Planes, Trains, and Automobiles: May 2009 Archives

Although the shortest distance route between the cities of Savannah and Charleston would in normal circumstances take a little over an hour and a half, we don't roll that way. So we took the scenic, and then the not-quite-as-scenic route, and managed to take well over three hours for this trip. Along the way we visited Hilton Head Island and Beaufort, SC, just to say we had.

Leaving Savannah is impressive because if you're going north you get to go over the Talmadge Memorial bridge which is really best avoided if you're even slightly susceptible to agoraphobia. I liked it bunches though Mary was clutching the dashboard somewhat frantically as she feels that driving and watching the scenery are not two abilities I can perform simultaneously. I doubt I hit a guard rail more than two or three times a year on average.

At this point we've come to accept rain as just a normal and unavoidable part of our existence, like breathing, or news articles about Paris Hilton. We think that there is a chance that the rain may stop sometime before the end of June but we no longer believe the TV. It lies to us all the time. So does the Internet.

We arrived in Savannah in a downpour. We walked around Savannah in a drizzle interspersed with brief periods of 'sheeting rain'. Sheeting rain is Mary's favorite term for rain, though why this is she cannot explain. Like Eskimos and their 50 words for snow (which is actually an urban legend or so I've read) I think we're gaining a new appreciation for all the words that can be applied to a simple act like water falling from the sky. It can be raining, drizzling, sheeting, blowing, spitting, pouring, thundering down, liquid sunshine, showers, misting, raining cats and dogs, a monsoon, sleeting and of course, raining with no end in sight. We've experienced all this and so much more in the last week.

Rain followed us up the coast yesterday or we followed the rain up the coast yesterday, the jury is still out. In any case more rain forecast for today as we tour Savannah. We're feeling distinctly soggy. I think there might be some sort of fungus growing in the dank, dimly lit portions of my body.

My cunningly conceived plans called for us to leave Orlando at precisely 9:00am which, assuming an average speed of 65 miles per hour, normal traffic patterns for this time of year, and no adverse weather, should place us near the community of Brunswick, Georgia at exactly 12:25pm, the optimum time for consumption of pulled pork barbeque, as established by the ground breaking study, Barbeque Eating Habits Among the Inhabitants of Southeastern Georgia, 2003, University of Georgia (Go Bulldogs!). We failed for a variety of reasons, for all of which I place the blame squarely on Mary's shoulders.

We've been coming to Florida several times a year for most of the last ten years and never before now have we really experienced what one could consider weather, unless it was the hot and steamy kind, and by that I don't mean the good type of hot and steamy like 'Body Heat' hot and steamy, but the miserable make-you-want-to-become-an-ax-murderer kind of hot and steamy.

Also from Upgrade: Better Travel, is a report that Air Jamaica which I can truthfully say I didn't even know existed, has implemented a new and really fascinating variant on the charging for a second bag scam. See most airlines just charge you for the second bag, you pay, and they put it on the plane for you to pick up at your destination. But this is just old school thinking.

Air Jamaica has gone back to the drawing board, and come up with a PLAN, that is so far outside the box that we're talking about the planetary orbit of Saturn here. See, on Air Jamaica, if you want to check a second bag, you will pay an additional $25. But that's not all, kids! For this princely sum of $25, Air Jamaica will not put the bag on the same plane with you. No indeed, they will promise, kinda, that your second bag will be transported to the Caribbean separately. Indeed, it is possible that the bag will not even be transported through the aerial means at all - they may ship it by sea to the islands, or use a giant catapult, or lashed to the backs of giant sea turtles, because they aren't making any promises. But never fear, the bag will arrive sometime during the next week, at any time that the airline deems appropriate, and you dear customer, will have to come down to either Norman Manley or Sangster International Airport, from whatever fabulous and remote resort you've booked, and find it yourself. Anyone who takes advantage of this innovative offer should also go ahead and place expensive cameras, designer clothes,  and heirloom jewelry in the bag because I'm sure security for the luggage will be world class and the airport workers, their families, and any random passerby will not be able to rifle through the bags to their heart's content.

Via Upgrade: Travel Better, a report that Dr. Evil, umm, Michael O'Leary, CEO of Ryanair, has devised yet another dastardly scheme aimed at either world domination or just general jerkishness, it's sometimes hard to tell which. Apparently they want to eliminate those annoying check-in desks and the people who staff them and want pay and benefits, so they have instituted a 40 pound fee ($62) if you want to interact with a human being.

Not content with that, Darth O'Leary has come with a new and even more evil scheme, where he is now charging people who do his bidding by avoiding the check-in counter and printing out their tickets at home, a 5 pound fee ( $7.75) to use their own printer. It's really ingenious, in a dastardly Snidely Whiplash kind of way. Basically, he's made it impossible to avoid paying an extra fee to ride on his airline as far as I can see. Because you need a boarding pass to get on the plane. It'll cost you a lot if you wait till you get to the airport and use a kiosk of ticket counter to print it out. It'll cost less, but still cost you, to print it out at home using your own computer and your own printer.

If there were ever an opportunity for me to fly the unfriendly skies of Ryanair I think I would rather plunge a rusty fork repeatedly into my leg, before succumbing to the low, low prices.

I know complaining about food in first class is frowned upon. I mean you're getting sustenance and imported beer (really, as much as you can drink, at least up to the point where you start seeing gremlins out on the wing and they plastic cuff and duct tape you to the seat) so it's kind of bad form to kvetch about it. But sometimes some airlines, American for instance, just to pull a name out of a hat, serves something that's so unusual as to excite comment.

Stuck with an hour to kill in Dallas, which is our absolute minimum layover since approximately 87% of all visits to Dallas International Airport and Bar have resulted in delays on arrivals, on departures, and during exceptionally busy times, for urinals. So we aim at trying to program in excess of one and a half hours between flights even though ultimately this is as ineffective as slathering on a couple of gallons of insect repellent during a late summer crawfish boil in Louisiana. In those dark hours before dawn on the central Texan plains we sometimes wonder if American Airlines has some sort of deal with the city of Dallas to do all it can to drive up hotel occupancy rates. I can safely say that Dallas is the city I've spent the most number of nights in that I've never actually visited.

In any case with an early morning flight in and time to kill along with a bit of gnawing hunger, we attempted yet again to find something marginally edible outside of Terminal D. We failed.

One our last trip to England, I was struck by an article I ran across in the Times, or the Telegraph, or the Independent, or one of the other seemingly numberless London newspapers. Apparently, the newspaper you read defines your class, economic status, and/or sexual orientation. I always feel self conscious reading London newspapers cause I'm always unsure if I'm reading the right one, or if everyone in the café is looking at me and thinking, 'blue nosed, toffee snorting, class enemy' or 'radical socialist, brick throwing, animal rights activist scum'. In any case, meandering, after a substantial detour, back to the original point, the article mentioned that in a survey commissioned by one of the major grocery chains - Tesco, I think, most of the meat pies that were sold at the grocers were bought by men and consumed in their cars out in the parking lot. I can understand this. If Mary is any example for others of her sex she is always tut-tutting ferociously whenever I stop and stare into a shop window longingly, salivating at all the wondrous meat pies on display.

Via the Washington Post, a story about a bunch of Swedish football fans (that's soccer to us 'Mericans), who brawled on board a Malmo Aviation plane. It sounds like the usual hooliganism, with drinking, fighting, refusing to fasten their seat belts, and the like.

 

Hooligans sounds much less threatening than thugs. With thugs, you'll usually end up in the hospital with a few dozen stitches and one or more limbs in a cast. With hooligans, well, you'll suffer the same fate, but it's because their football team lost, or won, or tied, and not just a random beat-down.

 

And really - Swedes brawling? It seems to be running against the natural order of things for Swedes to be portrayed as anything but laid-back hipsters from a frosty, remote land, who only want to cover the world with cheap yet stylish furniture and quirky plastic kitchen utensils. It'd be like Raiders fans not beating up the opposing team's fans. And the hot dog vendors. And the kid selling programs. And their mothers.

Via Upgrade: Travel Better comes a story about a London-bound British woman who allegedly washed down a bunch of prescription drugs with a few bottles of wine. This naturally progressed to sampling the liquid hand soap from the plane lavatory (me, I prefer a nice postprandial port but to each his or her own). Just the thing for that mad dog, foaming at the mouth look, which of course then leads to trying to bite the flight attendants.

 

Apparently she was returning to London after flying to LA for an encounter with a man she'd met on the Internet. This type of thing always seems to end badly. That's how Mary and I met. Hmm....

 

As a reminder, previously we'd written about Frozen Dead Guy Days both here and here.

On our second, and regrettably last day at Frozen Dead Guy Days, we drove back up to Nederland to take in all the major events. Well, major for Nederland anyway. I suspect on  normal day a gathering of more than four people is regarded as a mob. The day dawned overcast and cold and went downhill from there. By the time we arrived back in Nederland the snow was coming down semi-copiously interspersed with lulls. It promised to be a cold day for us, especially in light of the fact that most of the activities were outdoors, at least all the ones that did not entail beer drinking.

 

 

One:

Either Brits did not get the memo that goatees were cool or they came and went more quickly here than in the US. I didn't see anyone with the all too ubiquitous chin stubble in London. That's a trend that one hopes is finally on the way out in the States. Too many of those that adopted the goatee looked more like they had glued a small mammal to their chins, rather than really looking suave. But then who am I to talk - I had a 'stache in the Eighties and we thought they were tubular cool then.

 

Two:

Also, the English have apparently not bought into the concept that flip flops are appropriate for wearing in any and all circumstances. The first few days we were in London it was cool and drizzly and I didn't see anyone wearing sandals or flips-flops. When the sun did make an appearance later in the week, some people did start sporting casual footwear. Americans, on the other hand seem to feel that there is no weather condition, social occasion, nor geographical location where flip flops, thongs, slaps, slippers or sandals are inappropriate. Even here in Colorado where the average denizen is slightly more common sensical about things, we've seen people wearing flips-flops out while in the middle of a snow storm. Granted it wasn't actually blizzard conditions, so I guess that made it alright.

Ahh, Las Vegas, to many the land of dreams where fortunes are won and lost on a roll of the dice and beautiful people in beautiful clothes with beautiful jewelry party the night away. We didn't go to that Las Vegas. We went to the one that we now refer to as Las Stinky. Not because our luck was poor, since when it comes to gambling our luck is always abysmal. No, we think of Vegas as the cityscape dominated by the pervasive stench of stale cigarette smoke.

 

As we recounted earlier in a hopefully helpful Frugal Hedonist article we took advantage of some really good deals to go to Vegas. Which turns out to be a good thing since I'm pretty sure we'd been rather unhappy paying full rack rate. Well, Mary's hates playing rack anywhere, but doubly so in Vegas. There was nothing wrong with the Wynn per se, other than the fact that any time you wanted to go to or from your room you had to pass through the casino and that always reeked badly of the noxious weed. The rooms were adequate - not five star lux, but a good upscale room that I'd be happy to stay in if I had to attend a conference for the American Association of Cereal Chemists (and no, I'm not making that up).

Recently we dined at a very nice and very expensive restaurant in New York. I won't mention the name of the place except to note that it was Jean Georges. Damn, I have a hard time keeping secrets. We'd had breakfast and brunch several times at the slightly less upscale venue next door - Nougatine, and enjoyed each greatly, at least till the bill came.

 

On this first and almost certainly only trip to Jean Georges, we found the food (except for dessert) really quite nice. On the other hand, our waiter gave the distinct impression of having recently had surgery to have their personality bone removed. It's quite unusual to find someone in a service type job, at least one that does not have a Civil Service designation, that demonstrates such a complete lack of humor or even a glimmering of humanity. I think we gained an appreciation for what things will be like when our robot overlords take over the restaurant industry. It might not be fun but at least the toast will be perfect.

Timing is everything. Mine often seems to entail the generation of negative atmospheric pressure or in the vernacular of urban youth - it sucks. A case in point.

 

One: I've wanted to try absinthe, a liqueur, for a while but it's been illegal in this country for 80 some years. Back around the turn of the last century it was widely reputed to cause madness and delirium so it was banned. You can see now why I wanted to get a hold of some. Then it gets legalized recently, so I'm all set.

 

Two: Last week we fly home on Virgin Atlantic from London. Mary's looking through the duty free catalog and sees that they now have bottles of absinthe for sale on-board. It appears Mary may have plans for driving me mad or at the very least somewhat confused. I'm not that hot for it as it's not readily apparent that I'll actually like absinthe so I don't want to buy a whole bottle. And besides it foils her evil plot which she claims doesn't exist but I know better.

 

Three: This week, mere days after our trip, Virgin America sends out an e-mail announcing that they are now in fact, serving absinthe on-board in handy single drink size drinks. I'm bereft. Mary's says she's not disappointed and actually doesn't care at all, but I know better. Of course, living here in the middle of the country we have no access to Virgin America, so I can't get any of that mind altering absinthe.