Want to know what it's like to be delayed at Charlotte (NC) airport? It's just like this...
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For this last trip to Boston, I tried out National Car Rental. National's Emerald Club let's you pick your own car from anything on the lot when you reserve a midsize. So when I arrived, I got to check out the lot and decided to take the new Pontiac G8 GT they had waiting.
The G8 is Pontiac's full size sedan, and the GT comes with a 6.0L V8 generating 360 hp through a 6-speed automatic transmission to the rear wheels. As you might expect, this car gets full marks for power! The interior is nicely appointed, and very comfortable.
However, there were a few things that bugged me in this car.
- The handling really isn't that great. Unfortunately, this is par for the course in my experience with domestic cars. While it was light-years above the Mustang, it still feels a little skittish in the corners under speed.
- The window and mirror controls are all in the center console. While this gives the car a certain cleanness of lines around the door, it also makes it very inconvenient to try to roll down your window while holding something - like toll money or an id badge.
- The large LCD display is set low in the center dash. While this isn't automatically a bad thing, there is a large low-res LCD that display battery voltage and oil pressure in the top of the center dash. I'd much prefer my radio and clock displays be higher up so I don't have to lose sight of the road to check the time.
- The car I drove only had 3000 miles on it, but the tire pressure sensor in the right front wheel was faulty. It would read fluctuating values between 90 psi and 1 psi, and contantly beep to alert me... very annoying! Unfortunately, this is another incident of "Pontiacs break down a lot" stereotype appearing true.
So, overall, I thought the G8 was an excellent rental car, and I won't hesitate to take one again if given the chance... But it still falls short of a car I'd be willing to buy. Which is really too bad, because Pontiac has all the elements of a great sedan in this car, if they could just follow through on the little things.
Cindy has an enviable track record of spotting birds that I miss. (She says it's because she has to look up at the sky to look at me.) Today we pulled up to a red light and she spotted a hawk perched on a telephone pole eating it's latest quarry. So we pulled into a nearby McDonald's for some sweet tea and watched the hawk.
It turned out to be a red tail hawk, although we never established exactly what it was eating. But it was amazing to watch other birds pester the hawk while he tried to eat his meal. At first there was a crow, which at least comes across as a fair match-up in size. But then two grackles started mercilessly hounding the hawk - swooping back and forth around him, and even pecking or grabbing his back during fly-bys! They managed to drive the hawk off, meal in talon, in about 10 minutes.
It was really entertaining to see all this drama unfold, but it was all the more amazing because no one else seemed to notice. This was taking place on one of the main streets in Quincy (outside Boston) and despite the rush hour traffic and heavy pedestrian traffic from the train station, I didn't see a single other person stop and look up. I always feel lucky when Cindy and I get to enjoy a spectacle like this that for all intents and purposes must be invisible to everyone around us.
A fearless bull frog hanging out in a pond in Mt. Auburn Cemetary, Cambridge, MA.
Cindy got to experience Wild Wonderful West Virignia on our last trip to the south. This is an HDR image I shot of the rocks at Seneca Rocks on our way to Fairmont, WV.
Apple is known for they're aesetics and marketing for their products, so I'm always disappointed with they go with something that looks good, but sucks. In this case, I mean the earbuds which come with iPods. My girlfriend and I were watching a movie on my iPod Touch during our flight out of Montgomery. She was using her Apple supplied earbuds (retail $40) and I was using a pair of Phillips foam earbuds (retail $10).
She was getting frustrated by how low I was keeping the volume, until she finally took one of my earbuds. Then she suddenly realized that the reason I was keeping the volume so low was that I could hear everything just fine. Her earbuds were so bad at blocking the ambient noise in the plane that she was basically stuck reading the subtitles to follow the plot.
The iPod got a lot of press a year or so ago for the poor quality of their earbuds, and they deserved every bit of it. Considering the premium that is paid for Apple products, it's disappointing that they have to include one of the poorest quality accessories I've ever seen with a high-quality product.
Renting cars is part of the job when you travel full-time, and this time I ended up with my first hybrid - a 2008 Toyota Prius. My friend Kostaki got a Prius right before I left my old job, and I was suprised at how roomy it was. So I was looking forward to driving one for a month to get a real feel for the car.
Continue reading Rental Experiments.
Cindy and I drove down to Dauphin Island last weekend. It was about a three hour drive each way down to the island, which is south of Mobile, about 2-3 miles into the Golf of Mexico. There's a nice bird sancuary and public beach on the East side of the island.
Since we were doing it as a day trip and we had to fit 6 hours of driving in, we limited our exploration to the pond trail and a little time on the beach. We had some excellent viewing of several Great Blue Heron, as well as Least Bittern, around the pond area. Out towards the beach, there was no end to the Brown Pelicans and Laughing Gulls. Watching the pelicans soar along and then fold up and dive into the ocean was really entrancing. They would kick up a plume of spray three to six feet high when they dove down into the water.
The other neat view of the pelicans was afforded by the lenghy drive across the bridge connecting the island to the mainland. The sea breeze creates a updraft along the entire length of the bridge and the pelicans take full advantage of the updraft to cruise along between the island and the mainland. There were at least a dozen times we would cruise past a pelican about 10 feet away from our car. If you're interested in pelicans, I doubt you can find a closer view of them in the wild.
This week I made an interesting discovery - my Painful Inactivity Threshold (PIT). I work in a fairly stressful environment due to workload and deadlines. Perversely, management has a gift for putting me in the wrong place at the wrong time. So this week I was assigned to a job site where I literally had nothing to do. The computer lab on-site was going into configuration lockdown in anticipation of next week's testing. I tried my best to look busy and help other people out with their issues. But my desk faces away from everyone in a room full of waist-high half cubicles. So there's the stress of hearing people walk in behind me and never knowing if it's the Big Boss or not.
Turns out, I can only stand 3 days of that before I snap and have to find something, anything productive to do. So today I drove up to a different job site and did some spontaneous research on a problem that isn't really mine to solve. But at least it gave me something to put in my status report this week.
Cindy and I saw Blue Man Group at the Charles Playhouse in Boston today. I thought it was going to be a larger show -- it was only 3 Blue Men. But it was awesome. I laughed and smiled so much my face hurt by the end of the show.
If you haven't seen Blue Man Group, I highly recommend it. They do a great job involving the audience. If you're not in a great mood afterwards, you really need to get some professional help.
As a full-time traveler, rental cars are a fact of life. There's always an element of luck in getting a good car when you rent. This last time around, I managed to get a Ford Edge -- Ford's new SUV. While I'm not a fan of domestic cars, I'd heard that they were starting to catch the Japanese in quality. The Edge could be an example of that. I'm reserving final judgement, but so far it seems a nice car. Very roomy, nice set of power features, including memory seats. Power could be better, but rental agencies are notorious for getting the low-priced models, so Ford may have a higher power version.
Not actually, thank goodness. But I enjoyed a wake up call at 2:30 am last night courtesy of the local air raid sirens. A major storm front blew though Alabama last night, including a radar detect tornado. As it turns out, the radar detected tornado just means that there's a cyclonic doppler return at altitude in the storm system. There's no guarantee that a "radar detected tornado" will turn into a will turn into a "kill the wicked witch tornado". But it is guaranteed to get the radar watchers jumpy and pushing the alarm buttons...
Today I set out to return to Alabama. Lots of fun stuff has happened since my Day 0 entry, but those are stories for another time. Today it's all about the joys of traveling professionally.
The day started off well enough. Breakfast with the parents, a leisurely drive into Dulles International Airport, and an on-time arrival at the terminal. Unfortunately, it was all down-hill from there. My flight was booked with US Airways. So of course, I went to the US Airways desk to check in. The first sign of trouble was when the e-Ticket kiosk couldn't check me in.
After the US Airways clerk found a second person to help me, they eventually figured out that I couldn't actually check in at the US Airways desk. Yes, I had book through US Airways, my itinerary said US Airways, everything was US Airways. But I had to check in at the United desk. (I haven't been getting enough exercise lately, so fortunately for me the United desk is at the other end of the terminal!)
For those of you who don't fly, the airlines do something called "code-sharing". A code-share flight means that you book and pay for a flight on one airline, but you actually fly on a plane owned by another airline. Most of the time, this is not something you even notice - you deal with the airline you booked through, you just happen to board a plane with a different logo on the tail. But for some reason, US Airways and United couldn't play nice today, so I had to deal with United.
Well, as soon as I had to give my bag to one airline with the anticipation of receiving it from another airline at my destination, I knew I was screwed. So I pretty much assumed my bag would get lost today.
When the boarding passes were printed, the first one had the quadruple S emblem all over it. For those of you who avoid the friendly skies, the "SSSS" flags you for special screening at the security check point. So I obviously thought it was turning out to be my lucky day....
Surprisingly, the special screening turned out to not be a bad thing. In the "old days" (you know, two years ago), the "SSSS" meant you got hand searched and everything was a pain in the ass. Now they have the new chemical sniffer machines, so they just make you walk through that and then hand search your carry-on. Since only a few folks are picked for the extra screening, there was no line. I actually got through security quicker than if I had gone through the regular screening!
My flight plan today was a three flight extravaganza - way more connections than a professional traveler normally accepts. But I had a one hour layover in Raleigh and a two hour layover in Charlotte. I figured it wouldn't be a problem to make the transfers, and I don't actually mind the little CRJ commuter jets.
Arriving on-time into Raleigh, I start wandering around to find my connecting gate. Well, we arrived at gate B19 (or something) and I had to connect to gate A22. In pretty much any airport I've ever been to, you can get from one gate to any other gate without much effort. Not so in Raleigh! Terminal A is on the other side of the airport and the only way to get there from Terminal B is to walk outside and through the parking garage to the other terminal. (Raleigh makes it easier by not putting any signs up explaining the situation either. I had to ask at an information desk to figure out what the hell was going on.)
Not only is this an asinine design for the comfort of travelers, you have to leave the secure zone and go through security again to make your connection! I wasn't planning on all that excitement when I looked at the hour layover. Fortunately the lines at the security check were short, so I made my connection. But Raleigh is off the list of airports from now on!
After my adventure in the Raleigh airport, I finally made it to Charlotte. In my book, Charlotte is everything Raleigh is not. There are five concourses, all connected to a main terminal building. Everything is within the same security zone. The architecture is nice and open, with huge windows in the main terminal and most of the concourses. There are LOTS of restaurants and cool shops along the terminal and concourses. They even have rocking chairs along most of the terminal windows, so you can just sit down and relax if you want. In short, it's an excellent airport to have a layover.
Relaxing in Charlotte gave me a chance to eat some lunch and get my shoes polished. The shoe polishing thing may sound anachronistic, but for $5 I got a fresh shine on my shoes and some entertainment as the shoe shine ladies gossiped and joked.
After that, it was on to my gate to relax and read some more of Al Gore's new book - The Assault on Reason. I borrowed the book from my dad this morning, and I've already finished about 80% of it. Even though there's a tinge of partisanship once in a while, Gore approaches things with an even keel for most of the text. I'd highly recommend it to anyone serious about where our country is going - regardless of whether you agree with Gore's politics or not.
Finally arriving in Montgomery, I was not surprised in the least when my bag never showed up on the baggage claim belt. So 45 minutes later, I've got the baggage claim paperwork from US Airways and I can finally head to the hotel. Poor Charley, the coworker who got screwed into working the last two weekends, had to orbit the parking lot for an hour waiting for me to get out of the terminal. I think he was happy to finally escape the airport!
There's another flight in at 8:30 tonight, so with any luck my baggage will show up before the morning....
Well, that should give you a taste of a day in the life of a traveler. Sounds fun, eh? ;-)
Update: My bag showed up around lunch the next day. Everything was intact, save a small cosmetic cut on the front. So now I can look forward to a shower with my shampoo tomorrow. ;-)
Well, got up this morning with the mission of getting to Alabama. Dad drove me down to Dulles and dropped me off. I've only packed two bags - my 25" pullman and the new rolling laptop bag. I was going to try and fit everything into my 21" carry-on bag, but with the new restrictions on fluids (3 oz. containers only), there's just no way to pack for 3 weeks of travel in a carry-on. So, the upside is I have more room in my bag.
I left behind the big camera and my backpack. I'm treating this as a dry run for packing for Japan. When I hit Japan, I know I'll bring my backpack. So this is a reduced-luggage version of the packing regime I expect to follow.
I also dressed the part of a business traveler this time. Normally I just wear jeans to be more comfortable. But I must say that the airline people don't pester you with all the usual bullshit when you're dressed for business. Check-in and security check went smoothly. The first glitch was that the flight from Dulles to Charlotte didn't have a gate listed on the display boards. But the US Airways folks guessed it would be Z9, and they were right.
I got a shot of the flight display boards with one of those funny Microsoft error messages on it, but I was having a hard time getting it loaded on Flickr. I'll try again in a bit.
The flight to Charlotte went off without a hitch. While I was laying over there, I had a beer and bought Madeleine Albright's new book The Mighty & The Almighty: Reflections on America, God, and World Affairs. I've only read the first few chapters, but it's been both entertaining and very insightful. I don't have any particular memories of Ms. Albright while she was Secretary of State under Clinton, but the book meshes with my recollection of the events she describes. She's been very good, so far, at putting America and religion in both a historical context and a current events context. I'm interested to see how the whole book develops.
The flight to Montgomery was on a smaller commuter jet. I carried my laptop bag on, but I could barely fit it under the seat. Fortunately it fit after enough prodding. As the exit row person, it wouldn't do to have my bag sticking out impeding traffic. The flight was unremarkable, and I didn't have any neighbors in the row to bother me.
Arriving in Montgomery, it was moderately humid. Not hot enough to assault you when you disembarked the plane, but hot enough to be noticed. I ended up sharing a taxi with a lady in the Judge Advocate General (JAG) here. We had an entertaining discussion about Japan and how much being in Alabama is not like being other places we'd both have enjoyed more.
The hotel is actually an extended stay suites place. Nice, in the "one room with everything you need to live" kind of way. The staff and I had a good laugh while I hung out and harassed them with questions, though. So hopefully it won't be too bad here for a week. Oh, and I almost forgot - the girl at the front desk is from Boston. haha! So even though I didn't fly there, I still get to meet a Bostonian. Go figure...
Well, I'm waiting for my new coworker to arrive while I slowly starve. He better not have eaten before he arrived here!
UPDATE: Here's the shot of the flight departure board at Dulles....
