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  • Podcast #135 — Airport Bingo; My New Old Travel PC

    Podcast #135 — Airport Bingo; My New Old Travel PC

    Always use a coffee name when crossing the 3-adjective limit

    Here’s something to listen to while in the Thanksgiving airport lines and traffic jams. We list out some of the squares we’d like to see in an airport bingo card, and I end up going back to the future with my new travel PC. We also talk about my growing stack of subway “tap” cards and some forecasts on what could be a traffic jammed Thanksgiving holiday. 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 #135:

    • Intro music — Warmth by Makkina
    • Coming to you from the TravelCommons studios outside of Chicago, IL. Started my traditional Thanksgiving no-fly shutdown a week early. My normal practice is to stay at home Thanksgiving week, avoiding what is in the US the busiest travel week of the year. But this year, I’m taking advantage of every opportunity to scale back my travel a bit; consciously going to an every other week travel schedule. This is a big change for me; I think last year I travelled all but 6 or 8 weeks. I’m finding this more leisurely makes me much less brittle/much more accepting of travel hiccups.
    • Which came in very handy on my last trip because, as I feared, I jinxed myself with the last episode when, after a great flight back from DC, I said “Damn if this doesn’t make me look forward to my next trip.” Well, we all know that no good deed goes unpunished. My next flight to Charlottesville was late night Sunday — leave ORD 9:50pm, get into CHO around 12:30am. I’m sitting in the Admirals Club catching up on e-mail, reading a bit. I’d been getting occasional phone notifications; my flight was bouncing around, changing departure gates, never a good sign, but it settled down after a while. Around 9:15, I figured I’d walk over to the departure gate. I looked at the monitor — gate G7 as it had been for the past half-hour, so I packed up my stuff. Just as I picked up my phone — bing, a new notification — my flight’s cancelled. What the hell?
    • I asked the Admirals Club folks to check — yup, it’s cancelled; no, they don’t know why, and yes, they’re as surprised as I am. Of course, American sends me a nice notification that they’ve re-booked me onto the same flight the next day — leaving 9:50pm Monday — seeming to expect that I’d be perfectly happy with them blowing a day hole in my schedule. The Admirals Club agents knew that was not an acceptable answer, and one of them immediately started looking for alternatives. Me too — looking at CHO, DC, and Richmond. Because of how late AA canceled, there was nothing available the next morning. Not surprising given how full planes are flying these days. After about 20 minutes of non-stop keystrokes, the Admirals Club agent found me a flight the next day at 11:30, getting me into Richmond at 2:30pm. I took it — that was as good as it was going to get — and gave her a couple of the service recognition coupons American sends the status fliers. She’d earned them. And as I heard other guys around me scrambling for hotel rooms, I stopped thinking about how American had wasted my Sunday night and was going to waste my Monday morning, and instead was happy that the cab I was going to catch was taking me to my own bed.
    • Bridge Music — Another Girl by duckett

    Following Up

    • I’m sorta short-cycling what has become my normal monthly cadence — just squeaking in episodes at the last day of the month — so that I can give you something to listen to in those Thanksgiving airport line and traffic jams. Triple A forecasts 45.5 million people hitting the roads, the highest since 2005 — probably some combination of low unemployment and low gas prices. And as the Thanksgiving holiday has expanded — trying finding anyone in the office on Weds — Tuesday evening is forecasted to be the worst traffic, when getaway drivers and outbound rush hour combine into a hellish brew of standstill traffic jams. In Chicago, the trip from downtown to O’Hare is predicted to be an hour and 14 minutes, almost 4x more than what it takes on a clear road. Surpassed only by the 2 hour trip to JFK also forecasted for Tuesday evening.
    • Steve Frick left a comment on the TravelCommons’ Facebook page about last episode’s topic on ratings grade inflation — the need for that 5-star review. Steve writes:
      • I’m a “Yelp” guy and I consistently give Fairfield Inn 3 stars. My reviews are along these lines “Typical Fairfield, nothing that bad yet nothing yet nothing that great. Friendly staff, clean location, and comfortable beds. Same sub-par Fairfield breakfast, but that’s why you pack instant oatmeal and protein bars.” There’s nothing that makes me want to tell people to stay there.
      • Your Untappd information got me thinking. With around 1200 unique beers I’m well below your numbers but I came in with the bulk of my ratings also at 3.75.
    • Thanks for that, Steve. My rationalization for my beer ratings skew is selection bias — with over 5,200 unique beer check-ins, I pretty much know what I like and what I don’t like, so I’m not knowingly going to order and pay for a beer I don’t think I’ll like. I did have the exception to that last weekend when my son and I were at FoBAB — the Festival of Barrel Aged Beers. We volunteered to pour on Friday — the first night — which earned us a free ticket for Saturday night. At some point, my son give me a glass “Here, taste this”. I spit it back into the glass, dumped it, and rinsed the glass twice. It was awful. What was it? It was a beer that I had specifically said I wanted to avoid after reading the description in the program — “Aged 12 months in Ardbeg scotch barrels with coffee and peanut butter.” I rated it 0.25 out of 5 because a zero doesn’t register as a rating. After that, I think I can live with a bit of rating skew.
    • I started off the other topic in the last episode — the value of loyalty — with the story of finding a new Jag in the Hertz Presidents Club aisle at ATL. Of course, I grabbed it. The next afternoon, though, I was kinda wishing I’d taken an Uber or Lyft. My meeting in Norcross, north of Atlanta, was running late and refreshing Waze, I could see traffic both through and around Atlanta was building. And the rental return is at least a 15-minute ride to the terminal — when the train doesn’t make an unscheduled stop mid-transit as I described in an earlier episode. So I was gearing myself up for missing my flight and the hassles of finding a seat on something later, when up popped an e-mail from Hertz offering to drive me to the terminal for $20. Sold! After I pulled in, one of the car “checker-inners” hopped into the driver’s seat and off we drove. And she was as happy to be driving that Jag as I was. “I love this car!” she said as we pulled out. “It’s such a beautiful day, I may drop you off and just keep on driving!” We had a good chat. She dropped me off at the door closest to the PreCheck line and I legged it in to make my flight. I won’t pop for that every time, but that $20 was worth it.
    • Also, thanks to Cristina Sainz of Booking.com’s Business Travel Blog who put TravelCommons #2 in her list of the “7 Podcasts Every Travel Manager Needs to Listen to Right Now”. She describes the podcast as “serving up pithy travel advice since 2005.” Well, we try. Thanks again Cristina for the shout-out.
    • When I was in DC last month, I added another subway “tap” card to my collection, which was a little bit of a bummer because I still had an old style Metrocard — the paper fare card with a mag stripe — with at least one ride’s worth of fare still on it. So now I have a Smart Trip card along with a Ventra card from Chicago, an Oyster card from London, and a Breeze card from Atlanta. I hold onto them because they’re reusable and, while not expensive, their costs start to add up. The Atlanta and DC cards were $2 each; the Chicago card was $5, and the London card £5 — or about $6.60 at today’s exchange rate. The Chicago card is, of course, the one I use the most. And it’s nice because I can top it up with a smartphone app. Comes in handy when I decide to take the L from ORD downtown. Beats standing in the perpetual long lines in front of the ORD fare machines. You’d think that if CTA is going to charge a premium to board at ORD, they’d at least pony up to cut the line to pay it. Little known pro tip for folks coming into ORD — skip the line and pay with your iPhone if you have Apple Pay set up. It doesn’t read as fast as the Ventra card, but it works — at least on the L — the subway. When I was in London this past summer, the Underground was wonky. I could tap in at the turnstile with my iPhone, but couldn’t tap out which was a real hassle. But my daughter, though, who has a contactless debit card from RBS had no problems. And there wasn’t an app to top up my Oyster card, so I had to queue up in front of a lot of fare machines. Last month, New York announced that they’re hiring the same company London used to revamp the MTA’s payment system. I hope they get Apple and Android Pay working right. And more broadly, I hope these tap cards are just a temporary bridge until these transit systems can fully upgrade their systems to use smartphones. Until then, I carry a card holder in my backpack with my $15-$20 worth of subway tap cards.
    • 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 — The Long Goodbye by John Pazden

    Playing Airport Bingo

    • I got a press release a couple of days ago from AirHelp, a company that looks like will file compensation claims for delayed flights in return for a 25% cut — which doesn’t seem too bad since they’re doing it on a contingent basis. They sent along an Airport Bingo card for “helping you pass the time while not so patiently waiting to board”. It’s kinda the airport version of “buzzword bingo” that we all play on conference calls — instead of marking a square someone says “synergy”, AirHelp has squares for things like “police dog” and “solo traveler”.
    • That’s OK for a start, I guess. But here at TravelCommons, we try to go to the next level of road warrior-ism. I’m not going to fill out all 24 squares, but here are 12 squares’ worth to get you started
      1. 10-15 minute traffic jam on the airport access road — just long enough to get those stress hormones flowing
      2. Guy in front of you in the PreCheck line walks through the metal detector with his smartphone. The alarm sounds. He stands there, puzzled. The TSA person rolls her eyes and asks, yet again, if he’d emptied his pockets. He looks surprised that his smartphone would set it off. She looks at her watch for how long ‘til her next break.
      3. Girl pulling a Hello Kitty kids-sized roller board on her way to Grandma’s. Hey, who said airport bingo had to be 100% snarky?
      4. Woman in front of you in the Starbucks line orders a half-decaf 3-pump no-foam vanilla latte, breaking the 3-adjective rule. It’s Sodexo, not your corner Starbucks. Keep it simple so the rest of us can order.
      5. A piano bar playing Christmas carols — or if you’re in Nashville airport, a country duo
      6. A family of four or more walking abreast, slowly, so that people racing for their gates drift into the on-coming traffic, or try to thread through the crowd in front of a boarding gate. The only upside? One of the family might be pulling a Hello Kitty bag.
      7. An available rocking chair. More airports are scattering these around, in front of windows in terminal connectors, in random hallways. Bonus if it’s next to an open — and working — electrical outlet
      8. A craft beer bar with beers you haven’t had — get those stress hormones back under control, and increment your unique beer counter on Untappd
      9. Dueling gate announcements. Gates G20 and G22 are boarding at the same time, with each gate agent talking over the other one. You hear Boarding Group 3 called and hustle up to the door, only to be shunted over to wait in the shame station; the other gate called Boarding Group 3.
      10. Boarding is complete and there’s an empty middle seat next to you! The clouds part and a golden ray of sunshine reflects off the iPad of the guy sitting in the window seat, illuminating that lovely little bit of extra elbow room. You and the window seat guy look at each other, smile, and feel those stress hormones drop another notch.
      11. Missing crew. Boarding’s complete, you’re next to an empty middle seat, but you have no crew. Their flight was late, and pulled into a gate two terminals over. They’re on their way, but now you’re worried that some stand-by will drop into that empty seat. That golden ray of sunshine dims a bit.
      12. Early arrival! Not only did the seat stay empty, but favorable winds put you on the ground 30 minutes early. You start to think that you should travel more often.
    • OK, there you go. There’s half your airport bingo card filled out. If you’re flying out Tues or Weds, you’ll have more that enough time in line to figure out the rest. Let us know — Twitter, Facebook, or website — what squares you come up with.
    • Bridge music — Slinky Blues by Admiral Bob

    Back to the Future with my New Travel PC

    • I’ve been muttering under my breath about my Lenovo ThinkPad for a while now. I’ve had it for 4 years now. It’s feeling a bit heavy and looking a bit beat up, and though it’s no doubt been fully depreciated off the firm’s balance sheet, I don’t hear any rumors of an impending refresh. So I’ve been semi-shopping for a new Travel PC — clicking through to Engadget reviews, glancing over, eyeing what the other folks on the plane or in the concierge lounge are using.
    • Seven years ago (just about to the day), in what might’ve passed as an instance of pithy travel advice, I wrote about the use case for a Travel PC — what it is, and more importantly, what it is not. It’s not my primary computer; it’s not my podcast production or video editing machine. That’s my home PC which is now up to 16GBs of RAM, an 8-core processor, 2 21-inch monitors, Blu-Ray burner, and a couple of terabyte hard drives. My Travel PC is spec’d for what’s important, what I need when I travel — light weight, long battery life, low screen profile so not to get crushed when the guy in the row in front of me power-reclines his seat, and reasonable processing power (in that order) — and leaves behind what’s not. Seven years ago — in 2010 to save you the math — the 11-inch MacBook Air was my choice for the Best Travel PC.
    • My Travel PC use case hasn’t changed, but the market has — kinda. In my looking around, what I’ve seen is 2 ½ kinds of travel PCs. There are the next generations of the laptop — thin ultrabooks from Lenovo, HP and Dell; MacBook Pros from Apple — or full-sized iPads with combo covers/soft keyboards and pens — with the Microsoft Surface Pro being that ½ case, a thin Windows PC with a fold-out keyboard cover and pen. Quite honestly, none of those options really spoke to me — at least enough to make me part with my own cash. The ultrabooks didn’t offer much new; I’d might as well “accidently” dump a grande cappuccino on my old Lenovo ‘cause this is what I’d get in return. The MacBook Pros are certainly sleek, but as a Travel PC, don’t seem to offer much more for the Apple premium. I have been thinking about the tablet/keyboard combo, specifically the Surface Pro; but watching guys try to work that soft keyboard on an airplane seatback tray… I could see myself wearing a cup of coffee two weeks after starting to fly with one of those. So, I kept semi-shopping
    • But then last week, I got an e-mail blast from Newegg, the online PC parts retailer; I usually buy from them them when I’m assembling or upgrading my home PC. They had a flash sale on refurbed 11-inch MacBook Airs, not the 2010 model but what Apple dubs an “early 2014” model. Pretty much identical to my old one, but with updated specs, including the same processor as my Lenovo. I looked at it, did a few Internet search. It sat in a shopping cart for a couple of days until I thought “For $385, why not?” and pulled the trigger. It showed up a few days ago, and save for a corner ding, looks pretty new. I’ve upgraded to the current version of MacOS, installed Office 365 and VMFusion on it, and so I’m pretty much ready to go — back to the future.

    Closing

    • Closing music — iTunes link to Pictures of You by Evangeline
    • OK, that’s it, that’s the end of TravelCommons podcast #135
    • 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
    • Bridge music from dig.ccmixter.org
    • Find TravelCommons on Stitcher, SoundCloud, and iTunes
    • Follow me on Twitter
    • “Like” the TravelCommons fan page on Facebook
    • Direct link to the show
  • Podcast #87 — Sick on the Road; What’s in My Briefcase?

    Podcast #87 — Sick on the Road; What’s in My Briefcase?

    Warning in a St Louis Taxi
    Warning in a St Louis Taxi

    I skipped the Midwest’s “snow-pocalypse” by flying to Phoenix where it was unseasonably cold — in the 20’s and 30’s F — but without snow. It’s been a cold winter and I came down with some nasty bug while visiting Dallas, which reminded me how miserable it is to be sick while traveling. Before my whining, though, I give a quick status on my New Year’s travel resolutions, my observations on the status of the TSA’s full body scanning program, and my struggles trying to use Avatron’s Air Display app to turn my iPad into a second display for my MacBook Air.  Gary Learned suggests a headset that can defeat overhead PA announcements at airports, and I go through my briefcase — how I’ve changed what I carry for business travel over the past 5 years. Here’s a direct link to the podcast file or you can listen to it right here by clicking on the arrow below.

    Here are the transcript from TravelCommons podcast #87:

    • Intro music — Warmth by Makkina
    • Coming to you from the TravelCommons studios outside of Chicago, IL.  I managed to skip this week’s “snopocalypse” — the 20+ inches of snow that fell here Tuesday and Wednesday.  Instead, I flew down to Phoenix on Tuesday morning – though not without a couple of glitches courtesy of American Airlines – and came back Friday evening.  And yes, I did feel a bit guilty skipping out on the shoveling in the wind and cold, but that’s what kids are for.
    • It has been a cold winter so far.  I was in Dallas a couple of weeks ago where it was rainy, in the low 30’s and the wind was blowing a steady 20 mph – OK, no snow, but not any better than Chicago.  And then even this week in Phoenix – the temperatures were in the 30’s, getting into the 20’s at night.  Yes it was colder in Chicago and elsewhere, but still – where’s that global warming when you really need it.
    • Earlier in January, Phoenix was much nicer – sunny and in the 60’s.  The first couple of days I was there, I was running on autopilot a bit – for lunch, I’d dash out of the office, hop in my rental car and drive the quarter-mile north to the shopping area with the sandwich shops and a Whole Foods.  Driving back the second day, I thought, “What the hell am I doing?  It’s 20 degrees back home!”  The next day, I took an hour for lunch, walked to the Whole Foods, bought myself a cup of soup, sat outside in the sun and ate it, and then walked back to the office.
    • Which kind of reminds me of the New Years resolutions I posted on the TravelCommons site on the first of the year.  #3 was “Take More Quick Breaks” – along the lines of “take advantage of the travel because it sure takes advantage of you…” In the post, I mentioned the afternoons I took to hike up Squaw Peak in Phoenix or walk along the beach in Naples, FL.  Walking along a road to lunch seems a bit of a pathetic reach, but the spirit is there – if you’re traveling from snow to sun for work, don’t forget to grab a couple of rays for yourself.
    • Actually, I did a bit better than that – I went to the BCS college football championship game while in Phoenix, and to a Mavs-Lakers basketball game while in Dallas – something for each week.
    • As for my other resolutions?  “Plan Further Ahead” because airline load factors/seat utilization is moving up again?  I’m doing OK with that – I’m booking out 2-3 weeks in advance, which is a huge improvement for me.
    • “Repack My Briefcase?” – check out the “What’s in my bag” segment a bit later.
    • “Take More Pictures?” – just a marginal improvement – I don’t count taking pictures with my iPhone of bullet points on whiteboards
    • And the toughest one – “Be nicer to TSA agents?”  I was doing better because, at least over the past few trips, they’ve been nicer to me.  I hadn’t been groped or irradiated on my first couple of trips, which will tend to have a positive impact on anyone’s disposition.
    • Bridge Music — Shine by Hungry Lucy

    Following Up

    • The TSA full body scan controversy that was white-hot during the Thanksgiving weekend seems to have cooled quite a bit.  The TSA will say that this is proof the American public supports its program of full body scans or AIT – Advanced Imaging Technology – as they like to call it, and the “enhanced pat-down” as the TSA likes to call it, or the full body grope as the rest of us experience it.
    • I think instead it’s that the TSA has pulled way back on their use of these invasive techniques.  I hadn’t been hit with a full-body scanner or a grope-down from the beginning of December until last week.  When the TSA dropped the scanners into ORD in July, they had everyone go through them, which doubled the screening time – at least.  Then through the Christmas travel season, it seemed that the machines were off more than they were on, and even when they were on, they weren’t not on every security lane, so it was pretty easy to avoid them unless you’re going thru a small security checkpoint – which is how they last caught me in DFW.
    • They also seem to be have slowed the rollout.  I haven’t seen them crop up in any new places.  Terminal 2 in PHX, for example, is still a TSA porn-free zone.  Not that I’m complaining.  Nice to be able to just move through security without having to hold my hands above my head.  And remember when we used to complain about taking our shoes off…
    • However, on my last two trips out of ORD, I was fully irradiated.  Again, it was going through a small checkpoint – the status-only checkpoint in Terminal 3, where American lives.
    • Though the TSA will say that the full-body scan doesn’t take much longer than the metal detector, they’re just flat wrong.  The actual scan – the amount of time you have your arms above your head – is only a few seconds longer than walking through the metal detector, the entire screening process takes much longer.
    • I’m beginning to consider the locations of these full-body scanners when I book flights.  In ORD, it seems easier to avoid them in Terminal 1 than Terminal 3, so my next flight down to Florida I’ve switched over to United. Not completely driven by full-body scanners, but it’s definitely a factor.
    • And continuing my thread about my MacBook Air.  You’ll remember that one of the reasons I chose the 11-inch model was the TSA said it could stay in your briefcase – kinda like a bit iPad.  However, when you briefcase – or backpack – stacks your iPad on top of your MacBook Air, be prepared to pull one of them out.  Talking to a very pleasant TSA X-ray machine operator in ORD, he told me that when they stack up, they get too thick to properly scan.  Makes sense.  I’ve since moved my iPad to a difference section in my backpack – put some papers and magazines between the iPad and the MBA to provide a bit more separation and haven’t had a problem since.
    • A number of folks have asked me why I carry both the iPad and a laptop – and I haven’t been able to come up with a real compelling reason.  As I’ve said before, I like reading on an iPad and writing on a laptop, but does that justify the extra weight and re-packing hassle of the iPad?  I was wishy-washy on that right up to last week when I thought I’d found my killer app for the iPad – Avatron’s Air Display, which turns the iPad into a secondary display for the MacBook when they’re on the same WiFi network.
    • Now here’s a reason.  While I can work on the smaller screen of my 11-inch MBA (or the 10.6-inch HP netbook before that), having a second display certainly makes it easier to “spread out”.  I have two 22-inch monitors on my Windows desktop box at home and love it.  I eagerly dropped the $10 for the Air Display app and fired it up…
    • And was disappointed.  It didn’t work in the office.  OK, our network guys must have it locked down.  Not surprised.  I get back to the Hilton and fire it up – again, no luck.  At home, doesn’t work when associated with my Apple Airport Express, but does – just once – when associated with the access point that’s built into the big AT&T U-verse modem/router thing in the basement.  The only access point I can get Air Display to regularly work on is when I use my Verizon Droid 2 as a 3G hot spot.  That’s a bit of a kludge.
    • When it does work, it’s great – the few times that’s happened.  I’ve been hanging around Avatron’s support forums for about a week now, but haven’t found a solution yet.  Great concept; real spotty execution.  If they can get this to work, my iPad is no longer a heavy Kindle – it’s a real productivity tool.
    • And following up on my thoughts in the last episode about some of the hassles of the “digital nomad” work style when it comes to finding a quiet place for a conference call, Gary Learned sent in some thoughts…
    • Gary Learned audio clip
    • Gary, thanks for that suggestion.  I’m hitting Amazon looking for that earpiece right now,
    • And finally, the Gogo in-flight wireless guys have got a new giveaway as they continue to push awareness of their product.  For February, Gogo is adding Facebook to their set of free sites. After the plane gets above 10,000 ft, fire up your laptop or smartphone and associate with the “gogoinflight” wireless network.  Open your browser and you’ll get the GoGo sign-on page.  On the bottom of the page, you’ll see a set of free web sites – typically the dot com site for the airline you’re flying, a weather site, ….  And now, Facebook.  Nice to know that you can stay socially connected at 35,000 feet.
    • If you have a question, a story, a comment, a travel tip – the voice of the traveler, send it along.  The e-mail address is comments@travelcommons.com — use the Voice Memo app on your iPhone to record and send in an audio comment; send a Twitter message to mpeacock, or you can post your thoughts on the Facebook page with GoGo’s free service — or you can always go old-school and post your thoughts on the web site at T/C.com
    • Bridge Music — Beggarstown by Hollow Horse

    Sick on the Road

    • No, that’s not sick of the road – though that happens at times too.
    • As I mentioned earlier, I was in Dallas a couple weeks ago – when it was just cold and windy; no snow or ice – and scored an invite to a vendor’s suite at the Mavs-Lakers basketball game.  Definitely a premiere game.  I went with a couple of guys from the office.
    • It was a good game – Mavs were down at halftime but came back to beat the Lakers by 10.  During the second half, though, I started to feel a tickle in the back of my throat.  I couldn’t stop coughing – couldn’t seem to “finish up” a cough – and the beer and salsa were beginning to feel a little rough going down.
    • Back in the hotel room, I just couldn’t get warm.  I went to bed, but soon started shivering. The thermostat was just above my head.  I kept pushing the Up button until I heard the heater kick in.  After a while, I finally got warm enough to sleep comfortably.  The next morning I looked at the temperature setting – it was at 78°.
    • It didn’t get much better the rest of the day.  I drug myself through a full day of meetings and got on a United Express regional jet for my flight home that night.  Again, I couldn’t get warm.  Since United Express seems to have followed American in pulling blankets and pillows from its planes, I swaddled myself in my tweed jacket and overcoat, and tried not to cough on the person in the window seat.
    • Now, as being sick on the road goes, this wasn’t that bad.  I’ve gotten food poisoning a couple of times, severely pulled muscles, flown with sinus infections that made my head feel like it was going to split in two during descent…
    • But it did remind me how miserable it is to be sick on the road.  For the most part, you’re alone.  Though you may have co-workers who will try to help you a bit, when they go home to their families, you’re going home to an empty hotel room and are going to have to fend for yourself.
    • And it’s not just that you’re lacking a spouse or child to help you out – bring you a blanket or a cup of tea.  You need to find a pharmacy, perhaps a doctor.  But even then, it can still be a struggle. When I was last in Paris, I tweaked my knee pretty bad and needed some ibuprofen for the pain and swelling.  The hotel concierge pointed me in the direction of a pharmacy a couple of blocks away.  Walking/limping in, I knew I couldn’t ask for Advil or Motrin – those US name brands don’t exist in France.  So I asked for ibuprofen – the generic name of the active ingredient.  Ibuprofen is ibuprofen, I thought.
    • “Ibuprofen, s’il vous plaît” I asked.  The pharmacist cocked an eyebrow and looked at me.  “Ibuprofen, s’il vous plaît”, I said again.  Now the other eyebrow arched.  I fought the urge to say it again, only louder.  What was I missing?  Perhaps my throbbing knee was effecting my pronunciation.  I looked around on the counter; grabbed a pen and flipped over some advertising flyer.  I-b-u-p-r-o-f-e-n, I wrote.
    • “Oh, EE-bu-pro-fen” the pharmacist said, and gave me the container of tablets I had needed since I got up that morning.  Flipping French, I thought, and limped back to my hotel.
    • So what do you do?  Certainly “not getting sick” is the best approach – get enough sleep on the road – often tough to do in strange beds and with full schedules.  I find that the old saw – wash your hands for a full 20 seconds and do it often – has significantly reduced the number of colds I pick up, even when I’m flying a lot.
    • Packing a well-stocked medicine cabinet helps a bit – allergy medicine, cold tablets, throat lozenges, ee-buprofen tablets, ….  For domestic travel, at least, you’re not trying to cure the sickness; just stave off the symptoms long enough so that you can get home and into the hands of your regular care-givers.
    • International travel is a bit dicier.  I know some travelers who have medical jet/air ambulance insurance so that they have a quick way to get back home if something catastrophic happens.
    • While I haven’t done that yet, I am looking for a medical phrase book before my next trip to Europe, complete with pronunciation guides for common drugs.  Ibuprofen, ee-buprofen – geez…
    • Bridge Music — Love Survives by Lovespirals

    What’s in My Bag?

    • One of the New Year’s Travel Resolutions that I posted on the TravelCommons site on Jan 1st was to “unpack and repack my briefcase”.
    • Steve Frick, a long time TravelCommons listener, wrote the next day “did that this weekend. 3 pairs of headphones, approx 2 lbs of loose change, 50+ business cards and at least 15 hotel room keys. No wonder my laptop bag was so heavy.”
    • Five years ago – February 2006 – in episode #33, I did a bit of an audio tour through my briefcase
    • <audio clip>
    • The picture of this de-constructed travel kit is the first picture of the TravelCommons Flickr photostream
    • Five years later, some (and surprisingly only some) of the contents have changed, but the goal is the same – optimizing the trade-off between weight and having everything I need.  There’s always that desire to have everything you could possibly need – to make your briefcase into the road warrior version of Batman’s utility belt, letting you amaze your traveling companions by pulling out just the right thing to solve any travel problem.
    • So you’re always prepared, but you’re always trailing up the rear – either because you’ve got the heaviest bag or because the TSA is always pulling your bag for secondary screening because all that stuff makes them suspicious.
    • And so back to that balancing act – what do I need all the time (and so would be a pain to be without) vs. what can I buy or borrow for the one or two times I need it?
    • The technology has changed quite a bit, as you would guess, in 5 years.  It’s kinda fun looking back.  I’ve traded an IBM ThinkPad for a MacBook Air; a Motorola flip phone and U2-themed iPod Classic replaced by an iPhone; and an Aliph Jawbone 2 Bluetooth headset bumping the Motorola H710.  No need for the Microsoft travel mouse or Bluetooth dongle with the MacBook. Also, my vendor-supplied thumb drives have been upgraded – from 512 MB to 4 GB.
    • I replaced the Swiss Army briefcase – I called it a “poor man’s Tumi” in the podcast – with a backpack. And, of course, the TSA’s liquid ban stopped me from carrying on little bottles of hand lotion. I now grab them from every hotel and leave them scattered around conference rooms and rental cars
    • What’s stayed the same?  The Moleskine notebook, the selection of pens, the pink semi-transparent folder for expense receipts, a bottle with ibuprofen and zyrtec tablets, the iRiver MP3 player and recorder that I use to record these podcasts, and, most importantly, a tin of wintergreen Altoids to counter dry mouth when I fall asleep in flight – a pretty common occurrence.
    • What’s new?  An iPad, an extra battery for my iPhone, an AT&T USB cellular modem which lets me skip paying for slow hotel WiFi, a set of Motorola Bluetooth stereo headphones that I use when I work out, a couple of Tazo green tea bags because in-flight coffee is just horrid, an inhaler to make it easier to breathe when I catch a cold (good advice from a “doc in the box” in San Mateo after being laid low in the SFO Marriott by bronchitis), and a Verizon Droid 2 for the too many times that AT&T’s coverage sucks.
    • The iPad let me ditch the printed reports I used to carry – I hated reading them on a computer screen, but don’t mind it on the iPad.  The iBooks and Kindle apps also let me leave physical books at home.  I also tossed the 3 business card holders I’d accumulated – my backpack has a pocket just for business cards.  And do we really need business cards anymore?  Unless you’re regularly meeting with Asian businessmen, business card exchanges are getting rarer and rarer.
    • So I think I’m traveling lighter.  But it might be a push – what I’ve dropped in paper I think I’ve made up in device chargers.

    Closing

    • Closing music — iTunes link to Pictures of You by Evangeline
    • OK, that’s it, that’s the end of TravelCommons podcast #87
    • I hope you all enjoyed this podcast and I hope you decide to stay subscribed.
    • Bridge music from Music Alley
    • If you have a story, thought, comment, gripe – the voice of the traveler — send ‘em along, text or MP3 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
    • Follow me on Twitter
    • “Like” the TravelCommons fan page on Facebook
    • Direct link to the show
  • Podcast #86 — Fun with Layovers; Story Behind the Closing Tune

    Podcast #86 — Fun with Layovers; Story Behind the Closing Tune

    View from my new office atop Squaw Peak
    View from my new office atop Squaw Peak

    Finishing up the year in front of a warm fire in the TravelCommons studios outside of Chicago after a couple of warm-up trips to Phoenix.  I carved myself out an mini-vacation during one of the trips and worked at the summit of Squaw Peak for part of an afternoon. My MacBook Air — my perfect travel PC — turned itself into a good-looking brushed metal brick on my last day in Phoenix, forcing an unplanned stop at the Scottsdale Apple Store before my flight home.  Trying to get some work done while I waited reminded me of the difficulty of finding a quiet spot for a phone call while living on the road.  Missed connections caused by recent snow storms reminded me of ways you can have a little fun when stranded — if you embrace the adventure of it.  Responding to a couple of listener questions on the closing song (Pictures of You by Evangeline), I replay the song’s back story as related by the band’s manager.  Here’s a direct link to the podcast file or you can listen to it right here by clicking on the arrow below.

    Here are the transcript from TravelCommons podcast #86:

    • Intro music — Warmth by Makkina
    • Coming to you once again from the TravelCommons studios, wrapping up the year in the white icebox that is Chicago this winter.  And it’s a cold one.  Not as bad as what they’re getting in Minneapolis-St Paul – watching the video of the Metrodome’s ceiling collapse was pretty amazing – nor what New York is getting tonight, but I think I read that this has been something like the 7th coldest December on record.  So I can tell you that I wasn’t too upset when my travel plans had me in Phoenix two out of the last three weeks.
    • Packing for my last trip, I promised myself that, somewhere in the 4 days that I was in Phoenix, I’d find a couple of hours to get out of the office and go hike up Camelback Mountain.  It was 12 degrees in Chicago when I was packing and the forecast for Phoenix was 70’s and 80’s all week.  I’ve always said that if you don’t take at least a little something for yourself from even business travel, you’ll hate your life.
    • So I start looking for my opening.  Monday, nope – inbound travel days are usually jam packed and American Airlines just added to it – making it like an overstuffed carryon – with a 2-hr maintenance delay, complete with swapping out planes.  Makes me misty for the days when preventative maintenance meant more than…
    • Tuesday goes by, Wednesday morning I think – ah, I’ll do it on Thursday before I fly home – but I stop myself.  My Weds afternoon isn’t that full.  I push some stuff around and, presto, there’s my couple of hours.  I race back to the hotel, change, look at the map – hmmm, Camelback might be a bit too far of a drive, especially if I hit traffic.  But Squaw Peak looks doable.  And so off I raced. After 1.2 miles, 1,200 vertical feet, and 19 ounces of Propel sports drink, I was at the top.  It’s a pretty view – with the hills to the north and the city to the south.  I sat for a bit, caught my breath, and then looked at my iPhone.  Hmm, full bars.  Started running e-mail and turned the summit into my office for the next 30 minutes – reading a couple of documents, cranking out some quick notes while watching the planes and birds fly by.  I took a photo at the summit, which I later posted to the TravelCommons Facebook page and Twitter feed if you’d like to take a look at my new office.
    • Bridge Music — Arlos Auto Parts and Salvation by Swivel Neck Jones

    Following Up

    • In the last episode and in a prior TravelCommons post I sang the praises of my 11-inch MacBook Air as the perfect travel PC.  Which, of course, meant I had tempted the technology gods who, in response last week, reached out from their Valhalla data center and smote the little unibody of brushed metal – bricking it on my last day in Scottsdale.  I opened the lid – no instant on.  I pressed the power button, no instant on.  I held the power button for 5 seconds, 15 seconds, 5 minutes, nothing but a dead screen.
    • If this happened on any other laptop, my first course of action would’ve been to drop the battery to try and reset the power management.  But, that ain’t happening with a MacBook Air, so after stabbing the Power button another half-dozen times, I gave up and headed over to the Genius Bar at the Scottsdale Apple Store.
    • Since our company allows Macs but doesn’t provide help desk support – the Development teams use Macs and stooping to call a Help Desk would be the furthest thing from their minds – the Genius Bar is the defacto help desk.  Since it was near lunch time, I stopped off at Smashburger.  A TravelCommons listener – I forget who – had replied to one of my In-N-Out Burger tweets, asking if I’d tried Smashburger.  It was a god burger – not quite the mystique or ambiance of In-N-Out – but a good burger.
    • One thing that I should’ve done while waiting for my Smashburger was book a time at the Genius Bar. Walking into the Apple Store, the hipster with an iPhone told me it’d be a 30-minute wait.  I checked my watch – I had enough time before my flight back home.  Right at the 30-minute mark, a guy walked over to me, opened my Mac, punched the power button a couple of times to no avail and said “Wow” and took it into the back room.  OK, it’s a bit better than having some guy in India tell me to restart my PC a half-dozen times, but still… I look at my watch again.  How long before I have to fetch this guy and dash to the airport?
    • Not long as it turns out.  5 minutes later, the guy comes back with my now-working Mac.  My initial diagnosis was right – it was the battery, or the PMU – power management unit?  Since you can’t drop the battery, there’s a multi-finger key sequence – hold down the shift, control, option, and command keys with your left hand and then hit the power key with your right.  I wrote it down so I could “self-serve” next time.  Not sure if the whole experience was any better than hanging on hold for a help desk.  I am paying more attention, though, to the location of Apple stores.
    • Now, the 30-minute wait wasn’t a complete loss.  Though my Mac was dead, my iPad and iPhone were fine.  So while I was waiting for my Genius to arrive, I was running e-mail and reading documents on my iPad.  Not a complete loss, but it wouldn’t have worked if I had needed to talk to someone, if I’ve had a conference call.
    • And that is a big problem with the “digital nomad” work style – no office, working out of Starbucks and airport clubs and the like – there’s no good place to take a conference call.  You can IM, e-mail, and text all you want, but once you need to open that voice channel, it’s a very different story.  Nobody wants to be the guy flooding the conference bridge with overhead Muzak or the signature sound of a barista steaming a pitcher of milk.  Airports are no better.  If they don’t have an Admirals or Red Carpet Club – or if I’m flying Southwest – then the hunt is on for a spot not under a PA speaker and away from the aisles with the beeping carts.  And you think the hunt for a working electrical outlet is tough.  I’m forever trolling through the new issues of Skymall magazine looking for a real-life “cone of silence” like they had in Get Smart.  I wonder if the Brookstone in ORD T3 has one?
    • In the last episode, we talked about the bathroom being one of the most important rooms in a hotel.  For me, the workout room is another important place. I stayed in the Ashton Hotel in downtown Fort Worth earlier this month.  Nice place – a boutique hotel in a historical building right near Sundance Square and a great beer bar – the Flying Saucer.  But would I recommend it to friends?  Hmmm… I don’t think so, because the workout room is so limited?  Or lame.  A small room in the basement with a couple of treadmills and an elliptical – with a stand up fan pointed at them.
    • That might be good for a 1-night stay, but I was there for 3.  I, like many frequent travelers, depend upon hotel fitness rooms to stay in some semblance of shape.  A couple of treadmills stuffed in a closet just doesn’t cut it anymore.
    • And finally, I just want to remind everyone that Google’s Christmas present of free Gogo in-flight WiFi on Delta, AirTran, and Virgin America airlines is still on. It runs through Jan 2.  Perfect way to post your family Christmas pics on the flight how.
    • If you have a question, 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 me a Twitter message at mpeacock, or you can post them on the Facebook page or the web site at travelcommons.com.
    • Bridge Music — Smiling Perspective by General Fuzz

    Fun With Layovers

    • One of the most sacred frequent traveler rules is Fly Direct.  Be it winter with snow or summer with thunderstorms, adding that intermediate stop adds one more point of failure, one more opportunity for the airlines to screw up.
    • And while many connecting flights are cheaper than direct ones, for a true comparison, you have to factor in the potential costs of a delay – hotel room (because the airlines won’t pay for weather delays), meals, replacement clothes and toiletries for misrouted luggage…  In an episode last year, I calculated the cost – the breakeven premium between a direct and connecting flight — to be $100-150.
    • But, with the right frame of mind – an “adventuring” frame of mind as one person put it – you can actually manufacture something good out of a connection.
    • The first requirement is to step away from the 1-hour connection.  Yes, we usually want to get to our destination in the shortest possible time, but accepting a connection of 1 hour or less…. Think about it – a 15-minute delay on your inbound flight – which is as good as on-time for most airlines – and you’re sprinting through the terminal (remember when we used to call it “OJ-ing” it – that was a long time ago) and probably having to check your carry-one.  A 1-hr connection is just asking for a stress attack and/or an overnight stay at the airport branch of the Bates Motel.
    • The second requirement is to connect through some place you might want to visit.  On those rare occasions where I’m forced to take a connection, I look at the flight choices and think – where would I not mind being stuck?
    • OK, sounds a bit odd, but think about it.  I’m flying from Phoenix to Ft Myers, FL – zero direct flight – no surprise there.  So where do I want to connect through – Miami, Dallas, Houston, O’Hare, Atlanta?  The total flight duration for any of these connections is within 90 minutes of each other.  For me, it’s an easy choice – I go through Chicago.  If I get stranded, I sleep in my own bed.  If I get delayed, I call up my wife and we grab dinner.
    • Traveling with my family to Cape Town, South Africa, I chose the connection through Frankfurt because I knew the airport wasn’t too far out of town.  We landed after the overnight flight from Chicago, passed through Customs and headed straight for a cab that took us to downtown to Romer Square.  We had lunch, I had a beer, and then we walked around downtown for 4 hours – a quick sightseeing excursion between our overnight flights.
    • Some years back, my parents flew from Denver to Paducah, KY to visit my aunt and grandmother.  Again, no direct flights so they connected through ORD.  And, as you can guess, on the way home, their commuter flight was late out of Paducah and they missed a tight connection.  My dad called me from the airport.  It was New Year’s Eve night and we were having 3 or 4 couples over.  “Get your luggage and book the flight out tomorrow,” I told him, “you can help me cook dinner.” Completely unplanned.  I picked them up, brought them home, threw an apron at my dad, and we had a great time.
    • Planning ahead for these possibilities is key, though.  Last week, friends and longtime TravelCommons listeners Allan Marko and Chris Chufo got caught at ORD when a snow storm caused the crew for their flight to JAX to time out.  That was a bad night – some 1,500 flights were cancelled between ORD and MDW.  The United customer service line stretched all the way down Concourse C.  A frequent traveler, Allan immediately rang United’s Premiere Exec line and got seats on the next day’s flight to JAX, then found a room at a nearby Hilton Garden Inn and stepped out of line to go to bed.
    • But without luggage.  United didn’t even try to give it back.  And because they had to check one bag anyhow with presents, they decided not to carry on – avoid the battle for carry-on space on full planes because they had time – no need to power directly from the flight to a meeting.  But now, though they had a hotel room, they had no change of clothes and just the toiletries they could scrounge from the Hilton.
    • A small inconvenience, though.  Since their flight didn’t leave ‘til 7:30 the next night, I shuffled my calendar around, picked them at the Hilton and took them into Chicago for lunch.  We ate at Longman & Eagle, a Logan Square gastro-pub that picked up a Michelin star last month – Chris and I had wild boar sloppy joes while Allan had the pork belly BLT, and then ran down a couple of blocks to a brew pub, Revolution Brewery, where they picked up some fresh t-shirts and I refilled a growler with a double India Pale Ale – though we thought hard about it, we just couldn’t figure out a way they could get a 64 oz jug of beer through security.  By 5, they were back at ORD, fed, beered up, and ready to try again.
    • It’s all about attitude. Do you lean into it – figure out how to get everything you can out of it – or do you back away? On her extended journey to JAX, Chris Chufo kept chanting a mantra — “It’s an adventure” – and came out smiling at the end
    • Bridge Music — Goa Life by Ambient Teknology

    From the Archives – Story Behind The Closing Song

    • I’ve received a couple of requests over the past months for information on the closing song – the tune that wraps each episode of TravelCommons.
    • Earlier this month, Becky Boyd wrote – “I can’t find the name of the song you use at the end of the show by lyrics.  It is so appropriate to me and my husband.  We relocated from California to South Carolina, then purchased a vacation home back in California.  We often find ourselves on different coasts from each other.”
    • The song is Pictures of You, done by a now-defunct country band from Glasgow, Scotland called Evangeline – which is now confused on the Internet with a defunct country band from New Orleans called Evangeline.  Probably explains why Becky couldn’t find the song through its lyrics.
    • Back in 2005, though, the Scottish Evangeline was playing festivals in the UK.  I found them through the Tartan Podcast which, as the name kinda hints at, covered the Scottish music scene.  It too is defunct.  This story is starting to get a bit lonely.
    • Anyhow, after hearing the song, I sent a note to the band’s manager Willie Evans asking for a couple of words – a bit of back story on the song.  Here’s his response.
    • Five years on, I still think it’s a great song about life on the road.  If you like it, iTunes or Amazon are probably the best places to pick to it up.  Given the on-line confusion between the bands, I’ll post links in the show notes at travelcommons.com and on the TravelCommons Facebook page.

    Closing

    • Closing music — iTunes link to Pictures of You by Evangeline
    • OK, that’s it, that’s the end of TravelCommons podcast #86
    • I hope you all enjoyed this podcast and I hope you decide to stay subscribed.
    • Bridge music from Magnatune
    • If you have a story, thought, comment, gripe – the voice of the traveler — send ‘em along, text or MP3 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
    • Follow me on Twitter
    • “Like” the TravelCommons fan page on Facebook
    • Direct link to the show

  • Podcast #85 — Importance of Hotel Bathrooms; Maximizing Miles

    Safely hunkered down in the TravelCommons studios during the busiest US travel week of the year, I don’t know how I can call this a travel podcast if we don’t talk about the TSA‘s “junk touching” patdowns.  The general traveling public is finally catching up with the frequent traveler set.  The TSA’s claim that it’s groping vs. safety is a false choice — their security theater doesn’t make us any safer.  The increased hassles associated with air travel have increased the fly-vs.-drive breakeven point — almost tripled it according to some.  A new study on the future of hotels neglects one of the most important features of any hotel stay — the bathroom.  And we wrap up talking about mileage tracking websites with the CEO of GoMiles.com.  Here’s a direct link to the podcast file or you can listen to it right here by clicking on the arrow below.

    Here are the transcript from TravelCommons podcast #85:

    • Intro music — Warmth by Makkina
    • Coming to you once again from the TravelCommons studios outside of Chicago, Illinois during the one week a year I make a determined effort to stay off the road.  I wasn’t successful last year – a client scheduled a meeting in Philadelphia the Monday before Thanksgiving, so I did an 18-hour up & back – last flight out Sunday night, returned Monday afternoon – to avoid the building crowds.  But this year, I have a bit more control over my travel schedule.  And that means I actually put my roller bag away – not just leave it lying around empty in the bedroom.
    • I hate to sound elitist, but this week is always amateur week at the airports – families, infrequent fliers.  They’re going to be the ones trying to take a water bottle through the security checkpoint, taking 2-3 shots at the metal detector before getting all their jewelry off; then walking slow, 4 or 5 abreast down the concourse, placing 5-adjective orders at Starbucks, crowding the jetway door trying to board with the handful of elites who couldn’t stay off the road, ….  Why should I torture both of us?  So I stay home and keep myself calm with a weekend long low-grade tryptophan-induced stupor supplemented by a steady diet of football and good-quality beer.
    • Watching the TSA patdown controversy from this distance was entertaining rather than frustrating — even though it cost me the opportunity to earn the special “Don’t Touch my Junk” badge on FourSquare . Coming during “amateur week”, there were more than enough infrequent travelers willing to put themselves in front of a reporter’s microphone and say “I don’t care how long I wait or how they need to touch me; I just want to be safe”. They’re always there when the TSA turns the screw a bit tighter. But this time, there were an equal number of people saying, “Wait a minute”. I thought the woman who walked through LAX screening in a black bikini made the point
    • Though not many people voluntarily chose the full body groping during National Opt-Out Day , the organizers did get an impressive amount of attention focused on the TSA’s screening procedures. By Wednesday, John Pistole, the TSA administrator, must have gotten tired of getting wired up for the umpteenth remote interview with a news show..
    • The pile-up of interviews and media investigations made the point that frequent fliers figured out long ago – the TSA’s justification – the scanning and the gropings are a necessary evil for secure flight – is a false choice. Most frequent fliers don’t think the TSA and their security theater makes us more secure – they’re just one more hassle we have to deal with before we can get to our destination. Last week’s hoopla just drove the point home to everyone else.
    • Bridge Music — DLDN Instrumental by St Paul

    Following Up

    • First of all, here’s a nice audio comment from Linda Martin of the Indie Travel Podcast…
    • Linda, thanks for taking the time out from yours and Craig’s jealousy-inspiring tour through Southeast Asia to drop us that line…
    • Thanks also to the folks who “liked” the TravelCommons fan page on Facebook.  And to the folks who follow me on Twitter.  I try to use both services to keep in touch with listeners between episodes – especially with the “expanded spacing” between episodes.  I was scanning the archives the other day looking for the 1st –year recap show to put in the iTunes feed, and I realized that almost half of the TravelCommons episodes – 45% to be exact – were done in that first year.  Of course I had a lot of content to mine – years of travel notebooks – so it was easy to do a weekly show at first.  Now that I’m doing well to keep to a monthly schedule, the Facebook and Twitter “short-burst” messages make it easy for me to talk with everyone – or those who are interested – between episodes.
    • One such item I posted on the Facebook page was a link to an article by Gulliver, the Economist’s business travel blog, which itself linked to an article in the Atlantic about the breakeven point between flying vs. driving. Back in one of my 1st year episodes (#23 to be exact), I calculated the breakeven point to be at the 3 hour/180 mile mark – the distance between Chicago and Indianapolis.
    • Including all the time involved with catching the hour-long flight to Indy — ½ hr drive to ORD, 45 minutes between check-in, security, and boarding, 1-hour flight time, ½ hr for deplaning and getting the rental car, and another ½ hr to drive to the meeting site – got me to 3hrs 15 minutes.
    • But that calculus is 5 years old.  In light of reduced flight availabilities and increased TSA hassles, the Economist and Atlantic writers declared the new fly-vs.-drive breakeven point to be 8 hours or 500 miles – almost triple my number!  “If it’s under 500 miles, I’ll do anything rather than hop on a plane,” says the Atlantic’s Megan McArdle.  “And if it’s over 500 miles, it had better be way over . . . or I’d better be carrying a cooler with a still-beating heart in it.”
    • Anecdotally, I know a number of families who used to fly to places like South Carolina and Florida for Thanksgiving, opted instead for the 10-12-hr drive.  If I’m an airline exec, these numbers tell me that I’m in a no-growth industry; that my one remaining value proposition – we get you there faster than if you can on your own – is being negated by the hassles – both my own and the government’s – that surround me.  And that I should be afraid.
    • Speaking of afraid, I’m sure that everyone will recall the uptick in surgical masks on planes last year during the H1N1 “pandemic”.  After that whole thing died under its own hype, it’s been pretty much back to business as usual – with the exception of the occasional Asian mask wearer.  So I was interested – no, enthralled – when the guy next to me on an ORD-LAX flight whipped out a box of disinfectant wipes and cleaned all the surfaces around him – the seat, the armrests, the headrest, the headrest in front of him, and the tray table.  Even at the height of the H1N1 scare, I’d never seen quite such a swab down.  After he finished, I wished for a big sneeze, but couldn’t muster up much more than a cough.
    • As I mentioned on Twitter at the beginning of the month, I switched over from my little HP netbook to an 11-inch MacBook Air. Yes it’s light, yes it’s cool looking, but when I left it in my backpack going through security at both ORD and Orlando and came away unberated by the X-ray screener, that cinched it – it’s the best Travel PC out there. I posted a full review on the TravelCommon’s website with my impressions after 2 weeks on the road with it. A full month and my thoughts haven’t changed. It can still be a hassle integrating it into my company’s Windows infrastructure, but I can live with it. It’s a great machine.
    • And finally, following up on last episode’s riff on in-flight WiFi, Google’s Christmas present this year to travelers is free Gogo in-flight WiFi on Delta, AirTran, and Virgin America airlines for the holidays – it’s started the weekend before Thanksgiving and runs through Jan 2nd. I don’t think I’ll get to use it – the rest of my travel this year will be on American – but I hope some of you guys get a chance.
    • If you have a question, 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 me a Twitter message at mpeacock, or you can post them on the Facebook page or the web site at TravelCommons.com.
    • Bridge Music — Test Drive by Zapac

    Importance of Hotel Bathrooms

    • Yes, the TravelCommons podcast has long had a close relationship with hotels bathrooms.  Being born in the bathroom of the Wardman Park Marriott in Northwest DC, I think the penultimate bathroom recording was in the shower stall of the Camelback Resort.  The echo was so bad I had to re-record the whole thing.
    • So I was disappointed – to say the least – when reading through Hotels 2020, a future-of-hotels study from Amadeus, a European travel technology company, there was no mention of the importance of the hotel bathroom – or toilette or WC – on the guest experience.
    • Let’s be honest.  When we walk into a new hotel room, we look at the bed first – mostly because, being the biggest thing in the middle of the room, it’s hard not to catch the eye – and then look at the bathroom.
    • It kinda makes sense – unless you have a suite, those are the only two rooms you have, so of course you’re going to check them out.  And, if you think about where you spend your time when in a hotel – you probably spend most of your time in your bed, with the bathroom in second place.  How close a second place – there’s way too many personal issues there for me to sort out in a 5-minute segment.
    • So where did the Hotel 2020 study focus?  The usual suspects – the replacement of the fortress-like front check-in desk with self-service kiosks and live people roaming around with iPads (so we’re replacing front-desk lines with mobbing a wandering clerk?  And that’s progress how?); packing the rooms with even more technology – 3D TVs (so they replace the revenue lost on WiFi with rentals on the 3D glasses), plug-in jacks so we can more easily display the content we’re hauling around on our laptops and iPads and Droid phones; figuring out yet more ways to sell us “ancillary services” – tee times, massages, spa treatments – more ways to make more money from us while we’re at the hotel.
    • But no mention of the bathroom, which I think is a critical mistake.  The hotel bathroom probably the most underestimated, under-recognized cause for guest satisfaction – and dissatisfaction.
    • Think about it –when you look into that bathroom and see a big shower stall, a fluffy robe, and some cook toiletries – a smile comes to your face.  OK, you think, maybe I’ll take an extra long shower – something I don’t get to do at home – try this loofa thing, does the shower gel go on it or on me before it….  Who knows, but it’s fun trying something new.
    • Compare that with the alternative – small bathroom, water-stained tub with a small chest-high showerhead, and nothing more than a small bar of soap.  Not only are you not thinking of purchasing any “ancillary services”, you’re trying to figure out how to get out and book a room down the road.
    • And it makes sense — we all know that our basic physiological needs must be met before we can self-actualize.  And it doesn’t get more basically physiological than the bathroom.  If a hotel can’t deliver a quality bathroom experience, why would I trust it to align my chakras with a hot stone massage?  Give me cut-rate toiletries and I figure you’re cutting corners on the scented oil rub down too?
    • So all you hoteliers, before you get too wrapped around the axle with the latest flat screens and electronic room service ordering and personalized e-mails and electronic concierges.  Make sure you’ve got a great showerhead and toilet that doesn’t run.
    • Bridge Music — Goodbye Sooner or Later by oldDog

    Maximize Your Mile – Interview with Founder of GoMiles.com

    • Miles, points – the one thing that helps make frequent travel bearable is the idea that, through the hassles, you’re earning a free trip to some place you actually want to go.  This year, I used United miles to fly my family of four from Chicago to Vietnam, and used Marriott points to cover the hotel in Hong Kong on our way back.  I also used Hilton points for an anniversary weekend in Chicago – left the kids behind with their grandmother – and will use more United miles for spring break trip to Venice for my wife, my daughter, and me.  Doing the math just on this year’s redemptions – the dollar value of these points adds up.
    • Of course, where there’s value, there’s a business opportunity.  A number of web sites for tracking miles and points have popped up over the past few years.  One of these sites is GoMiles.com – a free service that aggregates points across airline, hotel, and car rental programs and displays them on a single easy-to-read page.  I caught up with the founder and CEO Michael Komarnitsky for a Skype chat on why people use GoMiles…

    Closing

    • Closing music — iTunes link to Pictures of You by Evangeline
    • OK, that’s it, that’s the end of TravelCommons podcast #85
    • I hope you all enjoyed this podcast and I hope you decide to stay subscribed.
    • The bridge music is from ccMixter
    • If you have a story, thought, comment, gripe – the voice of the traveler — send ‘em along, text or MP3 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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