Wednesday, August 23, 2006

This blog has been silent a long time, which may lead some to believe it has been abandoned. In fact, I have just been lucky enough to spend a nice, long block of time off the road. But my calendar is virtually full of travel between now and the end of November, so you can expect a substantial number of posts in the months ahead. 

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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.

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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, October 05, 2005

I’d appreciate insight from anybody who can tell me why normal, decent, mannered people turn into unbelievably inconsiderate assholes when they travel. These are people who jump into the front of the Southwest Airlines line even though they just arrived, claiming it’s important that they get off the plane first. I actually had one guy elbow his way to the front of the line boarding a United plane claiming he had to get on first because he absolutely had to find overhead space for his bag. Like the rest of us didn’t.

Today, at the airport in Charlotte, I had to use one of the stalls in a men’s room. The previous occupant had peed into the bowl with the seat down; the seat, as a result, was thoroughly spattered. It was the only open stall, so I had to spend five disgusting minutes cleaning the seat and, as it turned out, the floor, otherwise my pants would have soaked in it. Does the person who acted so incredibly thoughtlessly behave like this at home? Undoubtedly not. But once in an airport, he clearly felt no obligation to behave according to any code of conduct the rest of us might agree is a baseline.

These are just a couple examples; I have hundreds. I bet you do, too. But I have no explanation for it. 

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Saturday, September 17, 2005

I was born in Hollywood and raised in Los Angeles. I lived there until I was 40. I have driven in many other big cities, and to the day I die I’ll maintain that L.A., in general, has the best drivers in the world. To be sure, there are plenty of L.A. drivers who are jerks. But keep in mind that L.A. has a car-centered culture. The city sprawls so far in so many directions, and public transportation is so bad, that driving your own car is the only way to get around. Consequently, L.A. has the most crowded freeways and the most egregious congestion in the U.S. I should know. I used to commute 72 miles one way to work, beginning in the north San Fernando Valley and ending in Irvine, every single day.

Because the roads are so gridlocked, drivers learn to practice courtesy out of basic self-interest. If you let somebody into your lane, somebody will let you into their lane. This I’ll-scratch-your-back approach to commuting works because so many drivers practice it.

I just got finished with three days of driving the streets and freeways of Boston, where not one driver ever let me in when I needed to make a lane change. Not one. In fact, most of them sped up specifically to deny me the move into their lane (saving themselves a precious three or for seconds of time). Just this morning, leaving downtown Boston on my way to Concord, it took 10 minutes to cross a crowded street because not one driver would stop for me. This was not a street where traffic was cruising along. It was in a construction zone that frequently slowed to a crawl, then stopped. But even then, drivers wouldn’t leave a lane open for me, preferring to pull in front of me and sit for three or four minutes until the light changed and they could move again. I won’t say that never happens in L.A., but more often than not drivers in similar circumstances will stop a few feet back, leaving you enough room to get by. It’s all part of the car karma concept: What goes around comes around.

I love Boston; it’s one of my favorite cities. I think the people are great, the food is terrific, the entertainment first rate, the night life sublime, and the culture unique. But once a Bostonian gets on the road, you’re toast. I’ll take the congestion in L.A. any day.

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Monday, August 29, 2005

Road Weary has been dormant for a simple reason: I haven’t been traveling for the last few weeks. But I hit the road again today (Southwest to Chicago) and expect I’ll have new tales to tell in short order. Stand by…

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Tuesday, May 31, 2005

I’m flying JetBlue today for the second time. The first time was also a round-trip from Oakland to DC. The first time was fine, although I never actually watched any of the television that so many people find to be one of JetBlue’s best, most innovative features. Anyway, I’ll report from the road.

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Monday, May 30, 2005

I was sitting at the San Antonio airport, getting the last installment of ”For Immediate Release” edited and uploaded. It was easy, since San Antonio’s airport has WiFi access at one of its food courts. It cost $9.95 to tap into the WiFi network for one day. That’s steep, since I pay $30 (three day’s worth) for a month of access through T*Mobile. But when you have no other choice, you just pony up the payment and do your work.

I made my connection at Los Angeles International Airport, and needed to get online again. My day’s worth of access through Never2Late, “a member of the Airpath Provicer Alliance,” didn’t help, since LAX is affiliated with Bongo, a completely different provider. I would have had to pay another $9.95.

This situation is no surprise to frequent business travelers. Familiarity certainly breeds contempt, though. Since I don’t believe the WiFi providers are involved in a massive conspiracy to bilk travelers, I have to believe it’s just a case of massive stupidity in the marketplace. Not too many people are familiar with the National Exchange Carriers Association (NECA). I only know of them because I’ve done some consulting work for them. This group administers the payments long-distance telephone carriers make to use local telephone companies’ networks. That’s why you can make a long-distance call and only get billed by your provider, even though your call went over some other local company’s lines.

Why can’t the WiFi industry figure out a way to do something like this? The balkanized nonsense of paying whatever company happens to be servicing the airport or hotel you happen to be in is getting ridiculous, particularly when you wind up in two airports and a hotel in the same day.

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Wednesday, May 25, 2005

I’m sitting in a Courtyard by Marriott in San Antonio. Second night here. My daughter dropped me off at the BART station on Tuesday morning. I took BART from the Concord station to MacArthur, transferred to the Fremont line, got off at the Oakland Coliseum station and caught the AirBART bus to Oakland International. Took a Southwest Airlines flight from Oakland to Vegas, connection on a Vegas-San Antonio flight. The cab driver didn’t know where the hotel was. The hotel took my driver’s license to make a copy for identification purposes and neglected to give it back. This morning’s cab driver was pissed off that I only wanted to go a mile to my client’s offices.

And this is a goodtrip.

So I’m thinking about this, and about the miserable travel experiences I had last week (Tuesday to New Orleans, Wednesday to Ottawa, Thursday to New York, Friday back home) and wishing for the umpteenth time that I had a blog where I could talk about it. I don’t really care if anybody reads it; I just need an outlet for the next travel-related aggravation to arise (and it will arise, sooner rather than later). And sitting here in my hotel room in San Antonio, I finally decided to stop wishing I had it and just create it.

So here it is.

If you want to feel better about being stuck in the same city and never getting to travel for business, this is the blog for you. It’ll make you feel better. As the tagline says, if you wish you could travel more for work, be very careful what you wish for. You just might get it.

Posted by Shel in • General
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