JERRY GORBY loved his Pall Malls. Too bad his 33-year-old tobacco habit didn't love him back. Twelve years after he finally quit smoking, he ended up with emphysema-and a life tied to an oxygen tank.

He's not angry about his four years, so far, with oxygen equipment. The 70-year-old is thankful he's alive. It's traveling that gets him more than a little miffed.

Travel Travails TAKE THE TIME he drove from his Napa, Calif., home to Sacramento, then two days later flew to Washington, D.C. Oxygen was scheduled through four of his provider's stores. When Gorby arrived in Sacramento, instead of the top-fill tank he had ordered, the company delivered a side-fill, the only type this location had. He was without oxygen for two hours while he waited for a side-fill portable.

Gorby blames the "the right hand not knowing what the left is doing. ... The farther down the provider's chain of command you go, the more diluted the service," he says. "Somewhere along the line, the word doesn't get passed down properly."

Seeking Solutions SOLUTIONS ARE simple, Gorby insists. Providers could employ a standard checklist that, along with other information, would ask for the traveler's existing and required equipment and oxygen type.

Also, he notes, providers could pay and train their employees better. "Companies would find it more profitable to invest what it takes to ensure an efficient staff," he says.

Even then, however, travelers should double-check all information with all parties involved, he says.

Gorby plans to put his thoughts on travel to practical use. Sometime in the next couple of years, he will test providers' services when he drives across the United States, and again throughout Europe. "I want to see how much travel someone in my situation can do, and then report on it."

Jerry Gorby provides more advice and a listing of thousands of locations for oxygen providers, worldwide, in his Breathin' Easy guide. The 2000 edition also names providers that service airports and offers tips for traveling by air.

Says Gorby, "The goal of this book is to help people with COPD [chronic obstructive pulmonary disease] travel more easily, and get them to realize that they don't have to stay in their homes."

The publication-now enjoying its fourth edition-is something he could've used four years ago when he was preparing to visit a friend but couldn't find any oxygen in the small California town he was traveling to. With no available guide to point people like him in the direction of oxygen providers, Gorby, with a background in publishing and advertising and using his own money, decided to create one himself.

"Eight times in my life I should've been dead," he says. "But I must've been protected so I could provide this book for people."

For more information on Breathin' Easy, call 888/699-4360 or visit Gorby's Web site (www.breathineasy.com).