that falls in my category!â? In my case, single never married and no kids. But NOW I am discovering that when I do a search for people in my area, letâ??s say about a 20 mile radius, 5 profiles come upâ?¦wowâ?¦look at all the single women!

In order for me to find single women, even online, I would have to go out and top off my gas tank, print out a map of the meeting location from Yahoo Maps or Map quest, battle traffic on the interstate and stop and go traffic in the downtown area just to meet a stranger from the internet who might or might not be who they claim to be, or perhaps risk a no-show.

I am still willing to do that on occasion, however, it does get tiresome, and it would be nice to meet an actual available single lady that only take a quick 5 or 10 minutes to hop in the car and meet.

Now, the meat and potatoes. When Iâ??m online, going through the â??20-mileâ? radius searchâ?¦low and behold I see a NEW face. Is she single? Yes! Never been married? Yes! No kids? Yes! Has her teeth intact? Yes! Educated? Yes! She even had the same interests, attitude, and values as well, we even the shared the same hobbies! How exciting!

Imagine, someone that falls within a similar category as I do! What are the odds in this one horse town. Then I read her introductory sentence, â??Hello, I am single and new to the area, from the big city and discovered there are little or no single people in the area, so I figured Iâ??d give this a try.â? Some people donâ??t have to say it, but she expressed it because she was probably thinking the same thing I was thinking. â??Man, where are all the SINGLE people?!â?

So I sent her an email, thinking that she would respond, but I did not get a response, I waited for about a week, then decided to send her a follow-up email, she did respond with a â??No thanks, but youâ??re not my typeâ?. Iâ??m not her type? How is this possible? I read her profile, noticed she took on the same traits and interests that I had, so how can that warrant â??Youâ??re not my type?â?

Iâ??ve come to the conclusion with my photo displayed that I wasnâ??t the man she was looking for, and that the interpretation for â??Youâ??re not my typeâ? is â??Iâ??m just not attracted to you.â? Now, sheâ??s new to the areaâ?¦.I have to give her that much, and perhaps she needs time to realize that she just MIGHT have to reconsider her standards, she just left a big city full of good looking men with a lot of money to more of a blue-collar area, and basically the good looking, wealthy men are all married or taken.

A person like this needs, who is single and new to the area needs to realize that sheâ??s probably not going to find what she is looking for. My online dating advice would be to either.

1. Settle on some average Joe

2. Relocate and reside in a march larger city where there are â??beautiful peopleâ? to be had.

It seems though, that we live in a society where people have been blind sided by the media into thinking they should date only good looking people with high paying pay checks.

To draw a comparison, thatâ??s like being on a deserted island where they only man that crash landed on the island with you, is the only man alive, and perhaps not the greatest looking man in the world, and refusing to date him because he doesnâ??t meet your standards.

Wake up, and time to smell the coffee, because itâ??s not so bad to reconsider your standards to a more realistic level.

Stay Tuned for my Next Article â??Cyber-dating and How it Can Spoil Usâ?

If you want to be the FIRST to receive articles as I UPDATE them, please sign up for my Online Dating Newsletter. Be the first to read it before it appears here.

Tony Sacomano
http://www.articlesbase.com/relationships-articles/online-dating-the-single-lady-in-a-one-horse-town-96350.html

I donâ??t know why so many articles on life/work balance seem to focus on people who suddenly decide theyâ??ve had it with working all the time and within one hour quit their job, buy a yacht or a jet, grab their family or their best friends or their dog and travel the world for a year or two. They then get touted as the role model for the rest of us who either like our work, canâ??t leave right now, or just want to enjoy life at home. Besides, being in balance is more than just what you do with your time, its also how you feel and think all of the time.

The reality is that wherever you go you take yourself with you. I can go to the woods for a week to meditate, but if Iâ??ve never meditated, or gained some inner peace or learned to be happy with who I am rather than what I do, Iâ??ll go up to the woods and count the minutes until I can leave or find some way to distract myself from myself.

Life balance is more than how we spend our time, its also how we feel about that time and how present we are each moment. It doesnâ??t always take one major event to want to change or to know something is not right for you. It’s often a series of things.

Iâ??ve studied the subject, changed my unbalanced ways and eliminated some major stresses, and there are still times when I know I need to slow down and reassess my priorities.

In this article I feature four people from very different backgrounds who realized they needed to jump off the never-ending treadmill of stress and overload, and make some concrete changes. These are four people who found different ways of achieving life/work balance without sailing the seas or flying the skies for a year.

Conscious Change

Ross Pike has been managing partner of Diversified Maintenance Systems, a facilities management company for the last year and a half. When I interviewed him, he was calm, and focused. I learned that he wasnâ??t always this way. There were times in the past when he didnâ??t take the time he wanted with his family, and when he did, he was often tied to his Blackberry. â??Before I was with Diversified Maintenance, I was Division President for another organization. I was responsible for over 7,000 employees. I had no personal time It was always the customers time. My day started early and ended late. I had to keep up with east and west coast time.”

â??I was a hamster on a treadmill, always working, and always tired. I needed to make a change. I decided to be open to new opportunities where I could go home every night and spend real time with my wife.â? Soon after a colleague one of the owners of Diversified Maintenance, called. When his friend told him they were seeking an additional partner for their company, and asked Ross for recommendations, Ross suggested himself. Within six weeks he had left his old job as Division President of a national organization and became an equity partner of a much smaller organization. â??I left people that I really liked, and took a big cut in my annual salary, but I get to see my wife every night. I also get to spend more time with customers and less time with so much paper work. I was constantly tired and could barely stay awake until ten. Now I enjoy staying up with my wife and watching Boston Legal until eleven. I go to the gym now and take long walks, and my wife is happy because she can give me a longer to-do list.

Balanced and Beaming

Catalina Ganis is Executive Vice President and Managing Director of Elliot Executive Source Ltd. and Senior Vice President of Elliot Associates Inc., divisions of The Elliot Group LLC, a nationally recognized executive search firm specializing in the Hospitality, Food Service, Manufacturing, Distribution and Retail Service Industries. Catalina helps spearhead client development, long range strategic planning and is also responsible for managing senior level executive search assignments. She is the chairperson of the Multicultural Foodservice and Hospitality Alliance. Catalina has been active with the Organization of Chinese Americans (OCA) Westchester Chapter in New York and the Chinese School of Southern Westchester. She is married and has three children After speaking with her it was clear to me that she and her family know how to work together as a team and support each other in developing a good life balance.

Before she worked at Elliot Associates, Catalina worked in the hotel industry where she was on call 24 hours a day. â??We worked too many hours and the wrong hours. I knew that I needed to change how I was working. Now, I have the luxury of being able to work at home when I want. I make my own schedule and the work always gets done. It’s important to me that I am able to spend time with my family. When I travel I make sure that I take flights that allow me to see my children either in the morning or at night (I will leave the house at 4 am to make that early morning flight so I can be home by 8pm that same day). The work I have now also enables me to be involved in my childrenâ??s classes and activities.â? Her parents and sister help her, and she and her husband support each other. â??In order to have a good balance in our lives it is crucial that we learn to let go of things we canâ??t control and to not waste time complaining about the decisions we make.” “I also made a conscious decision to take a position with an organization and people with whom I share a similar mindset and values and where I am able to be flexible After all, I want to attend my kids practices and sports games (its not just for them, I need to do it for me).â? â??I learned to be realistic about what I can do with my time, so we eat a lot in different restaurants. I donâ??t have to spend time cooking and our whole family can enjoy our meals together. I know Iâ??m in balance now because I can sleep at night.”

From Solo to Stability

Lia Shigemura has been the diversity director of ABM for a little over 6 months. While some people leave the corporate environment for their own business in order to gain a better life balance, Lia gave up her own successful business to get back into corporate life. “I loved having my own business and due to hard work and good fortune, I was very successful. Much of that success, however, meant that I was constantly marketing myself and selling. The cycle was unending and relentless. When I wasn’t with a client or in meetings, I was on the phone. Life planning became difficult as I found that I often placed my clients’ need over my own.”

“I had been vaguely contemplating working within an organization for a while, but hadn’t begun a serious job search when a former colleague, who had recently been hired by ABM Industries, asked if I was interested in applying for a challenging position as director of diversity, inclusion and training. I saw it as a terrific opportunity to become involved in the ground-up development of such important company strategies and initiatives. With the work I do now I can help create change that will positively benefit 75,000 people and their families. The scope of my position is tremendous and offers many opportunities. And the energy that I used to devote to marketing and selling (and worrying) is now better spent on productive aspects of work that I much more enjoy.”

Lia misses some of her international travel she likes not living on airplanes, and gets to spend more time at home and on vacation with her partner of 14 years, Helen Zia. “I can now sign up for classes like yoga that are more than one session because I have a better idea of my schedule.. I can actually relax and be more present with my partner. This is a wonderful journey.”

When I spoke with Lia, I knew she was serious about this because she was on her way to Carmel, California to relax for a week by the water.

Taking Flight at Fifty

Marcie Lee Thomas is a principal consultant for HCMS Group, Inc. (Human Capital Management Services), a health information company. She loves what she does which is developing educational programs and managing client accounts. â??Since I began working for the founders and principals of HCMS (over 11 years ago), my life is a lot more balanced. I work with people who share the same philosophy and who treat people as assets and not as liabilities. Our clients also agree with our philosophy. I didnâ??t feel that way in other work environmentsâ?. Before Marcie worked with HCMS staff she worked for a county agency that provided health care programs for county employees.

â??We were expending our intellectual capital, but received no recognition for our good work. There was no mechanism for employee appreciation or recognition. We provided for the care of others without receiving care for ourselves. It was stressful, and I always felt responsible for outcomes even without the necessary control to effect changeâ?. I wasnâ??t fulfilled workwise and I realized that I was not in balance with who I was as a person.â? Marcie went on to tell me she was contemplating leaving but hadnâ??t made any moves until â??I saw someone get shot outside of the building where I worked. That was the moment when I said that all the benefits, job security and retirement were not worth the stress, nor could those things help me feel better about my job.â? She was fifty years old when she embarked on a new career. Other people told her it made no sense to leave her county position at that age and couldnâ??t believe that she would take that risk. â??From the minute I started working with the principals here, my stress began to lift. I finally felt that I was valued for my contributions and for the results I achieved.â? When I asked her what she did outside of work she replied â??I love to travel especially to Europe and Hawaii. I love visiting Paris. I exercise, dance, read, attend classes, and take time to go on spiritual/personal growth retreats. I used to take vacations to get a break from stress, but it was still there when I went back to work. Now, Iâ??m feeling in balance when I start my vacation and Iâ??m still in balance when I return.â?

All four people Marci, Lia, Catalina and Ross are very different from each other but they all knew they were working too much, too hard and not getting what they needed to balance their personal and professional lives. Lia left her own business to work for a large corporation, and Ross left a large organization to become managing partner of a much smaller business. Catalina and Marci both knew that they needed more flexibility to put their life in balance, pursue other interests and feel in control of their time. Each person made a conscious decision to make a change, and be open to new opportunities. As we enter a new year, take an assessment of what you do and how you live your life. Do you complain about your job, relationships, or lack of personal time? As you assess your life, if you find any areas that you donâ??t like, make a conscious choice to change and be open and willing to try new opportunities. Donâ??t wait, start today.

Simma Lieberman
http://www.articlesbase.com/careers-articles/lifework-balance-its-a-conscious-decision-116435.html