Up, Up & Away....

The first time I flew in an airplane was in 1973, when I went to Europe with a class trip. We flew to New York, where we had a long layover, and then to Luxembourg where we hopped a train, with all the hippies schlepping around Europe that summer. I can't remember what airline we flew from Ohio to New York. We flew Icelandic from there to Luxembourg, along with all the hippies. The meals were amazing. I tasted cognac for the first time on that trip, and a life-long love affair was born.

After spending my childhood taking long road trips with the 'rents, I discovered air travel, and I loved it.

In the years following college, I took a lot of trips on planes, I visited friends and relatives around the U. S. A few years after I graduated, I got a job that involved a lot of traveling, mostly to New York, Washington D. C. and San Francisco. We stayed in five star hotels and ate at extremely nice restaurants. Flying was fun. The stewardesses on Delta called the passengers "honey" and "sugah". They pretended they appreciated our business. They refrained from saying "bless your heart" to anyone but the total Yankees who wouldn't understand, anyway.

In the early 1980's, I married a man who hated to fly. We took one airplane trip together, and I swore I would never let him get on another plane, considering that my palms were positively bloody from his nails digging into them by the time we landed in Las Vegas. For most of the next twenty-plus years, we traveled only to places we could reach via four-wheeled motorized vehicle that did not leave the ground.

In recent years, I have had to travel occasionally for business and also on several occasions for last-minute trips to visit ailing parents. Flying in the post-9/11 world totally and completely sucks.

In the "olden" days, when a flight was delayed the airline apologized -- and often provided free drinks to soothe the jangled nerves once the passengers were aboard. These days, after hours and hours of delays, the airlines do not offer free drinks to anyone except first class (maybe). Hell, they don't even apologize!

Pardon me for being cranky: this was written after a delay of more than seven hours and three gate changes.

The good news was that my luggage arrived on the same plane as me. That's cause for celebration.

I'm Baaaaaaaaaaaaaack

I'm back.  Here are a few pictures from my trip to Seattle:

Downtown and Pike Street Market

The Space Needle Reflected in a building

Beautiful Flowers Everywhere

San Antonio, Texas

I recently visited San Antonio, Texas. I had been there once when I was a child, but that was -- um -- a while back. My memories of Texas were dim and generally unpleasant, primarily because, as I recalled, driving across Texas in a car with no A/C in August was kind of miserable.

In recent years people who have visited San Antonio have waxed rhapsodic about the beauty of the city. It has been on my list of places I wanted to visit for some time. I was definitely not disappointed. It helped that the day I was there, the weather was absolutely fabulous: clear and crisp, but not cold. There was not a cloud in the sky. I arrived around mid-day, and had the afternoon free before an evening business function.

I took advantage of the opportunity to go sight-seeing. I am an unrepentant tourist at heart, and I'm not even embarrassed to say that. A person can learn a lot about a place (and yourself) if you grab your camera, a map and put on some comfy shoes.

San Antonio is every bit as beautiful as it had been described to me. I only had a few hours, so I started at the Alamo, then I worked my way out from there, wandering around the downtown both at the street level and along the River Walk to the Market Square area.

I detoured off the main drag to make a pilgrimage to the house/office of the writer, O. Henry, who ran a newspaper in San Antonio for a couple of years. I even violated my "no shopping on pleasure trips" rule to do a little Christmas shopping at the River Center Mall. After dinner, our host invited us to walk along the River Walk to see it lit up for Christmas. While we were out and about, he asked if we wanted to see the Alamo at night. We said we did, and it was amazing.

San Antonio knows a thing or two about how to treat visitors. There are chamber of commerce folks standing around on the sidewalks in the heart of the tourist area, offering information or directions and, if you don't need either, they simply welcome you to their city and invite you to enjoy your stay. Even most of the people in the shops were friendly. They actually made me think they were glad I was there. How cool is that? [Living in a tourist area, where our merchants specialize in being as rude as humanly possible to tourists and locals alike, it came as almost a shock to be treated so graciously.]

Perhaps I should rethink my generally negative attitude about the Lone Star state. ... or, then again, maybe, I'll just make an exception for San Antonio.

Random Thoughts Whilst Sitting in Airports

I spent more than nine hours in the last two days sitting in airports (in between six hours actually in the air). I guess it was still faster than driving..., but surely air travel should not have to be that unpleasant.

Travelers
First of all, I am old enough to remember when people used to dress up to go to the airport. Whether they were flying or meeting someone, they dressed nicely because when someone flew it was usually due to some kind of special "occasion". I'm not suggesting we go all the way back to that, but I think people should at least dress with a minimum of decency when they travel.

Granted, you do see a lot of business travelers in suits, poor beleaguered folks schlepping laptops, briefcases, black roll-on luggage and looking like they don't have any clue what city they are in. (I'll rant about corporate business travel another time.) Most business travelers have adopted the "business casual" look, which is certainly more practical then having men sitting in airports for hours upon hours in suits and ties. Women business travelers have more options in suit material, but even they do okay with business casual.

Business travelers aside, the rest of the traveling public in America seems to have decided that there is no need to dress up, or even get dressed at all. It's appalling how many people I saw in various airports wearing pajamas! I understand bringing toddlers in pajamas so they will be comfortable, but anybody over the age of four should be wearing street clothes! Puleeeeze.

Common courtesy and civility are (with rare and notable exceptions) virtually absent in America today , and I think that Americans' sloppiness is an indication of our general disregard for others. I'm not asking for people to wear their Sunday-go-to- meetin' best (not that Americans dress up for church much anymore either)! If I could write a dress code for the American traveling public it would be simple: wear reasonably clean clothes that are not sleep wear (that prohibition on sleepwear extends to bedroom slippers); cover all private body parts; no obscene words on T-shirts. Personally, I think the bar should actually be higher than that, but I'd be happy if we could start there.

To avoid this turning into more of a tirade than a mere rant, I'll refrain from discussing: cell-phone etiquette; arguing with spouses in public; and, eating smelly sandwiches on planes. In short: Please stop and consider the impact your behavior may have on the people around you. I fully understand that is totally unreasonable, which is why I'm not going to waste my time spelling it out in any more detail.

Airlines
I remember when Delta flight attendants (fka stewardesses) were young, big-haired GRITS (girls raised in the south) who smiled their big ol' Southern smiles and called everyone 'honey' and 'sugah'. It made me feel at home just walkin' on the plane! They acted as though they were glad you were there (Southern gals make good flight attendants because they learn early how to smile and make you believe they give a rat's ass whether or not they actually do). When they counted the passengers, they made eye contact and smiled. Honest! It used to be like that. Really!

In the past two days, on four flights, I saw two flight attendants actually smile at a passenger. One smiled at a really cute baby (well, I thought she was really cute until we took off and she started screaming). I'm not sure that smile really counts.

The other one deserves special recognition. She was the poor heroic gal who was the flight attendant on a plane full of irate passengers. We had been delayed for more than three hours at which point the airline switched us to a plane that held twenty fewer people than the originally scheduled airliner (which had been booked solid). We knew when we checked in that twenty people were gonna get screwed. (How's that for stellar customer service? Thank you, Delta Airlines, for a really creative solution to a problem.)

Anyway, by the time we got on the plane after having been jerked around by Delta for hours, we were tired, hungry, and plenty pissed off. Nevertheless, this little gal, who must have graduated from the Southwest Airlines flight attendant school, tried to cheer us up. She was funny, perky, quirky and seemed to like interacting with the passengers. I think her efforts at both humor and interaction were mostly lost on us cranky passengers, but I stopped on my way out the door and thanked her for trying anyway.

That one pleasant airline employee aside, it is no wonder the airlines have financial difficulties. They treat their customers with something like contempt. Once I enter the lines for security, I feel as though I have been transformed from a human being into a sheep in a pen, being controlled, manipulated and moved around by unseen "others". It is a totally unpleasant experience.

The airlines apparently don't treat their employees any better than they treat their customers, because from the the minute you enter the terminal most of the employees appear to miserable, unhappy and surly.

I found myself actually pitying the poor schmucks at the gate check in counters who have be the face of the airlines for the passengers. Their job involves dealing daily (and sometimes many times a day) with angry passengers who know the airline is jerking them around. I watched the gate attendants carefully for hours yesterday, trying to get some signal from facial expressions or inflection of their voices that something might be happening to get us moving. I came to the conclusion that the airlines keep the gate attendants as much in the dark as possible. Perhaps they don't want them to know too much so they don't have to actually lie to the customers. In any case, there is no doubt those people have a miserable job. That does not keep me from feeling irritated when they are rude to me. I am a Customer not a Sheep!

It is no wonder the employees are unhappy. They come to work every day knowing they're going to get yelled at by dozens if not hundreds of customers every day because of the ineptitude of their employer. Now that'll get you up for work every morning!

There is NO reason for it. We have a lot of smart, creative people in this country. The airlines are serving more and more customers every year and, because we have no other alternative if we want to get around, that trend is likely to continue. They are still doing business the same way they did thirty years ago. They need to figure something out ... soon.

Our obsession with security (important as it is) has crippled our ability to move people quickly from one point to another, and I don't know what the hell it is that causes one flight delay due to a raindrop or two in Manchester, New Hampshire, to cause hundreds of people to be sent scurrying around from one gate to another while the airlines shuffle them from plane to plane I know people could figure out a better way.

Here's one example: Why can I print my boarding pass 24 hours in advance with a gate assignment on it? Gate assignments should not be made until the plane is on its final approach to land (after the airlines have dealt with other planes coming in late or early). I don't need a GATE assignment until it's time to board. I want a seat assignment as far in advance as I can get it, realizing that there may be reshuffling (and I may need to check in again) if they have to switch out planes to avoid delays. I'd be happy to wait in a common lounge until they call the flight and announce the gate assignment prior to boarding. The at-gate seating is too small for the size of most of the planes anyway, and when you get three and four planeloads of people waiting in one gate area because the planes are backed up, it's a recipe for disaster. It's also undignified for an entire planeload of people to be sent running down the concourse for a last-minute gate change. From a customer service standpoint, that is utter madness!

One more thing: baggage. The airlines have started charging for checked bags, which means that more people are carrying on more and more luggage. That slows down both boarding and exiting processes. It is also miserable to schlep stuff around airports all day long. Here's my suggestion: Raise ticket prices and go back to two free checked bags (maybe even three). At the same time limit carry on luggage to one carry on bag that would have to go under the seat, plus a personal item, that would also have to go under the seat. Overhead bins would be reserved for coats and other "soft" items. That would speed things up a lot, avoid injuries from passengers whacking each other in the head with suitcases, avoid hard feelings because some passengers obey the baggage size rules and others don't... etc. etc.

Transportation is a critical component of a healthy country. Our roads, bridges, rail transport and our air transport are all woefully in need of a major overhaul. Smart creative minds need to work on thinking big ideas for how we can do things better. Right now, it seems as though corporate America keeps trying to put old-worn out band aids on new problems. Then when the business borders on bankruptcy, they look to Uncle Sam for financial assistance.

Here's a novel idea: fix your own house, folks. And do it fast because it's having a bad effect on the neighborhood.

Courtesy on the Highways (or NOT)

My recent business trip involved travelling to St. Petersburg. My options were driving or Southern Trailways, so I drove. I do not like to drive, but the timing was such that I should not have had much traffic in either direction. That was true, but "light traffic" is a relative term. On the way to St. Pete, traffic was relatively light (as light as it ever gets in Central Florida) and there were no delays, so I made great time.

Even without any actual mishaps, I was a nervous wreck, by the time I reached my hotel because of the idiots on the road!

I think they must put drugs in the water in Orlando. Those people over there are absolute menaces on the highways. At one point, I was in the middle lane (of three). An Orlando police cruiser passed me on the left. A guy in front of me suddenly decided to change lanes with no signal or effort to determine whether or not there was room -- and he very nearly ran the cop into the wall! It looked just like Kyle Busch and Robbie Gordon (or anybody) pretty much any Sunday afternoon. What was amazing to me was that the cop did not pull the guy over! He just drove away. Maybe he had to go back to the police station and go to the bathroom. I know it scared the shit out of me because I was right behind them and would not have been able to avoid getting involved if they had collided.

It appears that in Orlando the traffic rules are different from other places in America. Those people drive like Italians: they decide where they're going and everybody else just needs to deal with it.

I am never going to look in my rear view mirror again when driving through Orlando! Every time I glanced in my mirror there was some bastard in a SUV or a big old redneck truck right on my ass. Scared the hell out of me every time I peeked back there, so I quit.

I didn't worry about the trip home on Sunday morning. I expected traffic to be light. The church traffic would be on the surface streets. Truck traffic should be light (WRONG!). I hoped to make it home without any undue trauma. Just outside of Tampa I came across a multi-car accident that had apparently just happened. I did not stop partly because there were a bunch of people helping who appeared to know what they were doing, and because there was some Cruella DeVille look-alike in a Mercedes about a half inch from my rear bumper, talking on the phone. I was too scared to even begin to slow down. Once we passed the accident and she realized any cop the area was likely to be busy for a while, she whipped around me and roared down the left lane like the Roadrunner.

My hopes about getting through Orlando without any undue freaking out were dashed when I passed the Disney ramp. What the hell all those people were doing getting ON the highway at 11:00 AM, I have no freaking idea, but a lot of people were leaving Disney early today. Traffic never came to a stop (which it typically does at that point when the Parks are busy), but it got heavy and hairy for a while.

Just past downtown Orlando, in pretty steady traffic, I saw something I have never seen before outside of the movies: street racers. A white Honda Civic and a red car that was probably some kind of sport scar I should recognize were racing, weaving in and out of traffic and cutting people off in every lane. It looked like a scene from The Fast and the Furious. A few miles down the road, I was gratified to see the red car on the side of the road with the hood up. It appeared to have a mechanical problem. I was pleasantly surprised. I had rather feared that if I saw either of those two cars again, they would be strewn in pieces down the center median, hopefully not intermixed with bits and pieces of the drivers.

My car arrived home in one piece, but I was kind of a wreck.

Oh, and by the way, my 'weekend' consisted of Sunday afternoon only. I will try to refrain from writing much this week as a mercy to the reading public.

On Not Going on Vacation

This year my husband and I are not going on a vacation. I cannot remember ever going a whole year without a trip somewhere. When I lived with my parents, we went on long camping vacations every year, criss -crossing the country from one end to the other. When I was single I didn't travel as much as I should have, but I went on some really cool trips nonetheless. Since I married DH, we have gone on at least one vacation every year; many years we went on several. This year, Daughter Dear had the opportunity to go on a bunch of absolutely magnificent trips with school and with friends, so we spent our vacation money on sending her to cool places and we stayed home.

It's August in Florida. That means that the only people here are tourists. Like the French, Floridians take to the roads in August. They tend to go to places that are cool (literally), like mountains (almost anywhere), Canada, northern Europe. The upshot of that for me is that I feel as though I am the only person in my world who isn't taking a vacation this year. Because I kind of am. That makes me sort of depressed.

In fact, I find myself feeling envious, which is not one of the Seven Deadly Sins for nothing. I rarely worry about sin too much (since I'm pretty agnostic about the hereafter), but envy is one of those sins that is really, really destructive in the here and now, so I try to avoid the occasion of that particular sin.

The irony about my feeling depressed about not going on vacation or envious of those who travel is that I don't really like to travel. I don't like the process of traveling: the packing and lugging suitcases (even though I travel lighter than anyone I know); the endless hours being cooped up in a car or a plane; the hassle of flying; sleeping in strange beds; using public bathrooms; eating in restaurants. I hate all of that stuff. There is a part of me that would love to never again go outside the triangle between my house, my job and the beach. Everything I need can be found within that triangle. Why do I need to go elsewhere?

I need to go elsewhere for two reasons. One is because, getting outside of my comfort zone and having adventures is good for me, whether I like it or not.

The other is that my need to experience beauty outweighs my irritation at the hassle of traveling. I am not the kind of traveler who immerses myself in the culture of the place I am visiting. I do not interact a lot with the "locals" (I'm not much for talking to strangers). What I do when I travel is look for beautiful things to see.

Some of my most vivid and amazing memories are:

• Coming around a corner on some road in the Rocky Mountains and passing through a tiny high meadow filled with blooming wild-flowers of every imaginable color. Against the backdrop of the grey rock and under a crystal sky, it almost hurt my eyes. I was only a child when I saw that meadow, and I can still see it. It has been my psychic and spiritual refuge my entire life.
  
• Getting my first glimpse of the North Rim of the Grand Canyon, peeking through the pine forest. Tiny glimpses here and there, for only a second, but hints of unbelievable grandeur of the canyon. Actually, the entire drive from Las Vegas to the Canyon is pretty spectacular.
• Nearly all sunrises are magnificent, but the most incredible sunrise I ever experienced was on a train from Nice to Barcelona. There were not enough seats, so my friends and I had to stand in the corridor all night long, with our suitcases piled in front of us. To the extent we slept, it was merely dozing, leaning against our suitcases. It was a long, horrible night, but it ended in a sunrise over the Mediterranean that makes tears come to my eyes just thinking about it. The sun rose red, and the black sea turned to something that looked like liquid rubies. The rocks and the cliffs in the foreground were still night-black. I think I took a whole role of pictures, none of which did justice to the glory of the moment.
  
• Bryce Canyon early in the morning when the light is still soft and the rock is pink and white. Looks like a little girl's birthday cake.
• The Grand Tetons early in the morning with the sun shining directly on the face of the mountains.
• Almost any beach in the Caribbean.
  
• Going through the Strait of Messina between the toe of the Italian boot and Sicily. Actually, the entire day when we cruised around the Italian peninsula to Rome consisted of one unbelievably magnificent vista after another, on both sides of the ship. I am such a horrible cruiser, I didn't even take time out to eat! By the evening, my eyes and my soul almost hurt. It was almost too much beauty to experience in one day.
  
• Sunset over the Gulf of Mexico, from almost any point between Sarasota and Key West. R
• Riverboats on the Ohio River, in particular the aptly named American Queen. Once, I was standing on a dock at the marina where we kept our boat waiting for my husband (who was in the bathroom or something). I was looking downstream and sort of day-dreaming. Suddenly, the American Queen came into my field of peripheral vision, and literally took my breath away. I had, at that point, never seen an ocean cruise ship. She was the biggest, grandest and most magnificent floating thing I'd ever seen up until that point. She filled up the river. Slowly and magnificently she passed by so close I felt I could reach out and shake hands with the passengers on deck, with the paddle slapping the water in a rhythm. That made me think people aboard that ship must sleep very well at night, indeed.
• The view from the top of the Dunlawton bridge in Port Orange. Heading east, that is the first place where you can see the Atlantic Ocean. Heading west, at the end of the day, almost any day you see either fabulous sunsets or storm clouds and Florida's magnificent lightning. (Florida likes to advertise its sunshine. The fact is, Florida's lighting is totally awesome, too.)

Fortunately that last one is close to home and I can go there anytime I want.

That caused me to think about other beautiful places and things close to home. And, so.... to counteract the onset of depression, envy and the inevitable self-pity that goes with those two evil twins, I will embark on a quest for the beauty that is around me in my daily life. I will look for the beautiful things I see every day, and don't usually even notice. I will consciously savor the experience of those beautiful things.

It's not exactly a vacation but it will be an adventure... which is the whole point.

I'm excited!

What I Did On My Day Off

My Dear Husband and I have been visiting St. Augustine regularly since 1983. Since moving to Florida a decade or so ago, we have made it a practice to visit at least every few months. It never gets old. Today was particularly wonderful. Usually we visit on the weekends when St. Augustine is very crowded. Today we actually found a parking space, which allowed us to walk around the Old City. We also stopped at St. Augustine Beach. The only stretch of that beach I had never walked was from the St. Augustine Beach Pier north to the pass into St. Augustine. That's about three miles or so. I walked that stretch today. For the last two miles or so, I was the only person on the beach except for one lady on a bike.

It was a PERFECT way to spend a day off: going on a vacation close enough to come home for supper and to sleep in my own bed.

St. Augustine Beach, Florida

Castillo de San Marcos

St. Augustine, Florida

Intracostal Waterway

Matanzas, Florida

Matanzas, Florida

Traveling

I have been traveling on business this week with minimal access to the Internet. I was the only person around who did not have a blackberry or other email-enabled PDA. I felt very out of touch. I know my assistant felt that I was frustratingly inaccessible! Everybody else around me was able to keep up with emails throughout the days. I sat there thinking about how my messages were piling up.

Since I couldn't get the Ethernet connection in my room to work, I had to go to the lounge in the evenings to catch up on the day's messages. That was the only good part. I had the chance to knock back a couple of belts whilst handling my work. I must confess that the last few emails in the evenings had more typos than normal (and I suck as a typist under the best of circumstances).

Traveling used to be fun. No more. Security is always an issue. This was a quick trip, so I was not checking luggage. That meant I went without my favorite shampoo, face wash and hair "product". I took the travel sized versions of toothpaste and deodorant, and planned to use the hotel's other personal care products. My skin feels like tissue paper but my hair looks terrific. I guess the hotel soap was a little stronger than the stuff I'm used to, but they had great shampoo.

I seem to be fated to sit next to fat people who do not like to fly. Last summer returning from Europe, I was wedged into a seat in the very last row of the plane next to a very obese lady who was clearly unhappy to be flying. She fidgeted and sweated profusely for eight hours. On my flight yesterday, I was in the middle seat between a seasoned traveler, who slept from the time we started taxiing down the runway until the captain announced we were making our final approach to Orlando, and a very obese man who sweated profusely and kept putting a napkin to his mouth. I prayed like mad the whole time he would not barf. I have a very weak stomach. When other people throw up, I tend to join in. It was very nerve-wracking.

One thing I want to know: why do men always have to sit with their knees pointed out? My two seat-mates (even the sleeping one) spent the entire flight with their knees about 36" apart. As I said, I was in the middle seat. Do the math. By the time we landed, I was so stiff from trying to be very still and very small and not touch anybody.....

I am glad to be home.