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  • Podcast #157 — Notes from the Baltics: Riga, Latvia and Tallinn, Estonia

    Podcast #157 — Notes from the Baltics: Riga, Latvia and Tallinn, Estonia

    Selfies with Friends in Tallinn

    Wrapping up my time in Charlottesville, VA with some “bleisure” travel, as well as some pure leisure travel with a quick trip in the Baltics. And a listener talks about the reason for his out-and-back day trip from Washington, DC to Hong Kong. All this and more at the direct link to the podcast file or listening to it right here by clicking on the arrow below.

    Here is the transcript of TravelCommons podcast #157:

    • Intro music — Warmth by Makkina
    • Coming to you today from the TravelCommons studio in Chicago just off the shores of Lake Michigan toward the end of what has been a record-breaking cold November. The first half of the month here was the coldest in 148 years with an average temperature of 31 degrees, which compares to an average high for November of 50 degrees, and a low of 39. But what’s been worse has been the early snow — 3½ inches of snow on Halloween (another record) and again on Veterans Day. And by some incredible strokes of luck (as opposed to any foresight on my part), I dodged both snows — by flying home from Charlottesville, VA the day before Halloween, and scheduling a week off the road the week of November 11. It’s always better to be lucky than good.
    • Last week was my last week in Charlottesville, finishing up an 18-week project that started in July. A year ago, when I wrapped up a long run in Charlottesville and didn’t know if/when I’d be back, I took an afternoon to hit Monticello, Thomas Jefferson’s home that was only a 10-15 minute drive from the client. It was one of those things I wanted to do, but kept putting off — I’ll get to it — and here I was, the last day, and so squoze it in between meetings and calls.
    • With that in mind, I did just a touch more planning this year, and on my second-to-last trip, the week between the Halloween and Veterans Day snow storms, I flew in a day early on Monday, but to IAD rather than CHO, instead renting a car, and driving the length of the 105-mile Skyline Drive down to Charlottesville along the tops of the Blue Ridge Mountains through Shenandoah National Park. I was probably a week late for peak leaf peeping, but it was still pretty, especially when looking west over the Shenandoah Valley.  I don’t think I would’ve made a special trip to drive Skyline Drive, but since I was in the neighborhood, why not? And it turned out to be just a great drive — clear blue skies, still some good leaf color, and on a Monday, not a lot of people on that 2-lane road. 
    • And then last Thursday, flying out of CHO for the last time until I don’t know when, I had to order one last beer at the Tailwind, the airport bar. For an airport with only 5 gates, the Tailwind always has a great rotation of local craft beers. And there’s a mini-Cheers effect — maybe not everyone knows my name, but Lyn the bartender recognizes me from my 4-year off-and-on presence in her bar. When I showed back up in July after a 9-month absence, she recognized me right away. So I had to get one last beer from her. I looked at the blackboard and ordered the stout from Blue Mountain Brewery, which was not far from when I ended my trip down Skyline Drive. I was getting over a bit of a cold; the IPA would’ve been a bit rough on the back of my throat. That Dark Hollow Stout went down smoother, but what I didn’t quite pick up on is that it’s a 10% alcohol beer. Bit of an eye opener at 11:30am. Made for a good nap on the flight home.
    • Bridge Music — Dive Deep (Loveshadow remix) by spinningmerkaba (c) copyright 2015 Licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution Noncommercial (3.0) license. http://dig.ccmixter.org/files/jlbrock44/50488 Ft: Loveshadow

    Following Up

    • Mark Skinner sent a note to comments@travelcommons.com a few days ago
      • Hi Mark, Long time listener. So your tag line “It’s more about the journey than the destination” hit home to me with what has to be my oddest business trip yet. Tomorrow, I’m flying Washington to Hong Kong, via EWR, arriving Monday afternoon, and then returning on Tuesday morning! I’m basically there for dinner…
      • No meetings in Hong Kong, it’s all about taking a cosmic ray detector for NASA on an over-the-pole flight; which the UA flights 179/180 do quite well, EWR-HKG-EWR. They want to understand the amount of radiation from space inside the aircraft cabin. I’ll be in the air longer than on the ground. I’m planning to stay on and to sleep at “normal” east coast times, which means while I’ll have a hotel room by HKG, I’ll be awake then (night in HK, but daytime hours for me).  Happily my upgrades to Polaris Business both ways have been confirmed! Otherwise the 16 hr flight would seem even longer…
    • Oh, my! There’s a nice end-of-year mileage run! I told Mark that his itinerary reminds me of one I did 12 years ago when I flew to London for a lunch meeting to wrap up a project. I flew ORD-LHR, showered in the arrivals lounge, took a car out to Reading, gave the final readout over lunch, hopped back in the car to LHR, and caught the afternoon flight to DEN. I always say that ORD-LHR-DEN run was the epitome of “stupid” travel, but Mark has a good reason for his out-&-back.  Given the amount of time I’ve spent at 35,000 ft over the past 35 years, I’m not sure I want to know the results of Mark’s measurements.
    • United Airlines sent out a link promoting a jet lag app, Timeshifter. Though Mark won’t need one because he’s staying on Eastern Time during his quick jaunt to Hong Kong, I decided to give it a try for my trip to Latvia, Estonia, and Finland. Going east, from the US to Europe, has always been easier for me. My usual routine – I skip the seat-back entertainment for 4-6 hrs of shut-eye (I wouldn’t call it true sleep) on the flight over, eat breakfast when I arrive even if I’m not hungry, get outside as much as possible, take a 30-minute nap after check-in, push through until 11:30pm that first night, and then set an alarm for, say, 7am the next morning. That usually resets my body clock and I’m pretty much good-to-go for the rest of the trip. Timeshifter added two things to my routine: starting to shift to destination time a few days before leaving, moving bedtime and wake-up time an hour earlier each day – going to bed at 10 instead of 11 and getting up at 5 instead of 6 the next morning. The second thing was taking melatonin before going to bed, which I tried by I’m not sure that it really does anything for me. It’s also a well-designed app that notifies you about things like when to seek out direct sunlight and when to start and stop with caffeinated drinks. I used the free first plan. Not sure I’ll pay the $9.99 for another plan, though.
    • And speaking of caffeinated drinks, last week, staying at the Omni Hotel in Charlottesville, they gave me two door hangers — one for each night — that I could exchange for a drink delivered to my door in the morning, or a beer at the bar in the evening. The first night, since I’d already had a margarita at dinner, I skipped the bar for something in the morning. Looking at the door hanger, my choices were coffee, tea, and Red Bull. Wow. Guess they’re catering to all kinds of morning afters. It wasn’t a big margarita, so I went for the cup of tea.
    • Following up on last episode’s carry-on discussion, about buying a new bag to meet Finnair and AirBaltic’s size and weight limits, My new TravelPro Maxlite bag worked like a charm. I packed a week of clothes and didn’t tagged by any gate agents. It even fit in the overheads of the ATR prop jobs that hopscotched us around between Riga, Tallinn, and Helsinki. On one of our passes through Helsinki, I saw an AirBaltic luggage sizer and scale by an empty customer service desk, so I decided to check the bag out. It was a bit of a force fit into the sizer and it weighed in at 8½ kilos, just a bit over the limit. Glad I didn’t catch a gate agent’s eye.
    • And since we’ve been talking about carry-on luggage over the past couple of episodes, so I pulled together all those threads into a new “how to choose a new carry-on” blog post. It went up at the beginning of the month, updating the one from last February, just in time for the Christmas shopping season. If you or a frequent traveling loved one needs a new carry-on, check it out, complete with Amazon Affiliate links if you want to toss a buck TravelCommons’ way.
    • And speaking of prop jobs, I definitely misfired on my Finnair seat choices between Helsinki and Riga. I was more focused on choosing seats for the long flights between Chicago and Helsinki, and didn’t pay much attention to the 45-minute flight to and from Riga. So just picked one off the seat map where there would be with no one next to me – 5C both ways – which, as it turned out, was empty for a reason, because it was right next to the propeller. I had forgotten how loud those propellers get on take-off. I popped on my Bose Noise Cancelling headphones (which, I noticed, are starting to show a good bit of wear; so I might be doing a bit of Black Friday/Cyber Monday shopping) on taxi, but when the pilot revved up the propellers, the noise cancellation started to cut in and out. The headphones were having to generate huge “anti-waves” to cancel the prop noise and the battery was too low to support the load. Luckily, I always carry extra triple-AAA batteries in the case. But while I was swapping the battery, the noise, the oscillation pressure was killer. I couldn’t get those headphones back over my ears fast enough. If you go to the TravelCommons’ Instagram page, you can see a bit of video out the window of my HEL-RIX flight complete with a slow-motion propeller.
    • And if you have any travel stories, questions, comments, tips, rants – the voice of the traveler, send ’em along — text or audio comment to comments@travelcommons.com — you can send a Twitter message to mpeacock, post your thoughts on the TravelCommons’ Facebook page or our Instagram account at travelcommons — or you can post comments on the web site at TravelCommons.com.
    • Bridge Music – Drops of H2O ( The Filtered Water Treatment ) by J.Lang (c) copyright 2012 Licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution (3.0) license. http://dig.ccmixter.org/files/djlang59/37792 Ft: Airtone

    Notes from the Baltics: Riga, Latvia and Tallinn, Estonia

    • At the end of October, right after pushing out the last episode, my son Andrew and I flew east for a week hopscotching through the Baltics — Riga, Latvia; Tallinn, Estonia; and Helsinki, Finland. Why the Baltics? I’m not really sure. I’m sure we had a good rationale when we first thought of the trip a few years ago, but now, it wasn’t much more than “here are a few kinda outta-the-way countries that might be cool to wander around.”  
    • Andrew booked our flights — Finnair from ORD to Riga with a connection in Helsinki. The Finnair service was fine, a pretty standard Airbus A330 but with lots of polka-dot Marimekko patterns on everything. I’d forgotten they were a Finnish company. I skipped using my UK passport one last time for a quick pass down the EU passport lane, deciding not to strand Andrew in the “everyone else” passport path, which led to an unexpected grilling from the Finnish border control cop about the details of my itinerary. Then he spent a good bit of time paging back and forth through my passport stamps. Can’t think of what he found interesting — the Chinese visa, the two Indian visas, maybe the Moroccan stamps from that day trip to Tangiers 3 years ago? Eventually, he decided to put his Helsinki stamp right next to August’s Krakow stamp and then open the gate so I could walk through. 
    • I’m not quite sure what I expected from Riga, but it turned out to be a nice, mid-sized city. Maybe it shouldn’t have, but I was surprised at how well-preserved the city center is, especially the buildings with the over-the-top Art Nouveau edifices with huge faces over the doorways and carved figures holding up window sills. It took some money, though. Down by the river, I saw two buildings side-by-side, the one on the right recently refinished and repainted; the one on the left was still waiting its turn, but time is running out. The Art Nouveau look was there, but muted under the grime and soot and flaking plaster; with some relief decorations on the window balcony worn away.
    • I was surprised, though, at how empty Riga’s old town was in the middle of a Tuesday. The streets were empty. Where was everyone? Maybe across the river where it looks like they’ve built new modern office towers. I was glad I didn’t book our hotel down here.
    • The Central Market down river from the Old Town was much more lively, and also where Riga stopped looking so Scandi and started looking a bit more post-Soviet. The busses and streetcars orbiting the market looked left over from the early ‘90’s. But I liked it. Most of the people here seemed to be doing their own grocery shopping — unlike food markets in places like Paris and Barcelona that seem to have more people taking pictures of fish than buying them. But the place is so big that I don’t see that it could survive just on food porn tourism. They repurposed a set of World War I zeppelin hangars — one for fishmongers, one of butchers, one for greengrocers, and then part of one with some restaurants where Andrew and I made lunch from a round loaf of Uzbeki bread and some tortellini-looking dumplings filled with lamb and venison. It was pretty good.
    • Then it was time to go search out some beer taprooms which had us walking sorta northeast, on a straight line away from the river, away from Old Town, across the canal and parks and past the embassies that sorta ring Old Town, and back into a less renovated landscape of storefronts and converted factories, some places run down, others with the hipster-signaling strands of naked edison bulbs over wood tables. Wandering into a courtyard off a busy street, we found  Labietis that had wide and interesting mix of beers — herb beers and fruit beers, as well as the usual batch of IPAs. The names were interesting, also. Migla, which they translated as “Fog” had hemp and peppermint in a light pale ale. Not sure it was my top pick, but I gotta give them props for trying something different.
    • It was a 45-minute prop job flight from Riga to Tallinn on AirBaltic. I did have a bit of a travel snob realization, though — when everyone is getting on the same bus for a plane, boarding status is kinda meaningless. Anyhow, AirBaltic was fine service — no hassles with carryon luggage, no annoying on-board upsells, though with only 45 minutes, there’s not too much damage they could do. Heading for the cab rank at Tallinn, I saw the same warning signs they had at Riga airport – there’s no regulated taxi fees so be careful which taxi you get into. At Riga, we used one of the airport-approved cabs with a meter. At Tallinn, we used Bolt, a ride-sharing app that looks a lot like Lyft. I used earlier in Krakow and had good luck with it, and it worked fine in Tallinn too – €4 from the airport to Old Town seemed a pretty good deal.
    • I can see why Tallinn is popular for long weekends. The Old Town is just that — winding cobblestone streets, lots of churches and restored old buildings, and lots of shops in those old buildings. It’s up on a hill, so lots of scenic overlook Instagram moments. You could easily spend a couple of days wandering the streets, popping in and out of churches and museums… and shops and bars.
    • But after a half-day, I was ready to breach the Old Town’s walls to see what else there was to Tallinn. The first stop was a market by the train station – Balti Jaama Turg. Nowhere near the size of Riga’s Central Market, we strolled around until, after the 4th or 5th fruit stand and butcher stall, our minds wandered to lunch. We bought a couple different kinds of Uzbeki breads from one stand and a couple of beers from another. The breads were stuffed with some sliced meat cooked in a warming, floral spice, maybe cinnamon. It was very good, though I never got the story of why all the Uzbeki food up here.
    • We walked out and around the train station, and through a collection of restaurants in small square buildings, old cargo containers and a couple of railcars. As much as I liked the Uzbeki breads, I wish I’d seen these places first. On the other side was something called Telliskivi Creative City. It looked like an old office or administrative building had been converted to a kinda “makers” mall, where people were doing small-scale clothing or leather work in the back of their space and selling it out of the front. We took a quick pass through it though didn’t see anything we wanted to haul back to the US.
    • We walked kinda north-northeast, through the Kalamaja neighborhood toward the harbor. Kalamaja was the exact opposite of the Old Town – wood buildings vs. stone; straight paved streets vs. windy cobblestones; groups of flats vs. castles and government buildings. A few blocks off the harbor we hit the Põhjala Brewery & Tap Room. It was in what looked like a very recently renovated stone building; workers were in the midst of renovating the building next to it. Where Labietis felt very native — funky space tucked away behind some kinda decaying buildings — Põhjala could’ve been any new taproom in the US — big U-shaped bar, open kitchen, BBQ on the menu. The beer was very good; the BBQ maybe less successful, but having lived in Memphis and Dallas, I’m a bit of a BBQ snob. The smoked trout dish, though — that was great. 
    • We walked back towards town on a path that ran along the harbor. There were lots of new apartment buildings across the road — 3-4 stories with floor-to-ceiling windows and enclosed balconies facing the harbor. There wasn’t a lot there… yet. But you could see it coming.
    • We stopped at the Uba Ja Humal beer store before heading back through the Old Town walls. We walked through the front store to the taproom in the back, complete with a DJ who was set up between the back coolers. Locals would pull a can out of a cooler, pay for it at the bar, get a glass, and sit down at a table with their friends. Tallinn had that kind of easy-going vibe.
    • Both cities have done a good job renovating and preserving their Old Towns, and now seem to be expanding past that, repurposing older, maybe Soviet-era buildings to something a bit hipper, edgier (?), less traditional. I came away liking Tallinn a bit more than Riga, but maybe it’s because they’re a little bit further down that hipper, less traditional path.

    Closing

    • Closing music — Pictures of You by Evangeline
    • OK, that’s it, that’s the end of TravelCommons podcast #157
    • I hope you all enjoyed this podcast and I hope you decide to stay subscribed.
    • Find TravelCommons on Stitcher, SoundCloud, TuneIn, iTunes, and Spotify The links, along with the RSS feeds, are on the right-hand side of the TravelCommons website, under the heading Subscribe.
    • Right below that, in the Social Media section, are links to the TravelCommons Facebook page, and Twitter and Instagram feeds.
    • If you’re already subscribed, how ‘bout leaving us a review on one of the sites.
    • And if you check out the TravelCommons Instagram page, you can click thru to highlights from Riga and Tallinn.
    • If you have a story, thought, comment, gripe – the voice of the traveler — send ‘em along, text or audio file, to comments@travelcommons.com or to @mpeacock on Twitter, or post them on the TravelCommons’ Facebook page, Instagram account,  or website at travelcommons.com. Thanks to everyone who has taken the time to send in e-mails, Tweets and post comments on the website
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  • Podcast #154 — Will We Still Love Uber When The Prices Go Up?

    Podcast #154 — Will We Still Love Uber When The Prices Go Up?

    The moment of truth

    Breaking out the mobile rig to record this episode in the Residence Inn in downtown Charlottesville, VA. Summer storms let me test Freebird’s re-booking service, I wrestle with AT&T so I can use my iPhone’s dual SIM capability on my trip to Krakow and Budapest, booking more relaxed flight itineraries lets me call an audible when Uber and Lyft prices surge into the stratosphere, which gets me thinking — will we still love those rideshare companies when they’re no longer cheaper than taxis?  All this and more at the direct link to the podcast file or listening to it right here by clicking on the arrow below.

    Here is the transcript of TravelCommons podcast #154:

    • Intro music — Warmth by Makkina
    • Coming to you today from the Residence Inn just off the Main St pedestrian mall in downtown Charlottesville, VA, leaving behind last episode’s multi-mic, big mixer board, sound-baffled podcast studio to go old-school, back to the TravelCommons roots with the mobile rig in a hotel room. I was thinking about going way back and recording it in the bathroom, but there’s a noisy exhaust fan that I can’t figure out how to turn off. There may be a bit of traffic noise in the background, and maybe even some thunder if the black clouds out my window live up to their potential. This episode will be one of the shorter ones. I’m trying to get it in before Irene and I head out to Krakow and Budapest Thursday night.
    • This is my fourth week back in Charlottesville in Chicago, IL. Not much has changed since my last commute back at the end of last year. American Eagle and United Express have a couple of direct regional jets a day from Chicago, and when weather knocks those flights out, Richmond is an hour-and-a-bit drive to the east, or Washington-Dulles is 2 hours north as a last resort. It’s still a 5-gate airport; the bar in the middle still has a surprisingly decent local craft beer selection. The bartender still recognizes me, though she still asks for my ID each time I sit at the bar. So not much has changed at CHO. 
    • However, my approach to flying there has a bit. I’ve talked about this in prior episodes; I’ve always planned my travel to maximize my time at home, with my family. Given a choice between flying out the night before or taking a 7am flight out the day of, I’d take the latter. The trade-off, though, is travel plans that don’t deal well with travel delays — a 2-hour flight delay the night before is annoying but won’t make me miss a meeting; that same delay the morning of my meeting may mean I won’t need to take that flight. And I’ve had all that happen with my flights to Charlottesville. So this time, with the kids graduated and moved out, and now that we’ve downsized from a house to a city apartment, my wife thinking I’m underfoot a bit too much, the need to maximize my time at home has… eased a bit. So I’m booking more… resilient itineraries — flying out the night before, staying over an extra day so I can fly out after lunch, before the summer humidity spools up the afternoon thunderstorms…. Which was paid off last week when thunderstorms in Chicago had my evening flight to CHO posting a 3 hour delay by noon. I had more than enough time to swing my endpoint from CHO to RIC (all done pretty seamlessly thru the United app, which I found pretty impressive). My travel plans may not be as optimized as before… or maybe they are, but for different things, like cutting down on stress and my need to bitch tweet.
    • Bridge Music — One for Me by SackJo22 (c) copyright 2009 Licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution Noncommercial (3.0) license. http://dig.ccmixter.org/files/SackJo22/21492 Ft: Haskel

    Following Up

    • We’ve had a thread over a couple of episodes about Freebird, a flight rebooking service. Back in episode 151, TravelCommons listener Mika Pyyhkala sent in a note about his great experience with them, how they picked up a Southwest flight cancellation and rebooked him on Delta while he was still in the air on his first Southwest leg. Saved him a huge disruption; well worth, he said, the $19/leg fee. I mentioned in the last episode that Amex Travel has been offering free coverage for flights I book on their site with my Platinum card. So Freebird has been covering these last few trips to Charlottesville. I get a text the night before and the morning of my flights assuring me that Freebird is monitoring them. And when last week’s outbound 6pm flight started posting delays at noon, I got texts letting me know they were monitoring the delay, but it hadn’t yet tripped their 4-hour trigger.  But knowing that there weren’t going to be many alternative flights to RIC or IAD later in the evening, I didn’t feel comfortable waiting for United to push over 4 hours — and then cancel — and so moved myself to their 6pm Richmond flight — which was on-time — getting me into my hotel around 10pm after an hour Uber ride. And then, indulging in a bit of travel schadenfreude, I kept tracking the ORD-CHO flight on FlightAware. It finally took off at 11pm Central – 5 hrs late — arriving CHO at 2am Eastern. So it did eventually cross Freebird’s 4-hour threshold, but I’m not sure if it was in time to catch an alternative flight. So, I’m glad I switched it myself. I dunno, maybe tight connections rather than thinly traveled direct routes is the better use case for Freebird
    • Also back in episode 151, I talked about trying out the alpha version of augmented reality directions in Google Maps, where you hold up your phone and the display uses the camera to show the streetscape in front of you with the  directions — street names, arrows — overlaid on the real-time image. I thought it was kinda cool; Irene and the kids were less than impressed. But you can judge for yourself because Google announced last week that they’ve widened the feature to a public beta. Give it a try and let me know what you think
    • Fast forward one whole episode — from 151 in May to 152 in June — which really was a big jump because, right after recording episode 151, we moved from the big house in the suburbs to a 60% smaller high-rise apartment on the lakefront — but in episode 152, I talked about having to recalibrate how I’d get to the airport. I had my guy who’d pick me up for a 30-minute ride to ORD or MDW… But no more. Over the past couple of weeks, I’ve started to get a feel for it — 45-50 minutes to ORD, but figure an hour for weird traffic. And in the morning, figure a 10-minute wait for an Uber or Lyft, and a tab with tip around $40-$45. So this Monday at 5am, I fire up Lyft and Uber while drinking my morning cup of tea to see what’s going on — $110 on Uber and $60 on Lyft. What the hell is going on? Well, maybe all the drivers are sleeping in, so I shower, get dressed, gather all my worldly belongings, and check again — $120 on Uber; $57 on Lyft. I hit the Lyft button and wait — and wait and wait. Then someone accepts the ride, and cancels. Guess he didn’t want to go to ORD. So I fire up Transit, my favorite mass transit app. It’s developed in Montreal and does mass transit routing in a huge number of cities in the US and Canada. And in Chicago, it also covers Divvy bike share and constructs Lyft-to-mass transit routing. I fired it up thinking that, if I couldn’t get a Lyft to ORD, then maybe I could get one to the nearest Blue Line L stop and take the subway the rest of the way. But even it couldn’t find a Lyft. But, it showed that, across the street from our flat, a bus will pick me up and, 18 stops later, drop me at the L stop. I got nothing else going — actually, I did but it would involve waking Irene up at  now 5:40am for a ride to ORD, truly a last resort. I wheel my luggage across the street. Four minutes later, the bus shows up. There’s me and another guy — no problem putting my luggage on the seat next to me. And we make pretty good time — not a lot of people waiting at bus stops at 6am, and the traffic is pretty clear too. All told, we stop maybe 6 times and have 8 people on the bus at its most crowded. I had to wait another 5 minutes for the L and, at 6:40, it was more crowded; almost everyone had an ORD badge around their neck — pilots, flight attendants, ground staff — except for a few passenger-looking folk like me. All told, it took me about an hour — maybe 10 minutes longer than Uber and Lyft were quoting. But at $2.50 vs. $60 or $120, it seemed like I made out on the deal.
    • Also in episode 152, I talked about “earning and burning” frequent traveler points rather than saving them because airlines and hotels keep playing with redemption levels and rules that reduce the value of the points. Jim McDonough tweeted me with a contra view –
      • Regarding frequent flyer miles and how they don’t appreciate over time – I still like to keep some around in case we need to travel for family emergency situations. The walk-up fare does not compete with the $25 charge to book a frequent flyer mile ticket last minute.
    • Jim, that’s a good point, but I wonder if that strategy still works as more airlines move from fixed awards schedules to dynamic point pricing — Southwest, Delta, and soon United — where point price for a flight climes as remaining ticket prices do. Does it still make sense to pay with points?
    • As I said earlier, Irene and I are heading out Thursday night for a weekend in Krakow, Poland and then heading down to Budapest for a mix of touring and visits with Irene’s family. So, I thought this was as good a time as any to try out my iPhone’s dual SIM capability. Up to now, my usual procedure is to transfer my US AT&T SIM to an old HTC One phone and then put my UK EE SIM in my iPhone Xs (usually sometime in flight in that panic drill between them clearing the breakfast tray and packing everything up for final descent) if I’m going to an EU country or when I pick one up after we land. I do this because local data is hugely cheaper than an AT&T international plan – the EE pay-as-you-go plan I got is £10, or $12 with this week’s Brexit exchange rate discount, for 3 GB of data, 100 minutes of voice, and unlimited texts. But I still want my US number to ring thru in case someone back home needs to reach me and doesn’t know I’m out of the country. I don’t carry both phones with me, though. I have the iPhone with me during the day, using the local SIM to run Google Maps and the like. The HTC stays in the hotel room and I check it for messages when we get back at night.
    • But with its dual SIM capabilities, I should be able to do this with just my iPhone. However, the iPhone has only one physical SIM slot; the second is an internal eSIM, like the ones Apple uses in their cellular Apple Watch. So to make this work, I had to get AT&T to transfer my US number from its physical SIM to the eSIM in the phone. My first stop was the local AT&T store. I explained to the store guy what I wanted to do. He looked at me for a moment and said, “Uh, I’m new; I don’t know how to do that. But I can give you an eSIM card if you want.” OK, that’s a start. He riffled around his desk drawer. “I don’t have one here. I’ll have to go in the back. But I’m the only one here today, so you’ll have to go outside so I can lock up while I’m in the back.” Interesting. I walked down the street to grab a bite rather than idle outside the door. I came back. He handed me the card, “Here you go, but I don’t know if this will work…” I went home and hit the AT&T web site. I spelunked around the site until I found the chat link and fired it up. The person on the other end knew what needed to be done. I gave her a few numbers off the card, then pointed the camera at the card’s QR code and it added to plan to my iPhone. Now, the chat agent said that they’ll have to do a bit of provisioning at the back end. She’d text me when it was done. Irene and I went out to dinner; no text and no activation. So the next morning, I hit chat again and this time stuck with the guy until the provisioning was complete. Then I pulled out the AT&T SIM and put in the EE SIM, and immediately got a text from EE telling me their US roaming charges. I also got a whole new set of selections under the Cellular section under Settings. Which line did I want to use for voice, for data, for iMessage and FaceTime. I spent some time on Apple’s FAQ pages trying to figure out which scenario works for me. My guess is that it’ll take me a bit of trial and error — and self-inflected AT&T international charges — to really figure this out.
    • And if you have any travel stories, questions, comments, tips, rants – the voice of the traveler, send ’em along — text or audio comment to comments@travelcommons.com — you can send a Twitter message to mpeacock, post your thoughts on the TravelCommons’ Facebook page or our Instagram account at travelcommons — or you can post comments on the web site at TravelCommons.com.
    • Bridge Music —   Fall to pieces – Silence by mika (c) copyright 2010 Licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution Noncommercial (3.0) license. http://dig.ccmixter.org/files/mika/24945 Ft: Colab

    Will We Still Love Uber When The Prices Go Up?

    • Lyft’s chief financial officer Brian Roberts said, during last week’s earnings call, that pricing was becoming “more rational.” “Rational pricing” is CFO-speak for “more predictably higher.” Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi, during his earnings call, said, “We and Lyft are big-time competitors here and have been for some period of time, but for now we’re seeing, generally, category positions that are stable. We are focused on improving profitability in this market.”  Which is CEO-speak for “we’re no longer going to slash prices to buy market share.”
    • We all knew this time would come — at least the rational ones. Uber lost $5.2 billion in the second quarter while the smaller Lyft lost a mere $644 million last quarter. Investors are going to let you torch large piles of cash for only so long. Hence the topic question — will we stay with Uber and Lyft even when they’re not a bargain anymore?
    • I’ve been talking about this with frequent travelers I know, or sit next to at bars, or bump into waiting for an Uber at O’Hare. One school of thought is that the Uber/Lyft experience is better than your typical cab, so even at the same price, you’d still order an Uber. You can order it on your phone rather than running into the street, trying to flag down a passing cab. Indeed, I’ve always said that, for me, Uber’s prime use case is getting a ride from midtown Manhattan to LGA at the end of the day a somewhat sane experience. Before Uber, I’d be practically dancing into 5th Ave, hiding my luggage behind a trash can because if a cabbie saw you wanted to go to LGA, they’d accelerate by you. I tried the cab company’s iPhone app last time I was in New York. It failed miserably.
    • Adding Uber and Lyft drivers to the transit mix means you can get a car ride from somewhere outside the usual downtown and tourist spots. I remember pre-Uber New Orleans, getting a cab anywhere other than between the airport and the French Quarter was near impossible. One night for dinner, we decided to go to a Mid-City restaurant, Toups Meatery. Phenomenal place. The owner, Isaac Toups, later made it to the finals of the Top Chef cooking show. He didn’t win, but was voted “fan favorite”. And his food was our favorite too. The only problem — getting a cab back to the Sheraton on Canal St from his Mid-City location. The hostess called 3 cab companies and we waited 20 minutes for a 15-minute ride. And that driver told us, “Yup, all most cab drivers want to do is make the easy money, driving between the airport and the hotels”
    • There’s also fare predictability — you see the price to get from, say, downtown Chicago to O’Hare before committing to the ride. No more meter anxiety, watching the number run up in traffic. And the accompanying “Will I have enough cash to pay” or “Will this guy’s credit card machine work?” anxiety. With Uber and Lyft drivers following GPS apps, there’s no more “am I being taken the long way around to run up the meter” anxiety, or depending on your cab driver’s knowledge to take the fast way, or having them punt it to you with the “bridge or tunnel” question I often get from LGA cabs. The technology helps avoid a lot of the bad experiences we’ve had with taxi cab rides.
    • I used to say that Uber and Lyft cars are nicer, but their bar has slipped as they’re scrambling for drivers in a full-employment economy. An Uber I took last week was missing the door armrest; a Lyft that Irene took had the front right quarter-panel held on with duct tape. These are exceptions, though a bit more common that a couple of years ago. But they’re still a damn sight better than the beat-to-hell Baltimore cabs that would sit at the cab ranks in the Inner Harbor. I only did that once, because the cab rank was right outside the client’s building and I was late leaving for the airport. The back seat was full of old newspapers and other crap, and there was no air conditioning — on a July afternoon. After that, I’d stand there, looking at the cabs, while waiting 5 minutes for an Uber to show up.
    • The place I most often take a cab rather than waiting for an Uber is the airport. And here, it’s not really about price, it’s convenience. The cab ranks are usually right at the terminal exit, while the rideshare pickup spot can be an Easter Egg hunt (Vegas), a 15-minute walk to the back 40 (Atlanta) or a confusing scrum of screaming traffic cops (Chicago Midway). Vegas and LGA especially — catching a cab is so much easier than a rideshare. Here at CHO also — it’s a flat rate into town that’s about the same as Uber and Lyft and the cabs are in decent shape, so if one’s there, there’s no reason to wait.
    • And I could be wrong, but it feels like the pricing discussion is mostly a US thing. In Paris last Spring, none of the Ubers were “rideshares”; they were all black car livery companies with professional drivers. Near as I could tell, Uber was just another dispatch system for them. In Lisbon a few years back, I couldn’t tell if they were true rideshares, but the pricing was the same as taxis, and there were more taxis so less wait. We took the path of least resistance and hailed cabs.
    • The rough consensus of my completely unrepresentative polling was – ride sharing got traction because it was cheaper, but now the technology gives such a better experience that I’d even pay a premium over a taxi — but I wouldn’t want to tell Lyft or Uber that. But what they said on those earnings calls, I think they already know that.

    Closing

    • Closing music — Pictures of You by Evangeline
    • OK, that’s it, that’s the end of TravelCommons podcast #154
    • I hope you all enjoyed this podcast and I hope you decide to stay subscribed.
    • Find TravelCommons on Stitcher, SoundCloud, TuneIn, iTunes, and Spotify
    • If you have a story, thought, comment, gripe – the voice of the traveler — send ‘em along, text or audio file, to comments@travelcommons.com or to @mpeacock on Twitter, or post them on the TravelCommons’ Facebook page, Instagram account,  or website at travelcommons.com. Thanks to everyone who has taken the time to send in e-mails, Tweets and post comments on the website
    • Follow me on Twitter
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    • Direct link to the show

  • Podcast #145 — Restaurant Karma; Hotel Breakfasts

    Podcast #145 — Restaurant Karma; Hotel Breakfasts

    How Much Extra For A Plate?

    Just regular domestic business travel since the last podcast, trying to dodge Hurricane Florence to get back to Charlottesville.  Thinking back to last month’s European travels, we talk about a tight connection through Amsterdam and some odd concierge lounge rules, which gets me thinking about hotel breakfasts. And a listener request for restaurant recommendations gets me thinking about the balance of visiting good and not-so-good restaurant towns. All this and more at the direct link to the podcast file or listening to it right here by clicking on the arrow below.

    Here is the transcript of TravelCommons podcast #145:

    • Intro music — Warmth by Makkina
    • Coming to you today from the TravelCommons studios outside of Chicago, IL after 3 weeks of “normal” travel — no vacation, no international travel, just a couple of trips to Charlottesville, VA on sandwiching a quick shot down to Dallas. And no delays. And empty seats beside me. Indeed, I even scored an upgrade on the late United flight from IAD to ORD, the long leg of one of my flights home from Charlottesville. Feels like we’re at the start of maybe a 6-week travel lull between the final end of summer vacations and the early starts of Thanksgiving travel.
    • There was a bit of drama around the Charlottesville trip in the middle of September. I had to fly out Sunday night — the weekend that Hurricane Florence hit the Carolina coast. The storm track forecast had Florence plowing west through the Carolinas and then taking a right hand turn at the Appalachians and heading north over Virginia. The question for me — when would it make the turn; would my Sunday flight make it through before or after the turn or would Florence be in my way on Sunday? Thursday night and Friday, I spent a bit of time hitting the Refresh button on the Nat’l Hurricane Center’s website. By Friday, Florence had dropped a couple of category levels and slowed down, and by Saturday, I could see that my Sunday flight would beat Florence to Charlottesville. It was a smooth flight that Sunday, though Monday was a bit wet.
    • Going through TSA Pre-Check in ORD that Sunday night, I watched a guy use the electronic boarding pass on his Apple Watch. It looked a bit awkward, and if you think about it, it’s understandable. Boarding pass readers face up; you put your boarding pass or phone face down on them to read. But a watch is on face up on the top of your wrist. So the guy ends up standing on his toes and twisting his arm around to get his Apple Watch face down on the reader. You’d think he would’ve shifted to his phone after that, but I saw him twist himself up again about 30 minutes later when boarding his flight. Seems like it would’ve been easier to spin the watch on his wrist so it was facing down — at least until Apple fires up the old Steve Jobs distortion field to convince airports to reorient all their readers for the convenience of Apple Watch users.
    • Bridge Music — Dub the Uke by Kara Square (c) copyright 2016 Licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution Noncommercial (3.0) license. http://dig.ccmixter.org/files/mindmapthat/53340 Ft: DJ Vadim

    Following Up

    • Allan Marko, a long-time listener and even longer-time friend, sent me an article that dove into an interesting part of Apple’s new partnership with Salesforce. The two of them are working with Marriott to put Siri in hotel rooms. You could ask Siri to turn up the heat, order room service, or get an Uber through an Apple HomePod in the room. That’s the Apple piece of it. The Salesforce piece lets Siri remember what you asked her, say your room temperature, at the next Marriott. Useful or creepy? And how do you make sure you wipe Siri’s memory before the next guest checks into the room so you can’t ask her things like “Hey Siri, tell me all about the last guest that was here…” or “Order me the same sandwich the last guy ordered”. I dunno. I don’t even like using these new Enseo TVs to log into my own Netflix account, let alone having Marriott listening to me through a HomePod and remembering everything I mutter. Some guys are making a nice living selling shutters that you can stick over your laptop webcam. Are earplugs for hotel HomePods the next thing?
    • In the last episode, I mentioned flying SAS from Chicago to Copenhagen. It was an odd schedule — leaving Chicago around 10pm, arriving Copenhagen after 1 in the afternoon. Leaving that late and having a long taxi, I fell asleep before we left the ground, and before putting my phone in Airplane mode. I woke up, I dunno, an hour or so later, looked at my phone for the time, and noticed some new e-mails. Huh? That’s weird. And then I noticed that my phone didn’t say “No Service”; it was connected to some cellular service, which turned out to be SAS’s in-flight cellular service. And as opposed to in-flight WiFi which you usually have to log into, my iPhone automatically started roaming on the SAS cellular service, that then continued to check/pull e-mail for a couple of hours until I flipped it to airplane mode. I got my AT&T mobile bill a couple of weeks back and ended up with a $25 roaming charge for those half-dozen meaningless e-mails. A pain, but not too painful. Unlike the guy four years ago who rang up a $1,200 WiFi bill on Singapore Air when he fell asleep with his data still connected.
    • On the third leg of that trip, going from BRU to EDI, our best option was KLM through AMS. I’ve been in and out and through Schiphol a number of times over the past 20-some odd years and have always liked it. Nothing flashy, but it works — not too big, reasonable facilities. Booking this BRU-EDI trip on the KLM website, I had two options — a tight 40-min connection or a 2-hr one. While I don’t mind Schiphol, I wasn’t looking to make an afternoon of it. So I broke one of my cardinal travel rules — never book a connection shorter than an hour — and booked the 40-min connection, knowing that we had a back-up if it didn’t work out. One factor I didn’t completely think through was that we’d have to cross the Schengen border during those 40 minutes too. The first leg — Brussels to Amsterdam — was within Schengen so it was just like an domestic US flight — no passport control, no customs. But in Schiphol, we had switch concourses and go through passport control because the UK is outside of Schengen. We made it through, though, with time to spare because – we walked real fast; like I said before, Schiphol isn’t that big, so switching concourses wasn’t a long walk; but most importantly, my wife spotted the “short connection” line at passport control. We had gotten in the regular line, but then we saw on a display screen that our EDI flight was classified a “short connection”, so we switched to the much shorter line — I earned a “Hey” from a security guard when I ducked under the tape — and quickly passed through what was a well-staffed and brisk passport control line (Munich Airport, you could take some lessons here). We get to the gate with more than enough time — boarding hasn’t been called yet. So while we made the 40-minute connection, the question now was — would the checked luggage make it? As we were queuing to board, I looked out the terminal window. There’s our plane, and there, next to the baggage loader, was Irene’s and Claire’s luggage — stationary, not rolling along like in that YouTube video. A very good sign, but there wasn’t anybody loading luggage. As I walk up to board, I tap one of the KLM guys standing around. Pointing out the window, I say “See those bags on the tarmac? Those are ours. It would be great if they made it onto this plane.” He laughed — him a bit more than me. I was happy to see them appear on the EDI baggage carousel.
    • I’m thinking that I need another carry-on bag; something between my maximum legal size 22-incher and my leather duffel overnighter. On that BRU-EDI trip, I carried my 22-incher on, but not without agents at Brussels and Amsterdam challenging me, even after showing them it fit in their baggage sizer. A few weeks after that trip, KLM added an augmented reality baggage sizer to their iPhone app. You fire up the app, point your iPhone camera at your bag and the app overlays a properly sized rectangle over your bag. If your bag is within the rectangle, you’re good to go. Would’ve been easier — and much cooler — than slamming my bag into those metal sizers, but somehow, with those gate agents, I don’t think the outcome would’ve been any different.
    • OK, one last thing from that trip. The concierge lounges in both the Copenhagen Marriott and the London St Pancras Renaissance had prominent “rules” signs at their entrances, and one of those rules was a ban on “fitness clothes”. Now, this wasn’t a big deal on this trip because I was on vacation, and wasn’t toting work-out gear. My normal program when I’m on business travel is to get up before 6, work out, go straight to the lounge in my “fitness gear” for some breakfast while cooling down, then head back to my room to shower, change, and head out. Having to separate the cool down from breakfast would add 15-20 minutes to what is an already tight morning routine. So I hope that rule doesn’t spread to the US lounges. The rest of the rules seemed pretty reasonable, though one — no wearing a bathrobe in the lounge — seemed a bit superfluous. I’ve never seen someone walk into a concierge lounge in a bathrobe… until in Copenhagen at 3 in the afternoon with it not looking like there was anything on under the robe. So, OK, I’m now completely on-board with the no robe rule.
    • And if you have any travel questions, a story, a comment, a travel tip – the voice of the traveler, send it along. The e-mail address is comments@travelcommons.com — you can send in an audio comment; a Twitter message to @mpeacock, post your thoughts on the TravelCommons’ Facebook page or our new Instagram account at travelcommons — or you can always go old-school and post your thoughts on the web site at TravelCommons.com.
    • Bridge Music — Emma by Doxent Zsigmond (c) copyright 2015 Licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution Noncommercial (3.0) license. http://dig.ccmixter.org/files/doxent/50905 Ft: Martijn de Boer

    Restaurant Karma

    • Casey Milch sent me a note a few weeks back — “Greetings. Love the podcast. I know you mention frequent trips to Charlottesville and I’m finding myself there every six weeks for work myself now. Any restaurant suggestions?”
    • One of the compensations for getting on an airplane just about every week is that you get to try a lot of restaurants. Now, in the last episode, we talked about the downside of that — rapid waistline expansion — but if you’re thoughtful about it, and you like trying different food (I hate the word “foodie”), business travel has its benefits. I sent Casey a few recommendations — Fitzroy, a meat place — burger, double pork chop, fried chicken — on the Main Street pedestrian mall; Lampo, a small Neapolitan pizza place with a big wood oven that is — I forgot to tell Casey this — a 5-minute walk from Champion Brewing Company’s taproom; and The Alley Light, a speakeasy in an small alcove (a bit too short to be a proper alley) with no sign though there is a light over the door, that took 3 tries to find the first time in the pouring rain, which led to the question “How many consultants does it take to work Google Maps”. Putting the list together for Casey reminded me that we hadn’t been to Alley Light in a while, so we ate there last Tuesday night — found it on the first try this time — and had roasted bone marrow, pork rillette, duck confit — oh, and some carrots. So much for thoughtfulness.
    • Charlottesville punches above its weight for good restaurants, maybe because of University of Virginia. The 2 ½ years I spent in New Orleans was one of definitely one of my food high points, especially when crawfish were in season. 3 months in Portland, OR was fun with the food truck scene, and of course, it is ground-zero for the craft beer explosion. Stays in Manhattan, San Francisco, and London were that much more enjoyable with someone else picking up the dinner tab. Indeed, in San Francisco, I used to stay in different hotels so I could try different neighborhood joints.
    • But karma always seeks balance, and for all these great food locations, there have been other, let’s say, less-than-stunning places. Dover, OH — about 30 miles south of Canton — had, when I was doing a project there — two places to eat — an Arby’s and the lunch counter of the Walmart knock-off. And the Walmart knock-off was the better of the two. Oldsmar, FL was a bit too far outside of Tampa for us to head in for dinner every night, so the near-by Buffalo Wild Wings – B-Dubs – and Applebee’s were our best shots. And downtown Detroit in the early 2000’s, working, eating, and sleeping in the urban fortress that is the Renaissance Center was brutally monotonous.
    • But even when in London and New York, we weren’t splurging on big meals every night. We have reasonable expense budgets that we have to live within. So again, we find balance — one night we’re underspending at a dive (but good) pizza-by-the-slice joint, so that the next night, we eat at nice place. Some guys will extend balancing act to travel — sucking up the inconvenience of a cheaper connecting flight to pay for better meals. One colleague told me — “I’ll happily travel cheap to eat great food”
    • Bridge Music — Astral Travel by Astral (c) copyright 2013 Licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution (3.0) license. http://dig.ccmixter.org/files/Astral/44282

    Hotel Breakfasts

    • Growing up, those of us of a certain age heard that breakfast is the most important meal of the day — usually from a cereal commercial. I mentioned a bit early earlier my morning hotel pattern — work out, hit the concierge lounge for breakfast and then get on with my day. Most lounge breakfasts are pretty industrial — chafing dishes of stiff scrambled pasteurized eggs, thin slices of oven-baked bacon, vat of oatmeal, a few cartons of yogurt, and a bowl of fruit. It gets the day started. I may be judging it a bit harshly though. My daughter Claire loves those scrambled eggs. Go a little more upscale and you’ll see maybe a platter of smoked salmon, some sliced meats and cheeses, bran muffins…
    • So when I see something different, it gets my attention. Like roasted green chiles in New Mexico, Albuquerque and Santa Fe, to season those scrambled eggs, or the King Cake at the Canal St Sheraton in New Orleans during Mardi Gras season. Now, it’s not the best king cake I’ve had – and my wife has dragged me through a king cake tasting crawl there, so I speak with some knowledge — but I look forward to it whenever I’m there in the spring. I remember one morning I walked in — no king cake! I found one of the staff — “you guys stop doing king cake?!” “No! I didn’t know we were out.” And they immediately brought out a new one. Crisis averted!
    • It doesn’t even have to be anything big. The Copenhagen Marriott lounge had rhubarb juice. As a kid, my mother made pies from rhubarb growing in our backyard, that I think her mother had planted. So something different and nostalgic all in one. Was it life-changing? Not necessarily, but I’d never seen it before.
    • A little more life-changing was the bowl of bun bo hue that we got for breakfast when staying at a local, non-chain, hotel in Hue in central Vietnam. Kind of a spicier, funkier version of the pho you see in the US, and tougher to find here. Not like any hotel breakfast I’d had, and I immediately switched my breakfast choice over to it or pho for the rest of the trip.
      Back in May, when I was in Pune, we stayed at a Marriott Courtyard, a chain which, as I’ve complained about before in prior episodes, doesn’t have a concierge lounge but they had a nice breakfast buffet with what I guess is a typical two-track system — one side with the usual Western breakfast foods, and the other side with Indian food. The waiter pointed me to the omelette station. I was about ready to order when I noticed another station to my right with what looked like a super-sized crepe griddle. “What’s that?” I asked. “Oh, that’s to make dosas.” “Cool, I have one of those.” “Do you know what a dosa is?” “Nope, but I’ll take one, however it normally comes.” I watched him make this foot-wide diameter stiff crepe, rolled it up and put it, sticking up out of a cup of some sort of stew or curry. I walk back to the table. Everyone else has eggs, bacon, toast, arranged horizontally on their plate. I’m the only one with a vertical breakfast. But I liked that. Kinda flying the flag for something different at breakfast .

    Closing

    • Closing music — Pictures of You by Evangeline
    • OK, that’s it, that’s the end of TravelCommons podcast #145
    • I hope you all enjoyed this podcast and I hope you decide to stay subscribed.
    • Find TravelCommons on Stitcher, SoundCloud, TuneIn, iTunes, and now on Spotify
    • If you have a story, thought, comment, gripe – the voice of the traveler — send ‘em along, text or audio file, to comments@travelcommons.com or to @mpeacock on Twitter, or post them on the TravelCommons’ Facebook page, Instagram account,  or website at travelcommons.com. Thanks to everyone who has taken the time to send in e-mails, Tweets and post comments on the website
    • Bridge music from dig.ccmixter.org
    • Follow me on Twitter
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    • Direct link to the show
  • Podcast #134 — Value of Loyalty; Need Those 5 Stars

    Podcast #134 — Value of Loyalty; Need Those 5 Stars

    Status Recognition in Vietnam

    Finding a Jag in the Hertz Presidents Club aisle has me thinking about the differing value of loyalty from hotel, airlines, and car rental companies while 5-star rating schemes are pushing grade inflation. All this and comments on luggage discounts, traveling while injured, and #metoo while flying at the direct link to the podcast file or listening to it right here by clicking on the arrow below.


    Here is the transcript of TravelCommons podcast #134:

    • Intro music — Warmth by Makkina
    • Coming to you from the TravelCommons studios outside of Chicago, IL. No exciting or exotic travel since the last episode; just a quick down-and-back to Atlanta, a day in Washington, DC, and a few trips to Charlottesville, VA.
    • The first trip to Charlottesville, about 3 weeks ago, was the first time I’d been back in 5 months after spending more than a year there. Other than the flights being poorly timed — there are non-stops from ORD, but they arrive at either 2:45 in the afternoon or quarter past midnight — it’s been a great town to visit. So I was surprised as anyone by the white supremacist march there in August.
    • I was on the late night flight and when I walked out of the terminal, the one cab at the curb had already been claimed. But it was only a 4 min wait for a Lyft driver, so not a problem. Indeed, it turned out to be a great ride. The Lyft driver, an older black guy, told me, unprompted, the whole back story of the protests; how it started as a local political battle that then blew up big. He wanted me to know that Charlottesville wasn’t like that. He told me “I’ve lived here for 40 years and have never seen that statue, until one day, I drove past a park, looked to my right and there it was!”
    • Since the white supremacists had shown back up the Saturday before we came back, I said to the project team, “We need to find out where that statue is so we can avoid it.” One is from India, the other born in the US of Indian parents. I didn’t want us stumbling into a line of tiki torch-bearing protesters.
      But as we got working that day, we forgot about it. Driving to dinner, we missed a turn — actually we missed going straight; instead followed the road as it turned — and as we wandered through some side streets to get back on track, I look to my right, and there’s the Robert E Lee statue covered in black tarp, with a couple of people camped out in front of it, and another group of people walking toward it. I suggested that we didn’t need to come to a complete stop at intersection. And, well, we know where that statue is now.
    • For all of my complaints and bitch tweeting about delayed flights, I have to say that my American flight home from Reagan National Saturday morning was great. Exit row seat; no one in the middle. Everyone boarded quickly; they closed the door and left 10 minutes early and with no traffic on the taxiway and a beautiful sunny day, we were up and over the Potomac in 5 minutes. Typically, though, nothing like this goes unpunished at ORD, but we landed, didn’t have to wait for a gate, and taxied immediately in, arriving a half-hour early. Damn if this doesn’t make me look forward to my next trip.
    • Bridge Music — release.JOY.release by SackJo22 (c) copyright 2015 Licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution Noncommercial (3.0) license.  Ft: essesq, Haskel (hej31)

    Following Up

    • On my most recent trip through the ATL PreCheck line, there was no X-Ray machine choreography this time. If you remember in the last episode, I talked about the TSA agent at the parallel loading X-Ray machine coordinating each bin push, having everyone hold up until all the previous bins had cleared, and then having everyone push their bins onto the conveyor at once. Not this time, though I did get a bit of a stink eye from a couple when I walked around them to one of the further up loading stations. They’re obviously not old PC heads, otherwise they’d instantly understand the difference between serial and parallel paths.
    • Following up on the packing pro tips topics from the last episode, which I also repurposed/recycled into the Ruthless Packing Tips blog post, Dan Bennett, the CEO of Test Facts, sent me a link to study where they tested and compared 32,672 luggage prices. I’ll put a link to the study in the show notes, but a couple of interesting factoids from their introductory infographic
      • You can save an average of $110/39% buying on-line
      • Walmart and Target’s on-line stores tend to have the highest discounts; Kohl’s and Macy’s the lowest
      • Amazon is in 10th place for average discount (in the 40% range), but is tops by a long way in greatest variety — over 12,000 luggage items vs. 7,500 for Jet which was #2
      • Luggage sets have a 23% higher discount than single pieces
    • Check it out — it’s an interesting piece of analysis
    • Jim McDonough posted a “traveled while injured” story on Facebook that put my biking injury whining in its place
      • My wife and I were in County Kerry on the West Coast of Ireland. We were killing time before dinner, at an ancient stone circle on the edge of town. I was taking some photos, and it started raining. While walking down a slope, I was putting my camera back in my bag to keep it dry, when my left foot slipped on the wet grass. My right knee hyper-flexed, causing a complete tear of my quadriceps tendon. There was a loud crack, but no pain.
      • It turns out you can’t walk without a quadriceps tendon. We didn’t know what the problem was. My wife ran off and found some people and got them to come and get me, and they took me to the doctor’s house. The doctor (more like a physician’s assistant, the regular doctor was away) poked around but couldn’t diagnose anything. We went back to our B&B but did not go out to dinner that night!
      • Flying home, Dublin/Gatwick/DFW, I needed assistance for the connections. British Airways took such good care of me in Gatwick that I fly them whenever I can. While on the plane I was OK – I used seat backs to get to/from the head. American was supposed to provide a wheelchair at DFW but they failed to until the lead flight attendant got on the horn and got me one. I had surgery a couple of days later, and my rehab took a few months.
      • This is the same injury that Bill Clinton had at Greg Norman’s house. He had a better medical plan than I did
    • Just “ouch”, Jim. Reminds me of years ago when I broke my right foot getting out of my car in Philadelphia. I stepped on some broken concrete and heard a loud “snap”! After a long wait in an ER in downtown Philly — where they rightly were triaging gunshot victims over me — they plastered me up to my thigh and told me not to put any weight on my foot. The next day, I’m hobbling through 30th Street Station and down the stairs to the train platform on crutches with a carry-on bag across my back, swinging with every step. No one from Amtrak took any sort of care of me.
    • Mika Pyyhkala tweeted me a great video of what I assume is a new service that guides blind travelers through airports. I’ll put a link in the show notes. It’s a great demo, show how a person in the contact center is viewing a real-time video stream through what I assume is a camera mounted on the head of the traveler, and then providing audio guidance. And watching the video made me realize what a mine field an airport is for blind or low-sight travelers. I guess I should’ve realized this; it’s typically a mine field for those with 20/20 vision. Thanks Mika for the pointer. Very cool video.
    • The #metoo Twitter campaign on sexual harassment that started up a couple of weeks ago reminded me of a couple of stories women have told me about seat assignments. One from a woman CIO; she’s sitting in her aisle seat, pre-boarded with the top status group and is downloading some last-minute e-mails during regular boarding. She looks up, there’s a guy standing there who says “Why don’t you just slide over, honey”, pointing to the center seat. She closed her PC, stood up and pointed the guy to his center seat, and then leaned out into the aisle for the rest of the flight. Another story was from a friend, a woman air marshal, who was sitting in her assigned aisle First Class seat — armed and incognito to everyone except the flight crew. During boarding, a well-known male TV host on MSNBC asks her to switch seats. She can’t; the regulations say that air marshals need to be in their assigned seats; but she can’t tell him that and stay undercover, so she politely tells him “No”. To which he becomes very irate, obnoxiously berating her — “Do you know who I am” and all that. As much as she’d love to tell him why she can’t move, she can’t. So she has to sit there and take it, until finally a flight attendant comes over and intervenes. Followed by, again, an uncomfortable 2-hr flight in close quarters with a troglodyte. Sexual harassment is bad — full stop. Having to fend someone off, and then be in the same tight metal tube with him unable to leave, even worse.
    • And if you have any thoughts, questions, a story, a comment, a travel tip – the voice of the traveler, send it along. The e-mail address is comments@travelcommons.com — you can use your smartphone to record and send in an audio comment; send a Twitter message to mpeacock, or you can post your thoughts on the TravelCommons’ Facebook page — or you can always go old-school and post your thoughts on the web site at TravelCommons.com.
    • Bridge Music — Rise Up (Like the Sun) by Snowflake (c) copyright 2017 Licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution Noncommercial (3.0) license.  Ft: Bluemillenium, Sackjo22, Martin Luther King, Kara Square

    What’s the Current Value of Loyalty?

    • I continue to love Hertz’s new Presidents Club pick-your-own car aisle. Yes, National has been doing it for years. But on my last trip to Atlanta, I’m walking down the aisle looking at the cars — Altima, Altima, Hyundai, Altima, Jag, Altima — wait, what? I very quickly back up. It’s a new Jaguar Model XF. I look up — nope, I haven’t slipped into the Upgrade aisle. I throw my bag in the back and take off for one of my nicer drives up I-85 through the city. Another time, I’m walking down the aisle and a Hertz guy pulls a new Dodge Charger into the space next to me. He hops out, hands me the keys saying “We want to make sure you guys have a nice selection of cars to choose from.” And so now as the year is winding down, I’m looking — how many more rentals to keep Presidents Club status?
    • I felt the flip side of this last week at the Charlottesville Courtyard where as I’m filling up a couple of water glasses in the workout room cooler, I tweet “I kinda hate Courtyard Hotels. They offer the worst experience for the money to Marriott Platinum members…” Scott Drake tweeted back “I’ll be the contrarian: at the price point is it not valuable? Are you expecting the JW experience at a Courtyard?” while Michael Kline asked “Detailed explanation? Maybe on the podcast?” Mine was a tweet that come from a comparison between my stay at an Atlanta Marriott the prior week and this Courtyard. For about the same rate, the Atlanta Marriott gave me a bit of a welcome gift, free breakfast every morning, and restocked my room with bottled water. The Courtyard — I could either pick a bottle of something from their little market next to the front desk or have one free coffee during my stay. I took the bottle of water, which I then filled up every morning in the workout room until the maid threw it out. Not knocking the maid — she’s just doing her job. But as I’m carrying the now filled water glasses back to my room, I’m thinking — why am I staying here? And again, it’s not that I couldn’t go buy a bottle of water and expense it, it was more the disconnect of the thing — how much better the Marriott treated me for the same price.
    • On my last trip to ATL, I flew DL where I have absolutely no status. I was trying to thread my flights between already-booked conference calls, and DL, with way more flights than AA or UA, was the only way to string everything together. On the way down, I couldn’t get a seat assignment until I was at the gate — 32B, second-to-the-last row on an old Boeing 717 — the last of the DC-9/MD-80 series that I think Delta got from the old AirTrans. At the gate I thought I lucked into an aisle seat, but those 717’s have a 3-2 seat configuration, opposite of AA and the old NW, so B is a middle seat. The flight was fine; the service reasonable, and it was a short flight, so it wasn’t a big deal. But it was definitely a less enjoyable experience that my Saturday flight on American, with an exit row aisle seat and an empty middle seat.
    • There was a study a few months ago that showed American was the most stingy carrier with award seats. And there are other ways that they’ve eroded the value of loyalty. I’ve flown American since July 1985 when I started my first full-time job in Dallas and I’ve noticed that chipping way over what’s now 37 years — that’s a frightening number to say out loud. But when my objective is to get from Point A to Point B with the least amount of hassle, there is still some value to loyalty.
    • Which is kinda the muddling middle ground I’ve carved out nowadays; invest enough time/effort to hit the loyalty level that fits the value I will get. I’ll go out of my way to re-up my Hertz status because it’s given me great rental car choices. I won’t push for anything more than mid-level airline status because, with the high load factors and the push to sell 1st-class seats, there not much more to get than free front-of-the-plane seating and a reasonable shot at overhead bin space. Going out of my way to make American’s Exec Platinum or United’s 1K again doesn’t appear to be worth it. And with Courtyards, there’s not much value in a $2 bottle of water.
    • Bridge Music — Nube – Djiz Rmx by Kwame (c) copyright 2007 Licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution Noncommercial (3.0) license.  Ft: SylviaO

    Need Those 5 Stars

    • A few months ago, after an overnight stay at a Residence Inn in Baltimore, I wrote up a TripAdvisor review. I titled it “Pretty standard Residence Inn experience” and gave the place 3 whatever TripAdvisor calls them — stars, circles — whatever they are, I gave them 3. Seemed in line with the review, where I said “Standard Residence Inn set up; friendly service. Shuttle driver provided good service driving us to/from nearby businesses”. Nothing controversial. So I was a little surprised when I got a note the next day from the general manager
      • “Thank you very much for going on TripAdvisor.com to review our hotel. We greatly appreciate it. One request I have, if you would be willing, is if you might consider changing your rating from a 3 star review to a 4 star review. Marriott hotels views a 3 star review or lower as a “0”. Meaning the hotel takes a hit/mark against it for providing what Marriott considers is a “bad” stay which is 3 or under in their view. It looks like your comments indicate that you had a good stay. In that regard, I wonder if you would be willing to change your score up to a 4? We would really appreciate it if you would.”
    • I didn’t change the rating. Maybe I should’ve, but honestly, I don’t know. And even if I did, I really didn’t want to. I thought it was a 3-star experience. I’m sorry that Marriott doesn’t give you credit for that, but I kinda feel like that’s not my problem
    • Now, I’m nothing if not inconsistent, because I’ll give every Uber and Lyft driver 5 stars if they get me to my destination in a reasonably clean car. Indeed, I was right with my son when he jumped all over my wife for giving a Lyft driver 3 stars for what she thought was an “OK, nothing special” ride. “You gonna get him kicked off!” he said. And he wasn’t wrong. Internal Uber documents leaked a few years back said that drivers with ratings less than 4.6 would be considered for deactivation. So this is a little different than TripAdvisor. Here, Uber, the owner of the platform, is saying that a reasonable, acceptable ride should be 5 stars, since anything less will slide the driver down toward the deactivation zone.
    • It’s the Internet version of the Lake Wobegon effect — everybody is above average. The latest stats I saw on Yelp said that the average rating is 3.8 and 46% of their reviews had 5 stars. Which explains why that 4-star diner you drove to try out was just “OK”.
    • Call me cranky, but the two apps that I regularly rate on — TripAdvisor and Untappd — I rate “average” as a 3; kinda like King Canute trying to hold back the waves of grade inflation. On Untappd, anything below a 3, I wouldn’t order again. a 3 is OK, 4 is a great beer, 5 outstanding. I just downloaded my stats into Excel and after a little remedial pivot table training, I can see that I’m a bit skewed — 13% of my ratings are below 3; 60% are between 3 and 3.75; 26% between 4 and 4.75; and 1% at 5 with a median rating of 3.5. Not as bad as Yelp, but maybe it’s because I really like beer.

    Closing

    • Closing music — iTunes link to Pictures of You by Evangeline
    • OK, that’s it, that’s the end of TravelCommons podcast #134
    • I hope you all enjoyed this podcast and I hope you decide to stay subscribed.
    • If you have a story, thought, comment, gripe – the voice of the traveler — send ‘em along, text or audio file, to comments@travelcommons.com or to @mpeacock on Twitter, or post them on our website at travelcommons.com. Thanks to everyone who has taken the time to send in e-mails, Tweets and post comments on the website
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