Travel Blog

Have you ever refused to buy a product or use a service because the television commercial is just crappy? I know I have. I will never use Travelocity just because of the stuped "travel gnome." Geez, what a sorry commercial.

I do all my travel bookings online, and use multiple travel sites to do the bookings. I use places like Orbitz or Travelocity for comparing rates, along with AAA guides, which I get free with my annual membership (benefits include roadside assistance, maps, and guidebooks). I'll often use individual vendor sites to book hotel rates, since these often offer the best prices over what can be found at the aggregators.

Then on July 7 an Air France passenger jet carrying 196 people narrowly escaped tragedy after it ploughed into a herd of cows wandering on the runway of Port Harcourt airport, killing seven of them and suffering damage itself.

Flying Northwest Airlines? A pain. The service staff at Narita were helpful when about 15 of the 35 Ottawa JETs (Japan English Teachers) discovered one or more pieces of baggage didn’t seem to join us. I was one of them. Two hours of waiting and my backpack of clothing came to me (it had been misplaced). Others were not so fortunate. Several people had luggage completely missing, and those who had checked-in near the end of the line in Ottawa found out their luggage had gone a different route and might not have made it. For some of them, it included the bag that was intended to keep them going for the Tokyo Orientation.

Today we took the train down to San Diego to visit Grandpa Schwarz. Riding the train is a pleasant way to go there, and it’s an arduous trip by car. The only bad thing(s) that happened were that we missed the first two trains. When we got to the Gold Line station in Pasadena, the train left just as we were coming down the stairs. We had to wait for the next train, and then when we got to Union Station, we looked out the window and saw the Amtrak Surfliner leaving for San Diego. So we had to wait for the next one.

The trip to London never happened. However, I did have a lovely 16 hour trip down to Houston and back, viewed two incredibly bad movies while in flight, and stuffed my gut on 4 bags of peanuts, and all for the incredibly low price of $2,000. When Continental Airlines screws up, it does it right. To be fair, they have refunded the portion of the trip package cost, but only the discounted amount they gave to Travelocity. I'm waiting to see if I get stuck with the hotel bill, which I'll know on Monday morning. Continental has done their very best to deal with their muck up and loss of composure during a very mild weather situation (Emily hadn't yet formed and spanked them), but they did break down under the pressure of weather delays. I'm concerned how they'll hold up when and if we have another terrorist attack.

At first I didn’t understand why I got bumped, then I realized that probably had the most expensive ticket of everyone on the plane, and it started to make sense. I’m flying Austin, Texas -> Leon, Mexico -> Washington, D.C. -> Austin, Texas and because I had no advance notice, Continental Airlines did really well on the deal. The Continental employees were much more pleasant than the American Airlines employees.

Gosh, lets see where should we start… Last week while we were visiting Petoski, MI. we met two cyclists from CA. Kirsten and Geoff who were both riding long wheelbase Ryan Recumbents and pulling Burley trailers. They were cycling from west to east after taking an Amtrak Train from California to Montana due to their limited vacation time. They were riding to Mass. to visit Geoff’s mother. It was wonderful to exchange stories with them and to hear what WI, MN and the Dakota’s are like. They were riding 80 miles per day, which seems crazy to us, but again they had vacation time limitations. (We are so lucky)! They invited us to stay with them when we reach Oakland, CA. It will be great to see them in September or October!

As usual, we were last minute deciding to go, and last minute trying to find a place. Travelocity and all the other online reservation places showed nothing available. I knew there were tons of mom-n-pop places that would have something, but didn’t know how to get phone numbers short of swiping a phone book. Today, on my way to Columbia for a meeting, I stopped at a rest area which had travel flyers, and found some listings with potential.

Right now my sister is attempting to fly back to California (she is stuck at Dulles airport on a delayed Independence Air flight). She has now sworn off that airline and suggests that you do the same too. Jet Blue is a much more convenient way to fly to DC. In fact, for any of you who want to come to visit in the fall, Jet Blue just announced the $99 one-way ticket between Dulles and Oakland/Long Beach.

The current predicted track on Emily (click on the link in the column to the right) is significantly different from early yesterday, demonstrating how difficult such prognostications are. The mid-day track moved the path further south, talking the storm away from a direct hit on eastern Cuba and right over Jamaica. This morning, NHC adjusted it even more to the south, on a path that misses most of the big Caribbean islands and points Emily right at Cozumel on the Mexican peninsula. The cruise lines are probably keeping an eye on that, as that small town is a very popular tourist stop in the Gulf.

If there is one thing I am learning in México, it is how to answer this question. Guilt, in its infancy, is a small, persistent pain, like needle pricks. The dullness of these pricks leaves me with a tangible fear of having been given too much. Walking the streets of Mexico City, a woman, missing an eye, holds our her hand, her other eye rolling miserably in its socket. A man, shamelessly sits with his jeans rolled up to display a leg that has eaten itself, the skin clinging unnaturally to the bone. Children dance around your legs, asking for money so they can get high on glue in the alleys at sundown. Men huddle in the parks, the burning stakes of the Inquisition looming within the shadows of the trees. A prostitute, her face surreal with blue and purple makeup, walks with her eyes vast and empty, knowing too much and owning too little, not even her own life.

We thought, maybe, we could find someone who might offer us some coffee or similar to calm us after watching our plane catch fire, so we went around attempting to find a Delta representative who might be sympathetic, both to us and to the 300 people still stuck in line. Unfortunately, whenever anyone heard our story, all we were told was, "You have a new flight? Well, there's nothing I can do for you then. What more do you want?" Well, that's not true. One guy, a fine representative of Delta Airlines, told us, "What do you expect me to do about it? You're lucky the pilots knew what they were doing, or you could be dead right now."

And United Airlines, after I said nice things about them, managed to screw us over after all. I called yesterday to reconfirm our reservation and its attached cats, only to find out that the waiver we’d gotten to take two cats on a one-cat plane wasn’t a waiver at all. “We’ll send one cat cargo between Madison and Chicago,” they said.

I just found out today that online flight search websites, such as Travelocity and Orbitz, use information stored in cookies to alter your flight searches. So when you do a search and then come back to do another you will receive different results. The real concern is that the searches are altered to show more expensive flights and fail to reveal the cheapest tickets. If this is the case, do they show you the cheapest fares on the first search, the second, or some undeterminable future search. Anyone know the answer?

What’s going on here? It used to be that if customers couldn’t pay a premium, they’d have to accept low quality in return. In other words, the low price vendor was by definition the low quality vendor. That’s not true any more, witness the success of companies as diverse as Dell, Jet Blue, Progressive Insurance, and Men’s Wearhouse—all recognized for good products and good customer service as well as low prices. Note the fact that in both the AAMA and MSDW cases, representatives of both organizations conceded that lower price competitors were offering, in effect, comparable quality goods and services.

Websites like couchsurfing.com and globalfreeloaders.com list thousands of members willing to open their homes and often their fridges to budget travellers. The catch: What goes around comes around; you’ll be expected to host someone in the future.

Long story short (and really...thank me for sparing you the details) I missed a connecting flight* in Salt Lake City, Utah and did not get back to Phoenix today (*note that missing the flight was entirely the fault of Delta Airlines...that's D...E....L.....). I tried to get on several standby flights but was bumped from three of them before I gave up for the day and accepted the hotel vouchers from the airline. I reasoned that a good run on the hotel's treadmill and a strong drink would make up for the long day and all the hassel spent in the airport.

Man, talk about a hassle. Changing my ticket was like the three stooges go to the travel agent. Man, I went on Friday to American Airlines and their computers were down. So I waited and waited while the guy tried to do it on the phone and after about 45 minutes he told me, oh well if you don't have your actual tickets with you right now you have to come back later. So, I had to take the afternoon from work off to come back.� He told me to go to the Bolivian Airlines first, so I went there, they did something, then they told me to go over to American. So, I went to American, he did something and told me to go back to Bolivian. I asked him if I needed to take the hard copy of the tickets and he said no. So, I went to Bolivian and they said "where are your tickets?" So, I went back to American. He did some stuff for about 30 minutes, and then I wen back to Bolivian. When I showed them what I had from American, they told me "Oh, he did everything already, I don't have to do anything else."

The theory of gravity violates common sense in many ways. Adherents have a hard time explaining, for instance, why airplanes do not fall. Since anti-gravity is rejected by the scientific establishment, they resort to lots of hand-waving. The theory, if taken seriously, implies that the default position for all airplanes is on the ground. While this is obviously true for Northwest airplanes (relying on “A Wing and a Prayer”), it appears that Jet Blue and Southwest have a superior theory that effectively harnesses forces that overcome so-called gravity.

My adolescence was filled with frequent bus trips to LAX and JFK, where I furtively collected airline schedules. I walked back and forth past the check-in counters, trying to blend in with the real travelers until the ticket agents were sufficiently busy and I could surreptitiously sweep a timetable off the counter. I carried my treasures home and memorized their contents. AeroPeru, Air France, Qantas and Royal Air Moroc. The names were as tantalizing to me as quaaludes, acid and speed were to some of my Hollywood High School classmates. Departures and arrivals, class of service, non-stop or direct. Each symbol and code were magical because they could transform an awkward, selfless, self-hating teenage nothing into the sophisticated world traveler that I would someday be.

This means that if you sign up for a Travelocity newsletter and you sign up for the registry, Travelocity might be in violation of the Utah and Michigan law by sending you the very information you have requested. Interested in a deal on a hotel getaway package? Not if you live in Utah or Michigan, buddy.

From a Southwest Airlines employee: “Welcome aboard Southwest Flight 245 to Tampa. To operate your seat belt, insert the metal tab into the buckle, and pull tight. It works just like every other seat belt; and, if you don’t know how to operate one, you probably shouldn’t be out in public unsupervised.”

so for those of you who have managed to keep updated on my life through this here blog you’ll know that during all my travels thus far this summer, something has gone wrong and near wrong. memorial day weekend blew as i wasted an entire week doing absolutely nothing all the while berit was just minutes away without me knowing. south carolina was…interesting. i dont think i’ve ever done so much damage to my car in such a short amount of time. then in D.C. i got a flat tire almost exactly the same time as i entered D.C. now, finally, during july 4th weekend, i have the most hellish time with northwest airlines (i have come to treasure non-stop flights), kill the best phone in the world, and have some wierd ass shit from the hudson be eating me alive (i’ve been itchy all over since my dunk).

Unfortunately, as I travel by way of the Amtrak train, I could not haul them back to campus with me. All I have in Bellingham is my guitar and a piano in the lounge downstairs, which is in-tune but so ordinary in sound that I could not pick out its B-flat in a crowd. I put a note in each instrument case saying: Do not sell this instrument under any circumstances. I will be coming back for it in two years. They will make nice additions to my music room when I have a place to call my own.

No, not Paris Hilton, who’s apparently gotten engaged to a guy named… Paris. No, I’m referring to the Paris Air Show, which I only found the dates for today. It falls right in the middle of my fortnight off, so I was on to Air France like a shot and found a very acceptable return fare to Charles de Gaulle airport.