Archive for the 'Travel' category

On The Road Again: Alabama

Sep 27 2007 Published by under Miscellany, Politics, Travel

I’ve been hanging out on the Redneck Riviera this week – lovin’ the beach.

One of the benefits of the day job is I get to travel to different states and update our state associations on the latest happenings in Washington. I find it refreshing to get out of DC as often as humanly possible to talk to real people. Granted the conversations are still about politics. Just once it would be nice to spend a week outside DC and never have anyone mention Presidential campaigns, Congress or politics in general.

When you live in DC for longer than a week, you discover two universal truths. First, every conversation you have with a stranger involves the following three questions:

  • Where are you from? (nobody is from DC)
  • Where do you work?
  • What do you do?

If the answers to those questions don’t indicate that the two of you can do anything for each other professionally, the conversation usually ends there.

The other universal truth is that when you leave DC, if you tell anybody that’s where you live, it will immediately begin a conversation about politics. When I’m not traveling for work, I’ve begun to tell strangers that I live in West Virginia and study insect feces for a living. At least I can occasionally have a conversation about something other than the failings of our elected officials.

So anyway, I’ve never been to the Pensacola/Alabama region, and it is actually quite nice. It actually reminds me of my trip to Turks and Caicos. The geography (at least near the beach) is fairly similar. Turks & Caicos didn’t have as many trees, and the houses a half mile inland were not as nice, but the overall feel is very similar.

I could do without the humidity. It was quite muggy the last couple of days, but that’s Florida in summer. You can’t build on swampland and not have humidity. I’ve come to accept that about DC as well.

The two downsides (which I am always looking for in every situation) were the age of the hotel (it was built in the late 70s or early 80s) and my breakfast this morning. The trouble with a hotel knocking on 30, is the lack of modern conveniences – especially if they have not done renovations to the infrastructure. For instance, the hotel had beautiful views of the Gulf, but it had no Internet at all (forget wi-fi, I would have taken a cable) in the rooms. There was free wi-fi in the lobby, but I’d rather not hang out in the lobby. It also had no OnDemand movies, no decent cable, and little in the way of amenities. They really need to do some work.

Breakfast this morning was sort of an oddity. I would not think it was possible to get bad orange juice in Florida. I don’t know why I would assume that, but I did. Village Inn proved me wrong. I had a small drink of the worst orange juice I’ve ever had. I would have asked them to replace it, but I always fear doing that. I assume they’ll either taint it or they’ll give me another glass just as bad. Fool me once, and all…

In the words of the immortal Franz Zedlacher:

The meal was great, and would have recieved [sic] a 10 if the roll was warm.

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Have I Mentioned How Much US Airways Sucks?

Aug 06 2007 Published by under Craziness, Miscellany, Stuff That Sucks, Travel

A couple of weeks ago I received a message from the owner of this MySpace page asking me to join her crusade against US Air. While I was impressed by her initiative, and understood her feelings, it had been almost a year since my last horrible US Air experience. I had forgotten how bad they are, and my own statement imploring others to never, ever fly US Air.

Well, yesterday I had to fly to Asheville, North Carolina for a conference. I was speaking at 9 AM this morning. My flight was supposed to leave Dulles at 4:00 yesterday, so I headed to the airport around 2:30.

I ended up leaving almost an hour late because the inbound flight was delayed leaving Dayton, OH. These things happen, so no big deal, right?

When I arrived in Charlotte for my connection, it too was delayed creating a 3 1/2 hour layover (even after my one-hour inbound delay. Since Asheville is only about 2 hours from Charlotte, I figured I’d simply rent a car and drive. I approached the gate agent and asked to have them pull my bag so I could grab a rental car.

Here’s where the story goes from simply pedestrian to tragically ironic.

The gate agent told me that my bag could not be taken out of the stream because it had already been routed to the holding area for my connecting flight. They assured me that doing so meant my bag would arrive at my destination.

See where this is going?

It didn’t… I arrived at my destination after 10:00pm (8 hours from DC to Asheville BY AIR – a new record). My bag however, went into some sort of luggage limbo. After a half-hour trying to explain the concept of a missing bag to the gate agent in Asheville, the guy next to me indicated he was also waiting for an errant bag – and had been since Wednesday (5 days).

I did without the bag, grabbed some new clothes for my meeting, and headed back to the airport at 10:00 AM this morning. upon check-in, I asked them to check the status of my bag. It had not been located, let alone routed to Asheville.

After a half hour flight delay leaving Asheville, and another hour delay due to a blown air conditioner in Charlotte, I was batting .1000 for late flights on this trip – and all of them were due to mechanical problems (nice reliable fleet, huh?)

The US air lost baggage tracking system tells me they have found my bag, but not where it is or when I can expect it.

Under most circumstances, I’d say this was an unbelievably bad trip, but it’s par for the course on US Air.

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Traveling

Aug 15 2006 Published by under Miscellany, Travel

After spending 25 hours of my life trying to get home, I got a particular kick out of my friend Melissa’s suggestions for air travel safety. I’m not sure that I would ever fly if I had to wear a surgical gown and get a full cavity search, but her suggestions deserve consideration.

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US Airways Sucks

Aug 14 2006 Published by under Craziness, Miscellany, Travel

Usually the way corporate mergers work is a good, solid airline will buy up a smaller, crappy airline and the smaller crappy airline will be brought up to the standards of the better airline. It appears that hasn’t happened in the US Air/AmericaWest merger.

If you have ever flown AmericaWest, you know how bad they were pre-merger. It actually appears that they were so horrible they have actually sucked US Airways into the toilet with them.

On our flight to NM last week, they decided to sit me, Mrs. Quip, and baby Quip in three different rows, all in middle seats. Unfortunately, baby quip is 15 months old, so that presented a problem. Normally the gate agents would happily reassign the seats, or at the very least, ask the other passengers if they would help accommodate at least the mother and child… But not the new US Air. Nope. Their reply was, verbatim, “Well there’s nothing we can do for you.”

I could write that off, but then the flight back became even better. They cancelled our flight due to weather problems. No biggie. That happens all the time. But then the gate agent sent everyone back to the ticket counter to rebook… Except the ticket counter was closed, and nobody was available to help until they called in some agents from home.

So now I am waiting for my rebooked flight, and it’s delayed for 90 minutes because they have to bring in a crew from somewhere else. Fortunately my layover in Phoenix is better than 3 hours, so I should make my flight to DC.

Let my life serve as a cautionary tale. Never fly US Air…

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