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This is the time of year when many people travel. Vacations from school schedules, more comfortable weather, package deals and the urge to get away from the familiar and learn something about how others live, all conspire to encourage us to hit the road, or the rivers and seas or the air and go somewhere. And finally there is good news for the solo travelers among us. Party of one is no longer as expensive and difficult to book as it has been.

According to a recent New York Times article, one in four travelers on overseas vacations went alone last year, up from 15 percent in 2013 based on the latest Visa Global Travel Intentions Study. With the numbers increasing, travel companies are paying attention. Companies that have long been in business are finally offering guided trips for singles and at accessible prices.

Solo travelers are not necessarily singles who are looking for other singles but rather more often marrieds or those in committed relationships who, for one reason or another, might be traveling alone. Sometimes a couple owns a business together, and only one can leave at a time. Or perhaps a couple might be caretakers for an elderly person or one with special needs and can only get away individually. Sometimes trips have a singular theme, like tennis or rappelling, that doesn’t appeal to the partner. Then there is the familiar situation where one member yearns to travel and the other dislikes leaving the comforts and predictability of home for the uncertainty of the road. Traveling solo may save that relationship.

Among first-time travelers, The Times tells us, solo travel has jumped to 37 percent from 16 percent in 2013. This change alone has got to offer encouragement for the widow or widower who hankers to go off on a trip but is intimidated by the prospect of being without a companion. And guided tours among solo travelers are up almost 300 percent since 2013.

Look at some details of contemporary living. Over half of American adults are single. Does that surprise you? It certainly excites travel companies serving that market. As recently as 2012, one in five American adults had never married. Compare that with the one in 10 of 1960. And that is not just the trend for Americans. Other countries, like the United Kingdom, are not far behind. Further, among Americans 45 or older who traveled solo, 53 percent are married while 39 percent are single or divorced, according to AARP.

Some companies are reducing or doing away altogether with the despised single supplements. To mention names, Tom Harper River Journeys, a river cruise company near Boston, offered the information that in 2016, it would have a ship with supplement-free staterooms. The Majestic Line, a small-ship cruising company in Britain, announced that two of seven en-suite cabins on a new ship would be for singles without additional supplements. Holland America, of Seattle, is planning to add 12 new ocean-view cabins for singles on a ship coming in 2016. Companies such as Zegrahm Expeditions and Tauck are offering some relief to those saddled with single supplements, Then there is Solos Vacations, the American arm of one of the oldest British companies, Solos Holidays, whose attendees average 55 years of age.

Here is another comforting statistic from AARP: More than 80 percent of people 45 and older who have traveled solo plan to do so again within the next 12 months. That’s close to a unanimous endorsement. I would certainly be in that 80 percent. While I have never planned an entire trip alone, I have been on parts of a trip unaccompanied and have discovered what I really already knew: That the world is filled with people and that most who travel are interested in meeting and chatting with others similarly inclined.

There are some advantages to being alone. People might be hesitant to engage in conversation with two or more people, but they will readily do so with someone clearly alone who might initiate some chatter about the weather, the food, the accommodations or any other common experience. And that exchange might even lead to getting a cab together at the final destination or having beneficially shared time.

It is getting easier and cheaper to travel alone at last.

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We go so far even when we don’t seem to go anywhere. Our daughter’s jazz band played the same repertoire for the last few months, with the same solos, the same black pants for most of the group and the same introduction to the numbers from an incredibly positive and energetic conductor.

The first time they played compositions such as “Take the ‘A’ Train,” written by Billy Strayhorn and made famous by Duke Ellington, they sounded as if they were trying on clothing that didn’t exactly fit. They had their moments when they played together and some of the solos filled the room with the kind of spontaneous, live performance sounds you can’t soak in even with the finest video recording devices.

The group also had a few unsteady and discordant sounds. The problem with playing arrangements people in the audience know is that they recognize when the note isn’t exactly right, and they react when the entrance is too early or too late in a transitional phrase.

The audience wanted to let the music wash over them the first time they heard it, but they were like passengers on an airplane that ran into turbulence. They smiled through it, willing their sons and daughters to cleaner phrases, better sounds and a uniform performance.

A few weeks later, the group played the same music again and, ever so slightly, they improved. One of the players seemed to own the first few measures of her solo, turning several heads toward the stage as she directed her sound squarely into a microphone.

At the end of that performance, the applause seemed bigger — and so did the musicians.

Time after time, this group came together, working its way from guessing at notes to hitting them with the same energy as a “Jeopardy!” contestant who can barely wait to win money.

Recently, the jazz band had its final concert. Most of the players, who had performed together for close to two years, would be disbanding as they went off to high school. Yes, they will likely play some music again together, but the combination of two middle schools meant this was the last time these people would share music with their parents, families and community members.

Something about this final night felt different, even as they sauntered to their seats. Gone were the unsteady footsteps and the anxious looks.

The conductor, whose smile hadn’t changed from the first performance, snapped his fingers to the jazz rhythms — in contrast to classical music, where a baton is used. The group nailed that final concert, with each solo better than the one before and each chord coming together the way the composer intended. Could it have been better? Sure, and it will be better in high school and beyond. On this night, though, when the musicians put their instruments back in their cases and prepared to walk their individual paths, they shared everything they had on the stage with their appreciative audience.

The conductor took a moment, toward the end of the performance, to thank the musicians and the audience for sharing the three years of middle school with him. He commented on the changes he’d seen in them as people and as musicians, watching them enter when they were 11 from primary school and exit to high school as 13- and 14-year-olds.

As these young students consider the uncertainty of high school, with moments when school, music, sports and friends suddenly seem filled with awkward tension, they can reflect on the musical journey they’d taken and the music they conquered together.

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Thanks to legislation introduced by Suffolk County Legislator Tom Muratore (R-Ronkonkoma), the county could be the next municipality in the nation to create safe spots — public locations where residents can exchange goods and conduct private sales.

Similar safe havens have been created throughout the United States — in Georgia, Missouri and Connecticut, for example — in response to crimes committed against people using websites like Craigslist to buy and sell goods. While the majority of Craigslist transactions occur without incident, there is always the chance of someone taking advantage of the situation, whether it be robbing the other person in the transaction or physically harming them in some way.

We applaud Muratore, a former Suffolk County police officer, for looking into this simple solution to deter unscrupulous individuals from harming others.

But if the county does move forward with this idea, we hope the locations will be in active places; be monitored by surveillance; be heavily signed, notifying visitors that it is a safe spot and is being monitored; and provide residents with safety tips for engaging in such exchanges in an effort to be even more proactive than reactive.

As Muratore said, “Technology is changing the way people are doing business,” and we have to change with it.

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My mother adamantly refused to let the pediatrician remove my tonsils several decades ago. She certainly respected his expertise, having chosen him carefully after an extended search when she knew she was pregnant. But she was not going to agree with his recommended course of action despite my chronic tonsillitis.

“Do you have clinical evidence that children who have had their tonsils removed get sick less often?” she demanded of him. “No,” he responded slowly, “only anecdotal evidence. You know the tonsils have no known function and are not necessary, and hers are very large.” “Hmmph,” was my mother’s rejoinder, “not known to you doctors.” So, as you might expect, I grew up with my tonsils and still have them to this day. They are large enough to inspire each new physician who looks in my throat to exclaim over both their size and their existence in a member of my generation, but whatever role they may play in the human body, they are still playing in mine.

My mother and my father had two strongly-held beliefs: First that there were no superfluous parts to the miraculous human body and, second, that optional surgery was not an option. I am sure they were encouraged in those beliefs by the death of an only child of dear friends during an optional tonsillectomy.

Do I know if they were right? All I can offer is that history shows the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree. That is why I felt a burst of glee when I came across a recent article in The New York Times Science section headlined, “Saving the Appendix.” They stopped removing tonsils as simply a matter of course many years ago, but here was further affirmation of the parental dicta.

“Five small studies from Europe, involving a total of 1000 patients, indicate that antibiotics can cure some patients with appendicitis; about 70 percent of those who took the pills did not require surgery,” according to Gina Kolata, author of the article. As well, patients who had an appendectomy after first trying antibiotics did not face any more complications than those who went directly to surgery. This, of course, flies in the face of traditional exhortations about rushing to remove the inflamed appendix before it bursts, potentially with dangerous results.

While these studies suggest that surgery can be avoided altogether in treating appendicitis, a large-scale clinical trial must be held for verification — and one is in the planning. When patients who had already had an appendectomy were asked if they would have been willing to try antibiotics first, nearly three-quarters responded “yes.”

The appendix is “a tiny, worm-shaped tube that hangs off the right side of the colon,” Kolata said, and no one knows what it does or why it can suddenly act up. Nor does anyone know why it also can get better on its own, even without antibiotics. And antibiotics actually have been used in the past to treat an inflamed appendix.

According to The Times, during the Cold War in the 1950s, when American sailors spent at least six months on nuclear submarines that were prohibited from surfacing, patients with appendicitis were given antibiotics and no deaths or complications were reported.

To use antibiotics would, of course, eliminate the need for surgery and hospitalization where appendicitis is diagnosed, which would be both cheaper and safer. But even if it revolutionized traditional treatment, using antibiotics would not immediately answer key questions: Would the appendicitis recur? If so, how often? How much antibiotics would be required? How would the drug best be administered?

Presently, doctors don’t usually tell their patients about the antibiotics option, citing the above unanswered questions as a reason. Also we know and, for the most part, approve that medicine is a highly conservative profession, avoiding the trendy but insufficiently tested. It is hard “to go away from a 30-minute operation that cures them for the rest of their lives,” said Dr. Giana Davidson, a University of Washington general surgeon quoted in the article.

But patients are finding out on their own and some ask for this nonsurgical alternative, thanks in part to information gleaned from the Internet.

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A boys’ baseball team I coached recently lost a game in such an excruciating fashion that I couldn’t rely on all the standby coach catchphrases.

“We’ll get ’em next time,” would fall flat, especially when we had them for the taking. We were up by two runs and were in complete control of the game until the final outs.

“Hey, this one’s on me.” That’s nice and can work in deflecting any possible blame, but the kids generally don’t buy into it. If they believe it, it also sets a dangerous precedent for future losses.

“Hey, coach,” they might ask at the end of another game. “This one’s clearly not on you, right? Isn’t it Johnny’s fault?”

Those final three outs never happened. What made the game even more difficult to swallow was that the other team didn’t put a single ball in play in their final at bat. Four walks, a hit batter and a few wild pitches later, we were done.

We trudged to left field for the postgame analysis and pep talk.

“Hey,” I said. “Look, uh, this is one game, right?”

I could see it in their eyes: “Weak and feeble, coach. You’re going to have to do better than that.”

“You know, we did a lot right this game.”

“Who cares,” their sullen, downcast eyes indicated.

“We lost.”

“OK, well, we can’t win them all.”

I didn’t even need to look at them to know what they were thinking. I was thinking it, too, as the words came dribbling out of my mouth. “Seriously? You’re going with that?”

“Boys, I know you all did your best.”

Their eyes moved to their parents, as if they were saying telepathically: “Get me out of here, I want to go home.”

“Hey,” I said, a small smirk on my face. “Guys, who saw Joey’s slide at second today? Was that the ugliest thing you’ve ever seen?”

Joey had wandered too far from second and would have been out if the pitcher had thrown the ball to the second baseman. When the second baseman had to move a few feet from the base, Joey dove back head first and landed flat on his chest, a yard short of the base. He crawled on his hands and knees across the dirt to the base, arriving just in time to beat the second baseman’s tag.

“That was funny,” several of them seemed to say. Joey, you see, is a bit sensitive so that comment could have been dangerous. Even he, however, offered a small smile. It was an absurd moment to savor. And, fortunately for us, he was safe, so laughing about it was probably safe.

In that final, fateful, painful inning, the first pitcher walked two and hit a batter, sending the tying run to second and the winning run to first. I brought in a tall relief pitcher who promptly walked another two batters. A wild pitch later, the game was over.

“Fred, do you know why I put you in there at the end of the game?” I asked.

“Because you believed in me?” he offered hopefully.

“Well, sure, but the real reason is that you’re much taller than me.”

Again, I was reaching for the absurd. No one looked at their parents.

“Yeah, you see, it’s not right for a 12-year-old boy to be taller than his coach. I needed to cut you down to size.”

The grin spread quickly across his face, as well as those of the other four boys who look down on me.

No, it wasn’t in the playbook, but it worked.

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With warmer weather comes an urge to leave the house, and we expect, as usual, there will be a lot more cars on the road, so now is a good time to remind our readers not to lose their cool behind the wheel.

Whether a driver made a mistake — as we all do from time to time — or not, it can be terrifying for that person when another motorist becomes enraged and takes it out on them. We’ve all experienced tailgating or obnoxious horn-honking, and some of us have been victims of more dire cases of road rage, like prolonged following and actual physical violence or threats. In the less confrontational incidents, frustrated and angry drivers often lash out because it’s easy to hide in the anonymous bubble of a car, when they would not have been so bold to display such anger in person. In the more extreme cases, the mad drivers may have had a screw or two loose to begin with and might have acted out no matter the location or circumstance.

We understand that daily stresses factor into this problem, and Long Island’s immense traffic congestion doesn’t help the frustration we might already be feeling while in the car. But consider this: The AAA Foundation for Traffic Safety reports that aggressive driving is a factor in more than half of all traffic fatalities, according to 2009 data. In those cases, “motorists are concerned with the others’ aggressive driving while many are guilty themselves.”

Terrible accidents involving mangled cars happen all the time, but they don’t have to happen over things as petty as payback for being cut off or revenge on a slow-moving vehicle. We urge our readers to slow down when they’re seeing red behind the wheel and take some time to think about what the other person’s situation might be before lashing out. Give each other the benefit of the doubt because we are all humans who make mistakes. Let small road infractions go with a deep exhale. Rising tempers don’t give us license to rage on the road. And the consequences can be deadly.

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If you could wave a wand and make all the summer weekend traffic on Long Island’s highways disappear, it would be a miracle, right? Well, we should prepare ourselves for a miracle, because one is about to touch down at Port Jefferson. Specifically, it will arrive, starting tomorrow, May 22, and will last through Sunday and every summer weekend thereafter.

This miracle to which I refer is a high-speed ferry that will carry walk-on passengers back and forth from New York City to Port Jefferson three times every Friday, once on Saturday and again three times on Sundays.

In so doing, it will, of course, provide an alternate route not only to Port Jefferson but also, thanks to its alliance with the Port Jeff ferry and the Hampton Jitney, to points east and north. Do you hear the announcement, “North Shore, North Fork, Hamptons and the wineries”? What a stimulus this can be for business even as it is a long overdue benefit for passengers.

A partnership between Seastreak, the Bridgeport-Port Jefferson Ferry and Hampton Jitney is making this new mode of transportation possible. These companies will link the tristate area, even tying into the New Jersey coast.

The seasonal weekend service is called Sea Jitney, and it will use the Port Jefferson dock as its hub. Hampton Jitney service will carry passengers to their preferred destinations elsewhere in Suffolk, and the Port Jeff ferry can take them to Connecticut and Amtrak.

“Seastreak has been an innovator in introducing new ferry services from New York City to destinations such as Martha’s Vineyard and Nantucket,” said Jim Barker, president of Seastreak, in a press release.

I know something about that service because I used it myself as a way to spend a weekend with friends who lived on Martha’s Vineyard. But in order to do that, I had to travel out east at an early hour to catch the boat.

Still, I was willing to do that to avoid the legendary traffic jams that come with driving there, and as I bet people will do to visit Long Island. According to Baker, the vessels are equipped with high-backed seating, a full bar and Wi-Fi service.

Geoffrey Lynch, president of Hampton Jitney, commented for the press release that this innovative idea from these “three established and respected area transportation companies … will give people a relaxing way to enjoy the East End and Port Jefferson.”

The ferry will leave Manhattan’s East 35th Street dock and Highlands, N.J., traveling round trip.

Margot Garant, Port Jefferson’s mayor, said in the release, “We are extremely pleased to partner with the Sea Jitney to help bring people to Port Jefferson by our harbor. This powerful partnership has an extremely low impact on our infrastructure while introducing visitors to our beautiful, historic village.”

Bridgeport-Port Jefferson Ferry general manager, Fred Hall, pronounced the Sea Jitney “a game changer for people who travel between Connecticut and the Hamptons. At two-and-one-half hours from Bridgeport to Southampton, it’s shorter than going through NYC and much less stressful.”

Here are some of the nitty-gritty details. One-way fares will be from $33 to $50, depending on the length of the ride; reservations and advance payment are required. The trip takes about two hours from the city to Port Jefferson and an hour, traffic permitting, from Port Jefferson to the Hamptons. For a complete schedule, go to www.seajitney.com.

Aside from my patriotic enthusiasm for the new alliance, I have a totally selfish reason to be so pleased with this new turn of events.

My children and grandchildren live to the west. Their summer visits may change for them from endurance on the highways to a pre-weekend pleasure as they stand at the rail and watch the bluffs of Long Island’s North Shore slip by. I’d better start stocking the refrigerator now.

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Where do we get the “Oh, right, I get it,” moments? We’re so close to ourselves and our lives that those moments are often hard to see. It’s like in the movies, where someone has a close friend: Lo and behold, that friend turns into something much more, once personal introspection is abandoned and it is realized how important such a friendship is deep down.

Beyond the romantic comedies, however, we can turn to dramas, action films or other forms of entertainment for a broader awareness of ourselves and our lives.

Let’s say we’re driving on the Long Island Expressway and somebody cuts us off. What do we do? Well, if we’ve got kids in the car, we might grind our teeth, hold on tight to the steering wheel and fight the urge to say things that would look something like “$#$#@%$!!!” in a cartoon.

But what did that person make us do? Did we have to hit the brake a bit when we’re on the way to a soccer game? Did she interrupt our train of thought when we were about to cure cancer, come up with a solution for tension in the Middle East, or figure out a way to reduce fossil fuel emissions from the thousands of planes that soar overhead?

Is it possible that she was racing home from work to take care of a kid with a stuffy nose, to hear someone’s first violin concert or congratulate her son for earning his first A in social studies?

Yes, most of the time we’re, thankfully, stuck in the world of the small stuff. If we’re fortunate enough, we’re not worried every moment about taking care of basic needs. I know people have told us many times not to sweat the small stuff and they’ve even urged us to understand that it’s all small stuff. The problem is that we’ve become accustomed to a world in which everything is available to us right now and in which we don’t want to wait for anything or anyone.

How’s all that extra time working out for us? Are we all enjoying the chance to spend more quality time with each other? We seem to have freed up our time so that we can disconnect with the people around us, staying plugged in to a virtual world devoid of awkward silences, driven by words that pour out of our fingers instead of our mouths. We don’t have to comb our hair or check our teeth to send someone a funny text with a little premade goofy face.

This isn’t a diatribe against electronics. I enjoy the instant gratification of knowing something that comes from ubiquitous Internet access.

In movies like “American Beauty,” we see Kevin Spacey “get it” a bit too late. He doesn’t see the wonder of his life, his wife and his daughter until he can’t appreciate or show it.

In real life, even people with jobs they dreamt about often get so caught up in what they’re doing that they seem to miss “it.” Of course, when these small, unflattering moments occur for our fame-generated celebrities, eager members of the paparazzi capture them “losing it.”

It’d be difficult to smell the flowers, become energized and inspired by a child’s question, or pause to appreciate a shifting wind all the time. We wouldn’t get much done and, I suspect, might miss a bill, deadline, meeting or two.

But, wouldn’t it be nice if those “Oh, right, I get it,” moments came more often, giving us the ability to appreciate the unseen air we breathe and the world of infinite possibilities that awaits around the corner?

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If you haven’t yet read The Post and Courier’s “Till death do us part” series of stories on domestic violence in South Carolina, which won a Pulitzer Prize this year, you should. The opening paragraph sets the tone for the series with a shocking statistic: “More than 300 women were shot, stabbed, strangled, beaten, bludgeoned or burned to death over the past decade by men in South Carolina, dying at a rate of one every 12 days while the state does little to stem the carnage from domestic abuse.”

It goes on to say that while “state officials have long lamented the high death toll for women, lawmakers have put little money into prevention programs and have resisted efforts to toughen penalties for abusers.”

The piece is both disturbing and eye-opening, and while South Carolina is different from both New York and the smaller communities of Suffolk County, domestic violence is still a complex issue, and we commend our representatives for not just standing by.

The Suffolk County Legislature unanimously approved a pilot program on Tuesday that would provide 30 new GPS tracking devices for family court judges to assign to offenders with an order of protection against them. The program would also allow victims of domestic violence — if they so choose — to wear their own tracking devices so they may be alerted if an offender is near them.

The legislation is the latest brought forth by Legislator Kara Hahn (D-Setauket) and continues to strengthen county laws relating to domestic violence.

While some may question the use of tracking devices, giving the discretion to judges allows us to evaluate each case on an individual basis. That would hopefully limit the GPS system to the most dangerous offenders and prevent us from violating anyone’s constitutional rights. And 30 devices is a small number when looking at the bigger picture — in 2013, there were more than 1,500 violations of orders of protection in Suffolk County.

If assigned appropriately, carefully and conservatively, the devices could help give domestic violence victims a new sense of safety and freedom to live their lives.

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It has been a revolving door at my house, which must mean it is truly spring. I don’t know about you, but as soon as the weather turns beautiful, my dearest friends shake the winter cobwebs out of their systems and call to see if they can visit. The number of calls increases with the rising temperature as we move into summer. I only slightly attribute that to my scintillating personality. I know the real impetus for visiting is this beautiful place we live in.

They all have bona fide reasons to come here. They have meetings, conferences, cultural events, doctor appointments, dentist appointments and so forth that bring them out from the big city or from other states, or even from the other coast. In the meantime, they get to enjoy the shoreline, the beaches, the docks, and the shops, restaurants and art galleries in the villages, and I get to enjoy them.

They all bring me something. And I’m not talking about the candy, flowers or wine that are house gifts. They bring me stories about their lives in other places, about their children’s successes and their grandchildren’s brilliance. They bring me news of friends we have in common, so I can catch up on who is doing what. They bring me memories of places and events we’ve shared, for they are usually longtime friends and, therefore, witnesses to my life. And they bring me laughter about outrageous moments we have known and tears for those whom we have lost. Most knew my husband, even my father and mother and my brother and sister, all of whom are long gone from this world but who live on in our recollections and in the stories we exchange. And we worry together over friends who are not doing so well and about each other.

We also plan for the future: plays we will get tickets for, meals we will share, museum exhibits that are not to be missed, concerts we will hear, perhaps even trips we will take together. At this time in our lives, we are free enough of familial responsibilities to dare make such plans.

We talk of books we have read, movies we have enjoyed, and experiences we recommend. In so doing, we broaden each other’s lives. We even exchange the names and symbols of equities we have heard promising forecasts about and interesting personal interviews we have caught on television. We are often fearless enough to wade into political opinions, even revealing whether we had or had not voted for President Obama and how we think he is doing. Just mention the name Hillary, and the conversation is off and running for the next half hour. Lest you think we support only one party, Marco Rubio and Jeb Bush can also be part of the conversation. We cover the political waterfront.

As the day goes on, we might even lay bare some of our worries or shortcomings, offering encouragement to each other in the process, recalling triumphs that belie the worries. We might share recipes, including the men among us, and we brag about all the vegetables we have eaten in the previous 24 hours and how we cooked them.

They share stories about other friends, eventually introducing them and broadening our circle. Each newcomer brings some of the same interests, but also new subjects we might never have thought about, much less learned of. To pat myself on the back for a moment, I am pleased to have taught a small group of my traveling buddies how to recognize a Guernsey cow, which has orange and white markings, comes from one of the British Channel Islands and gives delicious milk rich in vitamin A. How do I know that? My father grew up on a dairy farm and shared that vital information with me, explaining how I could distinguish a Guernsey from a Jersey cow, which comes from another of the Channel Islands. How could we go through life not knowing that difference?

So my friends  are welcomed with clean sheets and morning coffee. Given all the above, it seems like the least I can do.

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