Monday, February 27, 2006

I haven’t experienced this one personally, but I know people who have. Two people check into a hotel room—husband and wife, business colleagues sharing a room, whatever—and each has his or her own laptop. One jacks in, signs up for the $9.95-per-day service, does his work, logs off. Then the second person jacks in and is asked to pay again. Each computer has a different MAC address and the hotel—many of which would charge for each flush of the toilet if they could—takes advantage of that to get double broadband fees for one room.

Dan Gillmor writes about this and notes that savvy Macintosh users can network their Macs to share a connection. As for me, I carry an Airport Express, the Apple WiFi device that’s about the size of a wallet. I’ve probably provided wireless broadband to a dozen or so people in rooms near mine. It works with a Mac or a Windows machine, given that the WiFi specification is a standard.

Hat tip to Geek News Central.

Posted by Shel in • Hotels
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Friday, February 24, 2006

I started “Road Weary” as a means of getting the rigors of business travel off my chest. I used to let my irritation with insensitive and clueless travel and hospitality providers fester. The blog provided an outlet. Get to the hotel, hammer out a few paragraphs, feel better. I never expected much of anybody would actually read it.

People, as it turns out, are reading it. In fact, it came as something of a shock to me when Bizrate offered to pay me to run an ad for luggage on the site! Other road warrior blogs are linking to me.

So I’ve decided it’s time to get more serious about Road Weary. Over the next few weeks, I’m going to clean up the sidebar, add a blogroll, post more regularly (including more tips I’ve picked up in my years on the road), and generally make enhancements wherever I can think of them. As long as people are reading this, I might as well make it more useful and usable. My only caveat is that I won’t work so much on Road Weary that I forsake my primary blog. But I do promise to pay a lot more attention to this one than I have.

I hope the effort proves useful to my fellow travelers.

Posted by Shel in • General
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In San Francisco, if you dial 511 from your cell phone, you can get traffic reports. Nifty idea. Too bad it doesn’t work.

I was driving home from San Francisco International Airport this morning. I was already later than I had anticipated; flight delays at O’Hare. (Just imagine; flight delays at O’Hare!) I was also already aggravated. I had run from gate C4 at O’Hare with only minutes before my connecting flight was due to depart at 10:10 p.m.—that’s what it said on the monitor. When I got to gate C23, there wasn’t even a plane at the gate. I asked one of my fellow travelers what the United gate agent had announced. His voice dripping with sarcasm, he said, “They’ve been uncharacteristically quiet.”

It was more than an hour before we left. So I was in fine mood when we landed at 1:02 a.m. I took the shuttle to Park ‘N Fly. That’s another story. I called from inside the terminal for a pickup. “I’ll be there in five to six minutes,” the driver told me. Fifteen minutes later, I called again. “I’m four minutes away,” he said. I watched the shuttles of every off-airport parking service swing by before Park ‘N Fly showed up. It seems this happens every time I park with them. Why don’t I park elsewhere? Hell, that’s where all my affinity points are.

Anyway, it’s nearly 2 a.m. before I get out of the parking lot. I dial 511 and ask for traffic between SFO and the East Bay. “Driving time is 32 minutes,” the 511 voice told me. “There are no delays.”

Great! I drive toward the Bay Bridge, get to Fourth Street and am diverted off the freeway. The skyway is closed for repairs. The delay is an hour long as we snake along surface streets to get back on Highway 80 at First Street. How can 511 miss planned construction? Beats me, but it’s the last time I use this worthless service. Sure, I could have listened to the radio—which I will do henceforth—but with the 511 service in effect, I figured I could relax to some music and take advantage of the service to plot my route home. Fool me once…

Posted by Shel in • General • Planes
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Wednesday, February 22, 2006

Join my crusade. We shall write our legislators. We shall march on hotel corporate headquarters. We shall prevail in our mission to rid the world’s hotels of tabletop ironing boards.

Do hotels really save enough money on these despicable alternatives to justify the misery through which they put their guests? These atrocities slide all over the desk that you had to clear of your laptop and other belongings just to make room for it. One pant leg bunches up under the board while the other is being ironed. Your back aches as you lean over the contraption.

I call for an end to these abominations! Road warriors unit for full-sized ironing boards!

Oh, and coffee makers in the rooms, too.

(I’m at the Fogelman Executive Conference Center & “Hotel” at the university of Memphis, Tennessee. Across the street is the Holiday Inn, which manages the fourth floor of the Fogelman, where the hotel rooms are. The quotes around “hotel” are mine.)

Posted by Shel in • Hotels
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Wednesday, February 15, 2006

I arrived in Des Moines and took a cab to my hotel, the Hotel Fort Des Moines. I checked in, got my key, and went to my room. I opened the door and found a room that had not yet been visited by housekeeping. The bed was unmade. Towels littered the bathroom floor. The quick checkout paperwork was on the desk.

I called the front desk and told them what I’d found. “Come on down and we’ll get you another room.” Fine. I went back down and waited while the front desk clerk tapped away at her computer. They had no other rooms. “I’ll send housekeeping up to clean it. Can I offer you a cup of coffee?”

I hadn’t had lunch, so I went next door. I had a Coke. I had a salad. I nibbled on some nachos. I read the Des Moines Register. I killed 45 minutes. I went back to the front desk.

“The computer says they’re still cleaning your room,” a different clerk said. “Have a seat. It could be 30 minutes.”

I sat in a chair directly in the clerk’s line of sight and listened to podcasts on my Nano. After half an hour, I went to check on my room. “How long ago did you first check in?” a third desk clerk asked.

“About an hour and a half ago,” the second desk clerk said.

“It shouldn’t take that long to clean a room,” said desk clerk #3. She called housekeeping. “They’re running down to check the room now.”

I waited at the desk. While I waited, desk clerk #2 got a call from a desk who wanted to know the outbound email address that worked with the hotel’s Internet connection. She didn’t have a clue what he was talking about. I helped out, explaining that the guest probably had a dedicated IP set up on his laptop and that he needed to change to dynamic addressing. She passed the information along.

Finally, clerk #2 pointed to her computer. “Does that ‘I’ mean the room is ready?” Clerk #3 said it did.

I got a key, retrieved my bags, and finally got to my room. If I kept a list, I’d cross the Fort Des Moines hotel off of it.

Posted by Shel in • Hotels
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I’m sorely tempted to stop making an effort to get to the airport early. Today’s experience at Edmonton International is the source of that temptation.

I had a 7:09 a.m. flight from Edmonton to Chicago O’Hare, connecting at O’Hare to Des Moines, Iowa. It’s about a 30-minute drive from my Edmonton Hotel to the airport, so I did some rough calculations and decided to get up at 3:40 a.m. to pick up a cab at 4:30 and be at the airport by 5 a.m., leaving me better than two hours to get my boarding pass, clear customs, and get through security. Plenty of time.

My time was perfect. The cab pulled up to the curb at the American Departures terminal at 5 a.m. on the nose. I exchanged my Canadian currency for American dollars and got into the United line. And there I stood. Chicago-bound passengers waited and waited without moving as three ticket agents brought Denver-bound passengers to the front of the line. The Denver flight was leaving at around 6:30 and these passengers—I counted about 30 of them in all—had all arrived late, as late as 40 minutes before flight time. It took nearly 40 minutes to clear the Denver passengers, who seemed to just keep trickling in. They were so late that, ultimately, the Denver flight was delayed. The plane for my Chicago flight couldn’t even leave the hangar until after the Denver flight had left; consequently (a highly appropriate word), the Chicago flight was also delayed. I barely made my connection.

I don’t wish a missed flight on anybody. And if a handful of people show up late and get moved to the front of the line, that’s fine, too. Cars don’t start, alarms don’t go off, there are legitimate excuses. That wasn’t the case this morning, when 30 people showed up 40 minutes before an international flight. So I ask you: What’s the motivation to be at the airport on time when you know you can sleep in, arrive late, and be accommodated at the expense of other passengers who did get there on time? If more late arrivers had to wait their turn and missed flights, perhaps more people would get to the airport on time.

Posted by Shel in • Airports
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Monday, February 13, 2006

On Sunday night in Calgary, I stayed at a Holiday Inn Express, a budget hotel if ever there was one. High-speed Internet access was free. Tonight I checked into the Coast Hotel in Edmonton. It’s a classier place. I got into my room. No high speed. So I called the front desk. High speed connections are available only in higher-priced rooms. I was moved to a room that cost CDN $15 more per night. I also got a refrigetator. (Big wow.)

This is a trend I’ve noticed in general. The classier the hotel, the more likely it is that they’ll charge for high speed access. Sooner or later the hospitality industry will wake up and realize business travelers need and expect pervasive high speed wireless access throughout the hotel. We’ll start giving our business to those that provide it, leaving those who don’t with more and more empty rooms. Take heed; I’m not kidding.

Posted by Shel in • Hotels
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Sunday, February 12, 2006

A power strip is one of the most indispensable items I pack in my suitcases. Here in the Holiday Inn Express in Calgary, there is one (count ‘em: one) AC outlet anywhere near the desk. But I have six because I bring a basic power strip wherever I go. With cell phones, iPods, laptops and a host of other items that need charging, why hotels think one or two outlets is adequate is just beyond me. But with my trusty power strip, it’s no longer a problem.

Posted by Shel in • Hotels
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Monday, February 06, 2006

Woke up to my 5:30 a.m. wake-up call here at the Sofitel in Philadelphia to realize there’s no coffee maker in the room. It’s a luxurious room—lots of space, nicely appointed, comfortable bed, an alarm clock that plugs into my iPod. I’d trade it all for a coffee maker. Instead, I ordered a $5 pot of coffee. Am I wrong, or is a coffee maker just a default amenity of a decent hotel room?

Posted by Shel in • Hotels
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Sunday, February 05, 2006

My US Airways flight from SFO to Philadelphia today was on an Airbus A321, the equivalent of Boeing’s 757. I was lucky enough to get the emergency exit row with nobody in the middle seat. I was also one row behind the row that’s right next to the mid-cabin bathroom. Sitting that close to the bathroom gives you a good sense of how frequently the bathroom is used. A steady stream (no pun intended) of people were in and out of the bathroom during the entire flight, including the inevitable idiots who make the trip when the seat belt sign is on, including one woman who made the trip during our final approach into Philly, about five minutes before touchdown.

My heart went out to the guy in the aisle seat next to the bathroom. Someone would go in, do their thin, then leave the door open when they left. Whatever odors were left behind wafted straight into the nostrils of the passenger with the seat closest. He’s reach over, a bit of a stretch, and close the door. After a while, he started asking people to close the door, but several ignored him. To complicate matters, the door—one of those accordian affairs—was hard to close from the outside; some passengers thought they’d closed it, but it would slide back open. He’d get it closed, then 10 seconds later, the next passenger would push it back open.

Here’s an idea for airline designers: self-closing bathroom doors. Over the course of 4-1/2 hours, this poor fellow must have shut that door 30 times and asked at least 10 people to behave like civilized creatures and close the door themselves. It was actually more interesting to watch than the in-flight movie.

Posted by Shel in • Planes
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Saturday, February 04, 2006

I’m flying tomorrow morning to Philadelphia from SFO at 8:40 a.m. To be there by 7:30 a.m., I would need to be on a BART train by about 6:15 a.m. Unfortunately, on Sunday, BART’s earliest departure from my station is 8:07 a.m., which would get me to the airport 55 minutes after my plane took off. Note to BART: Even on Sunday, people have places to be earlier than 8 a.m.

So I’m trying to work out transportation. The issue is my son, who is back from the Army and living at home. He’s working and needs a car to get to and from his job; he hasn’t put enough money together yet to buy his own car. If I take my car to the airport for the week, he’s stuck. My wife has to be somewhere fairly early on Sunday; so does my daughter. That leaves Ben, who’ll be working late tonight and in less than tip-top shape to drive me from Concord to SFO.

A cab ride would cost about $120. There is an airport shuttle, the East Bay Connection, but I’ve sworn off them. The last time I took them, they picked me up and then informed me they had five more pickups. I checked my watch. “How long will that take?” “We’ll be on the road to the airport in an hour.” I would have missed my flight, despite the fact that it was the East Bay Connection that asked my departure time and then scheduled the pick-up. When I called to complain, the answer I got was a smarmy, “Well, sir, we are a shared ride service. Fuck East Bay Connection.

The bottom line, though, is that BART goes right to the airport. Now if only they set a Sunday schedule that accommodates its customers, I’d be in good shape.

Posted by Shel in • Airports
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