Tag: flying

Categories
Tips USA

Dueling tourism taglines for North Carolina and Ohio

Here they are, and coincidentally both were on Chevy cars parked right next to each other in Dayton, Ohio.

You know I had to drop everything and take travel geek photos.

The plates feature taglines for two different states in two different regions of the US that both use an aviation angle to tout some “historic cred,” and perhaps encourage tourism along with state pride.

North Carolina, of course, is the home of Kitty Hawk on the Outer Banks, where the Wright Brothers conducted their famous experiments in flight around the wide-open, unpopulated sand dunes (at least, they were unpopulated way back in 1903.)

Today it’s still a nice place to visit, if a bit touristy. Plenty of lighthouses to see, although there are so many shipwrecks offshore that it’s called the “Graveyard of the Atlantic.”

Sainted Husband and I liked the area so much, we got married there a few years back, in the tiny town of Duck at the Sanderling Inn.

Ohio, on the other hand, was actually the home of the Wright Brothers and their famous bicycle shop in Dayton.

You can visit the Dayton Aviation Heritage site, but ironically the original Wright shop was transported to Greenfield Village in Dearborn, Michigan by automotive titan Henry Ford, in an effort to preserve important historic locations.

My esteemed contacts at the Dayton Daily News tell me that the National Museum of the Air Force, at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base near Dayton, does an excellent job of telling the aviation story in that part of Ohio.

Pick your state plate – you’ll get a fun flying story either way!

Categories
Tips

2 must-have items for air travel

Whenever I get on a plane lately, the experience provides perfect material for a blog post.

Here is the latest lesson….two items I could not have done without on today’s journey from Austin to Kansas City for the Travel Media Showcase conference.

1.   The 800 telephone number to directly contact the airline. Have it written down AND pre-programmed into your cell phone. Here is why:

  • My original morning flight on Northwest Airlines was already flashing “Delayed” when I arrived at the airport a little after 6 am. Not a good sign, especially since I had a tight plane change/turnaround in Minneapolis (yes, don’t get me started on the absurdity of flying to Minneapolis from Austin in order to get to Kansas City – die, airline hub & spoke!)
  • I went to the gate area to see what was up. No desk attendant from Northwest, no notice on the electronic board indicating a revised departure time.
  • I sat there like a sheep along with everyone else till the scheduled departure time came and went, with NOTHING heard from the airline.  I then whipped out my cell phone, called Northwest’s 800 number and was promptly and politely rebooked onto a Continental Airlines flight leaving just 30 minutes later (and getting me to KC 40 minutes earlier than the original arrival time.)
  • I did a happy dance, grabbed my trusty rolling carryon suitcase — here’s another example of why you should never check luggage these days if you can help it — and I scampered to my new gate.
  • Don’t be a sheep! I learned from calling the 800 number that the plane had a mechanically-related delay of 6 hours; who knows when someone would have come around to tell us that.

2.  Carry a small portable digital music player. Here’s why:

  • Your sanity.  My iPod blocked out having to listen to a yammering TV show at the gate while I waited for Northwest to ignore me (see above.)
  • Your sanity.  My iPod blocked out the screaming child who was running madly around in the Kansas City airport, ignoring his mother and jumping on the luggage carousel. Not my child, and he couldn’t set my teeth on edge, either.
  • Your sanity.  My iPod blocked out the women who blabbed on her cell phone for nearly 40 minutes as I awaited ground transport in KC.
  • Did I say, “your sanity?”  Air travel is crummy enough these days; having pleasant sounds of your own choosing makes life quite tolerable.
Categories
Philosophy USA

If you have nothing good to say about U.S. travel, come sit by me

In transit at the dreaded airport (courtesy sheilaz413 at flickr CC)

I am disgusted.

I am a U.S. traveler with multiple transportation options, and most of them are awful.

After a week spent flying from Texas to Virginia to Chicago back to Texas, my verdict is official – air travel is simply wretched. Unless you have the money to decamp to first class, which I do not, it is a soul-sucking, annoying, tiring disaster (and I was traveling alone, without having to worry about wrangling young children.)

I am not clueless about the current high price of fuel, so I understand why the airlines (except for Southwest, which actually planned for a fuel price increase) think they must nickel and dime passengers for every mangy pillow, blanket, sandwich, suitcase and inch of legroom, but I’d rather just pay for a somewhat higher-priced ticket and not be treated like a fee-ridden pest in coach.

I’m your customer, Mr. Airline.

I’m dealing with your dinky seats — I’m not obese nor am I tall, so I can handle crummy seat pitch although if you squeeze it much more, I won’t be able to fit.

I’m dealing with no food — I buy my own sandwich from some random nasty, unimaginative, overpriced food joint in your rat-filled airports.

I check in online, print my own boarding pass and try to arrive early, so you airline jerks can’t involuntarily bump me because you overbooked flights that you knew would be full.

I’m dealing with your rules about checked luggage and I refuse to let you lose my suitcase and have it end up in your Alabama warehouse — I traveled for a week with everything in my wheelie Travelpro carry-on.

I am not clueless about terrorism (co-Honor Graduate of my US Naval War College class should count for something) but I fail to understand uneven enforcement of various draconian TSA security rules that have dubious anti-terrorism benefit.

Example: the great 3 oz liquid flail, wherein my little baggie of appropriately-sized liquid toiletries sailed through checkpoints at Austin and Washington Dulles but TSA suddenly decides at Chicago O’Hare that the bag’s too big….except it was a quart-sized zip-top bag that I picked up from TSA last October when they were handing them out at the Albuquerque airport.

FAIL.

Give me a break.

Let’s not even get into how unwelcome visitors to the U.S. feel, thanks to our screening procedures.

Here’s my beef: we don’t have any other significantly better travel options in the U.S.

  • Unlike Europe and many other continents, we don’t really have a viable passenger rail system in the U.S. that can provide an efficient, well-priced alternative that runs on time, other than a somewhat functional Amtrak grid in the Northeast. I did find a family who rode the rails roundtrip Tucson-Chicago, but don’t expect to adhere to any schedule. Hope springs eternal, since May 10 is National Train Day, for what that’s worth (and I’m the granddaughter of a railroad engineer, so the demise of U.S. rail is painful.)
  • Would you take your kids and “go Greyhound?” Bus systems are starting to respond better to the needs of budget travelers (check out Megabus and BoltBus) but how well do those funky downtown bus stations work with children in tow?
  • Gas is pushing $4/gallon, and it seems wasteful for individuals or families to each load up a car and hit the road, rather than use mass transportation.

Where does this leave the family traveler?

The best (but less planet-friendly and more expensive option, when you include hotels) is to drive yourself, and that’s what I plan to do with my family this summer.

To heck with it.

We will explore our own backyard near Austin, and perhaps take a few short road trips to East Texas and maybe to a Bandera family dude ranch (wish me luck convincing my city kid teen to do THAT one!)

I’m not paying another dime to the airlines until I can figure out how to fly with my kids fairly comfortably, without feeling like I’m in a game of cat-and-mouse to avoid tyrannical air travel policies and price structures.

I’m smarter than that, Mr. Airline. You lose.

(My post title is a riff on a favorite saying by Alice Roosevelt Longworth, Teddy’s daughter and a noted curmudgeon.)

** Like this post? Click here to review on StumbleUpon and here to digg it. Thanks!