• Intro music — Warmth by Makkina
• Coming to you today from Business class toilet on an American Airlines 777 flying somewhere north of the Iceland volcano, flying back from my first trip to India. After spending 2 days each in Guragon, Pune, and Bangalore, I got on this non-stop flight back to Chicago – left Dehli at quarter past midnight Thursday night and some 14 hours later, get into ORD at around 4:30 am Friday morning. I’ll talk more about my India trip in the first topic, but now, I’m going to get out of the john before someone thinks I’m doing something strange in here – not that recording a podcast in the bathroom is normal for any except me.
• OK, I’m back in the TravelCommons studios outside of Chicago – landed safely and am now spending the day trying to get my body clock reset. The first time I flew home from Asia, I arrived before I took off – left Tokyo around 5pm and got into SFO around noon. Made my brain hurt a little bit trying to figure it out. Now, I just roll with it. Flying to Europe, I make a point to get on the destination time right when I sit in the airplane seat. Flying to Asia, that takes too much work. I just sleep when I want and eat when I want and leave it to my iPhone alarm to help me power through the consequences.
• One more quick India note – I was standing in line to board my return flight – we had to run the gauntlet in the jetway of repeated security questions (“Has your carry-on been out of your possession at any time”) and another wanding and pat-down — and now waiting to board when I heard a guy describing the scene to someone on the phone. It took about 20 seconds for it to hit me – Hey, I recognize that voice. I turned around and about a half-dozen people back was a guy I had worked with 6 years ago. Now I’m used to running into friends and former colleagues at ORD and LGA, but DEL? It’s either a really small world, or I know way too many people who fly.
• Bridge Music — We Are Complex by Curl

Following Up

• We’ve talked in past episodes about ways to find good restaurants on the road. I’ve mentioned Chowhound.com – a popular foodie forum – as one of my main tools. But Twitter has also become very useful. The last time I was in LA, I couldn’t figure out what I wanted to do for dinner. I tweeted – “What should I eat – sushi or In ‘n Out Burger?” – really thinking out loud to my family than anyone else, and then one follower replied “Try Kogi BBQ truck”. What a great idea! I had read about these guys a few months prior – some guys running 3 taco trucks doing Korean-Mexican fusion food – like kim chi quesadillas – and tweet every day the locations of their trucks. I hit Twitter, found the closest truck – a 30-minute drive – and headed out. I found it and queued up with about two dozen other Angelenos past an Arco gas station, ordered up some tacos, and ate them on the hood of my car. It was great – and I wouldn’t have thought about it without someone responding to my tweet.
• The best meal on my last trip to Seattle was courtesy of Twitter – Denrael saw where I was and suggested the Steelhead Diner and I ended up with another great meal. I think this is how the whole social media thing is supposed to work.
• Another thing that’s worked for me this year is hand-washing. When all the panic about H1N1 virus started up, I ignored most of it – except for the talk about the benefits of extended hand-washing. 20 seconds with soap and water, they said, was more effective than those little bottles of Purell. OK, I decided to give it a go – investing a bit more time under the faucet. One day, at the beginning of April, as Chicago began to warm up, it came to me – I haven’t had a cold this season. For the first time in as long as I can remember, in spite of doing the same amount of cohabitating metal tubes with sick people, inhaling their recycled exhales, I didn’t get sick. I guess those airplane HEPA filters work after all.
• I broke down and tried GoGo’s in-flight WiFi a few months ago. I’d like to say that I did it purely from an investigative standpoint – so that I could report on it to you, my podcast listeners. But actually, I had a half day in Phoenix, was racing to make the flight, and still had a bunch of e-mail that I wanted to get out before the end of the day, so rather than queueing up 25 e-mails and then blasting them out when I hit ORD, I ponied up for GoGo. So here’s my bottom line — Gogo inflight wi-fi is a pig, a slow one. And it’s not so much the bandwidth to the ground, but just the response time from the web server in the plane – airborne.gogoinflight.com. Maybe because it was a full plane with lots of laptop-toting professionals needing to get on-line in the middle of the day, but still, come on. When I first connected to the Buy page, the price was $10 for the flight. But that in-plane server timed out, so I had to start again from the start – great user experience. Even better — the second time I got to the Buy page, it was $13. I haven’t used GoGo since.
• Maybe it was a goofy day, though. On that same flight, the guy next to me tried to buy a cheese-&-cracker snack with cash. And then was – should I say it? No, I shouldn’t… but I will – he was “cheesed off” that American no longer takes cash. I was amazed — when was the last time this guy flew?
• And finally, listening this week to The World’s Technology Podcast , I heard about the death of John Shepherd-Barron, the inventor of the ATM – the automated banking machine. For the business traveler, the ATM revolutionized our lives, as much, if not more than mobile phones. I remember traveling before ATMs were ubiquitous. You’d pay American Express a chunk of change for a wad of $100 traveler’s checks, and then spend a good bit of your trip getting ripped off by currency exchanges in the airports, and cutting out of meetings in mid-day Fridays to hunt down a bank before it closed so you would have some cash for the weekend. It took a lot of planning ahead. Contrast that with this last weekend. On Sunday, I woke up in Guragon, wandered over to the mall next door, found a Citibank ATM a couple hundred feet from the front door, punched a few keys and out popped 10 crisp 500 rupee notes. And without taking much note, I now had a bit of cash with which I could buy a cup of masala tea. Thanks, John.
• If you have a question, a story, a comment – the voice of the traveler, send it along. The e-mail address is comments@travelcommons.com, you can send me a Twitter message at @mpeacock, or you can post them on the web site at travelcommons.com.
• Bridge Music — Crazy by Beth Quist

Business Travel in India

• Long-time listener Marc Loehrwald came back to me in the midst of my Tweet stream from India asking “Are you collecting some stories for a new Travelcommons episode?” Even without trying, I came back with some.
• Deplaning at Indira Gandhi Int’l airport – IRI to the locals – was pretty uneventful, though the Immigration officer did comment that I looked much younger in my passport picture. After a 15-hour flight, I’d have been surprised if it was any other way. I told him “it’s not the years; it’s the mileage”, but I think he was a bit young to catch the Indiana Jones reference.
• Getting out at our hotel, I had the first of many security screenings during my stay. At every hotel and major building, I walked through a metal detector, was wanded down, and had my briefcase X-rayed. The whole exercise took 90 seconds and the employees were exceedingly polite (because they worked for the hotel, not an overblown government agency), but given what happened in Mumbai a year and a half ago, the security was understandable.
• Sunday afternoon, I was back at IRI, but this time at the domestic terminal for a flight on Kingfisher Airlines – yes, owned by the same person as Kingfisher Beer, but no, it’s not served on board; all domestic flights are non-alcoholic – to Pune. I walk up to the door and am stopped by a security guard – polite, but not as nice as the hotel guys – asking to see an itinerary. I have an e-ticket, I say, so I don’t have an itinerary. No paper, no entry. He points down the terminal to the Kingfisher ticketing desk and says they can print it out for me. 10 minutes and some aggressive line jockeying and was back with the necessary piece of paper – a printout of my flight itinerary. Now I can go in.
• And face more security. Going through security screening, everyone kept on their shoes and belt, but then everyone was wanded and patted down after passing through the metal detector. Every carryon had to have a tag, which was stamped after X-raying. These tags were then checked by a security guard as you boarded the plane. No stamp and back you went to security.
• Leo Vegoda, another T/C listener, responding to my security line Tweet – “Is the line still 2 hours long?” No, even with all this extra security, the lines weren’t long – there seemed to be enough staff to handle it. I don’t know – perhaps I was traveling at non-peak times; or perhaps their staffing algorithm is better than the TSA’s.
• What struck me most by the middle of the week was how isolated my travels were. In past T/C episodes, we’ve talked about the “travel bubble” that business travelers inhabit – seeming to float above the day-to-day activities of a given city – kinda like Glenda the Good Witch in “Wicked” (I’m just full of pop references today…).
• In India, I was in an extreme travel bubble – eating breakfast in the hotel, taking a private car to my meetings, then driven to dinner (usually in a hotel restaurant), and finally dropped off at my hotel around 9 or 10 pm. But unlike everywhere else, I wasn’t trying to escape it. I don’t think it was the poverty or a concern about security – I’ve dealt with that in places like Joburg and Rio. No, it was something else, but I didn’t know what it was.
• Finally, looking out the car window one day, on one of my many rides, I realized that it was the crowds – everywhere I was, everywhere I looked, there were always huge numbers of people moving to and fro – much more than I’d seen before, and never letting up. Maybe all the extra security got to me subconsciously. I’m sure that, in time, I would’ve gotten comfortable with the crowds, but the pace of the trip – 3 cities, 7 days, 15 hours a day in meetings and then another 3 hours back in the room catching up on things back home – I never got situated, never got comfortable with where I was.
• I finally fell out of my travel bubble transiting between the domestic and international terminals in Delhi. It’s a 30-minute bus ride, but security wouldn’t let me on because I forgot to print my American Airlines itinerary. I had to go outside and catch a cab – not a car, not a minibus, a regular street cab. Careening through the streets, I remembered the story one of my hosts told me a few days past, about how he had taken a cab between the two terminals – the cab went off to a side street and only continued onto the international terminal after he gave them $100. I watched the street signs – why wasn’t he taking the exit for the airport? Down and around the support pillars of the expressway, past a strip of hotels with neon signs, driving in a sea of motorscooters, we emerged in front of the access road to the international terminal. A couple of more jigs and jags to avoid construction and we were unloading my bags in front of the terminal. I tipped the driver 200 rupees on a 250-rupee fare and slipped back inside my travel bubble.
• Bridge Music — Blues for a Rainy Day by Mark Cook

iPad vs. Netbook

• At the beginning of the month, I swapped my standard corporate-issue Dell Latitude E6400 laptop for an HP Mini 5102 netbook running Windows 7 and an Apple Wi-Fi + 3G iPad. After trips to Scottsdale and India with my lighter (by 1.4 lbs) briefcase, I found myself liking both devices, but for very different reasons.
• The main reason I was willing to dump the 14-in Dell screen for a 10-in netbook display is that most of my computer time is now spent running e-mail. Back when I was developing code or creating PowerPoint decks, I was willing to lug some extra pounds to get extra pixels. Now that my life revolves around Outlook, screen size isn’t as important. But a good keyboard is, and the HP’s traditional keyboard is much more usable for a touch typist than the iPad’s onscreen keyboard. You can’t rest your fingers on the iPad’s virtual keys, and eliminating the semi-colon key causes some real problems for touch typists. Also, being able to work in the actual Outlook client on the HP – looking at other people’s schedules when setting up meetings, browsing shared Exchange folders — is a huge advantage over iPad’s mail client. HP is the clear winner with e-mail.
• Even though the HP’s screen specs out larger than the iPad (10.1-in diagonal vs. 9.7-in diagonal), the iPad’s screen looks bigger and brighter. Perhaps it’s the 132 pixels per inch, but it probably because the iPad’s tablet form factor frees it from the desktop (or your lap) and makes it seem natural to bring it closer to your eyes. And if you’re browsing rather than typing, touching the web site is a more direct interaction than connecting your finger to the cursor through the touchpad. Unless, that is, your browsing involves web sites like Hulu, which lands you directly in the cross fire of Steve Jobs’ Flash jihad. But for non-Flash web browsing, the iPad is the clear winner.
• When I’m writing, the best keyboard wins out. While I’m getting better on the iPad virtual keyboard after a couple of weeks’ practice, I switched over to the HP’s physical keyboard to write this episode. A number of folks have suggested that I use a BlueTooth keyboard with my iPad, but one of my travel principles is to travel with the least number of electronic things as possible. Having lots of electronic bits show up on the X-ray screen makes any TSA screener twitchy – it significantly increases the probability of a hand search – something any frequent traveler wants to avoid.
• It’s also easier to get files on and off the HP. The iron sandbox that Apple has erected around the iPhone and now the iPad may improve its security, but makes it difficult to use as something other than an isolated machine. When I’m creating a document more than a few lines, I find myself switching to the HP.
• Now, moving from the Dell’s 2.26 GHz Core 2 Duo processor to the HP’s 1.66 GHz Atom chip, you’d expect to wait a few more seconds for applications to start up. And you do. But if you’re just doing e-mail, web browsing, and some light Word/Excel/PowerPoint work, the Atom keeps up. But there are no such compromises with the iPad’s custom A4 chip. Video is smooth, screens snap, and there’s none of the stutter-step scrolling that has become so frustrating on my 3G iPhone. From a user experience standpoint, the iPad’s performance smokes the HP.
• Probably the biggest disappointment with the HP is the battery life. The 4-cell battery specs out at 4½ hours, but it was dying after my 3½ hour flight from Chicago to Phoenix. It could be that I don’t have Windows 7 configured correctly, but I couldn’t get much more battery life even after some deep Power Option tweaking. My experience with the iPad’s custom battery is the complete opposite. I have yet to see the battery gauge turn red, even after pretty constant use on my 15-hour flights to and from India — a pleasant change indeed from the usual iPhone experience.
• Now, doing a straight feature/cost comparison is tough — these are two very different machines. Comparing the two machines in my briefcase — the HP 5102 Mini netbook with 2 GB memory and 160 GB hard drive lists for $535 on HP’s web site while my 64 GB Wi-Fi + 3G iPad goes for $829 on apple.com — HP looks the winner. But if you factor in the delta between the price of a typical cellular data plan for the HP and the iPad’s lower cost 3G plan from AT&T, and can drop down to the 32 GB Wi-Fi + 3G iPad, you get pretty close to breakeven after 12 months. Is it a fair comparison, I don’t know — but it’s a data point.
• What’s the bottom line? It’s not clear. I really like both machines, but for very different reasons. The HP is a solid little machine — great keyboard, reasonable performance, and a compact size that doesn’t get crushed when the guy in front of me pushes his seat back in an American Airlines MD-80. The iPad provides a much better way to browse web sites (non-Flash, of course) and watch videos. I’d love to drop one of them, but since the TSA doesn’t make me take out my iPad before X-raying, I’m not in too big of a hurry.

Closing

• Closing music — iTunes link to Pictures of You by Evangeline
• OK, that’s it, that’s the end of TravelCommons podcast #83
• I hope you all enjoyed this podcast and I hope you decide to stay subscribed.
• The bridge music is from Magnatune
• If you have a story, thought, comment, gripe – the voice of the traveler — send ‘em along, text or MP3 file, to comments@travelcommons.com or to @mpeacock on Twitter, or post them on our website at travelcommons.com. Thanks to everyone who has taken the time to send in e-mails, Tweets and post comments on the website
• Follow me on Twitter
• Direct link to the show

• E-Mail — The main reason I’m willing to dump the 14-in Dell screen for a 10-in netbook display is that most of my computer time is now spent running e-mail.  Back when I was developing code or creating PowerPoint decks, I was willing to lug some extra pounds to get extra pixels.  Now that my life revolves around Outlook, screen size isn’t as important.  But a good keyboard is, and the HP’s traditional keyboard is much more usable for a touch typist than the iPad’s onscreen keyboard.  You can’t rest your fingers on the iPad’s virtual keys, and eliminating the semi-colon key causes some real problems for touch typists.  Also, being able to work in the actual Outlook client on the HP is a huge advantage over iPad’s mail client.
  Winner — HP netbook
• Web Browsing — Even though the HP’s screen specs out larger than the iPad (10.1-in diagonal vs. 9.7-in diagonal), the iPad’s screen looks bigger and brighter.  Perhaps it’s the 132 pixels per inch (ppi), but it probably because the iPad’s tablet form factor frees it from the desktop (or your lap) and makes it seem natural to bring it closer to your eyes.  And if you’re browsing rather than typing, touching the web site is a more direct interaction than connecting your finger to the cursor through the touchpad.  Unless, that is, your browsing involves web sites like Hulu, which lands you directly in the cross fire of Steve Jobs’ Flash jihad.
  Winner — Apple iPad
• Writing — Again, it’s the keyboard.  While I’m getting better on the iPad virtual keyboard after a week’s practice, I switched over to the HP’s physical keyboard to write this post.  As important, though, it’s easier to get files on and off the HP.  The iron sandbox that Apple has erected around the iPhone/iPad may improve its security, but makes it difficult to use as something other than an isolated machine.
  Winner — HP Netbook
• Performance — Moving from the Dell’s 2.26 GHz Core 2 Duo processor to the HP’s 1.66 GHz Atom chip, you expect to wait a few more seconds for applications to start up.  And you do.  But if you’re just doing e-mail, web browsing, and some light Word/Excel/PowerPoint work, the Atom keeps up.  There are no such compromises with the iPad’s custom A4 chip.  Video is smooth, and there’s none of the stutter-step scrolling that has become so frustrating on my 3G iPhone.
  Winner — Apple iPad
• Battery – This is the one disappointment with the HP 5102 Mini.  The 4-cell 29-watt-hour lithium ion battery specs out at 4½ hours, but was dying after my 3½ hour flight from Chicago to Phoenix.  It could be that I don’t have Windows 7 configured correctly, but I couldn’t get much more battery life even after some deep Power Option tweaking. My experience with the iPad’s custom 25-watt-hour lithium polymer battery is the complete opposite.  I have yet to see the battery gauge turn red — a pleasant change from my iPhone experience.
  Winner — Apple iPad
• Cost – Doing a straight feature/cost comparison is tough — these are two very different machines.  Comparing the two machines in my briefcase — the HP 5102 Mini netbook with 2 GB memory and 160 GB hard drive lists for $535 on HP’s web site while my 64 GB Wi-Fi + 3G iPad goes for $829 on apple.com — HP looks the winner.  But if you can drop down to the 32 GB Wi-Fi + 3G iPad and factor in its lower cost AT&T 3G plan, you get pretty close to breakeven after 12 months.  Is it a fair comparison, I don’t know — but it’s a data point.
  Winner — ranges from HP netbook to a tie

What’s the bottom line?  It’s not clear.  I really like both machines, but for very different reasons.  The HP is a solid little machine — great keyboard, reasonable performance, and a compact size that doesn’t get crushed when the guy in front of me pushes his seat back in an American Airlines MD-80.  The iPad provides a much better way to browse web sites (non-Flash, of course) and watch videos.  I’d love to drop one of them, but I can’t — not yet.

• Intro music — Warmth by Makkina
• Coming to you today from the TravelCommons studios outside of Chicago, Illinois. Sorry for the long delay between episodes, but I started a new job at the beginning of the year – after 17 years of consulting, I got a real job as a CIO – and I’m just beginning to dry off after drinking through a firehose for the past 6 weeks. I’m also in my 6th month of straight travel – I’ve gotten on a plane every week since Labor Day, but next week I’ll take a break, skip ORD for a week after 6 months. Now I will say that one week of that was self-inflicted – I mentioned in the last episode that I cashed in some frequent flier and frequent sleeper points to take the family to Hawaii for a week. Turned out to be a great decision – it was 75 degrees in Kauai, 7 degrees in Chicago. Since the beginning of the year, though, I’ve been back in full travel mode — Philadelphia, DC, and multiple visits to Phoenix , Dallas, and South Florida.
• In January, I almost got trapped in Phoenix due to the huge rain storms that swept in from California. I was sitting in a Scottsdale Starbucks when an automated voice from United rang me up to tell me that my 3:30pm flight to ORD was cancelled. I called up the Global Services desk and got rebooked onto the earlier flight – the 1:20pm – and managed to keep my 1st class upgrade. A bit of an annoyance – I had to shuffle my afternoon calendar – but it was manageable.
• I get to the airport and ask gate agent — why the cancellation? The 1:20 was now the last flight out. They’re forecasting 40 mph sustained winds and 70 mph gusts to hit town at 2pm. The agents tell us we need to board quickly so that we can get out before the weather hits. But then, nothing. We sit and sit. No boarding, no announcements. Oh, wouldn’t this be great. A January flight from PHX to ORD is cancelled for weather – in PHX! Finally, we board.
• But then, at the last minute, another delay. The caterer didn’t load enough lunches for everyone in 1st class. The sky is getting darker. A half-dozen of us volunteer to skip the rubber chicken – just get this flight off the ground. Finally the door closes and, as near as I can tell, we were the last flight off the ground before they closed the airport. Downgrading to the Thai chicken wrap from the back of the plane was a small price to pay for making it home that night.
• Bridge Music — Bahar-Un by Un-Kai

Following Up

• We’ve had a bit of a thread over the past few episodes on methods to track travel expenses and manage the receipts. Around Heijnis started it with an e-mail wondering if there’s anything better than a set of envelopes or colored folders. Up to now, no one has come up with anything better.”
• However, I just started using on online travel & expense tool called Concur Solutions which has moved me away from folders. Now, I don’t think it’s a single person solution – I think your whole company has to be on it – but if you’re on it, it seems to be pretty good. First, you use it to book your travel – airline, hotel, and car – which allows the system to create an expense report from your itinerary – automatically putting in your airline ticket, and place holders for your hotel and rental car. They also have can pull in the e-receipts that most hotel chains now set up, which is a huge timesaver if you work for one of those obsessive-compulsive companies that wants you to separately itemize room charges and tax across each night of your stay. Concur does that automatically when it sucks in the hotel receipt. It also pulls in electronic Amex receipts which you can drag and drop into the expense report.
• They also have an iPhone app that allows you to immediately record an expenditure and upload it — complete with a picture of the receipt from the iPhone camera if you want – so that you can drag and drop it into your expense report. I don’t know what it costs our company, but it’s a pretty sweet system.
• I was thinking about this when I saw a review for another one of those travel scanners on Gadling. There were all sorts of comments about how great it is to be able to immediately scan your receipts so you don’t lose them… But I dunno, given that most of us are carrying around multi-mega pixel cameras in our pockets – embedded in our cell phones – I just don’t get the rationale for schlepping around another hundred dollar piece of hardware. If the multi-colored folder system doesn’t do it for you – and it didn’t seem to for the many Gadling commenters who extolled the praises of scanning receipts – then take a picture of it –shoot it on a white sheet of paper if the aesthetics of, say, a wood bar bother you — and sync it back to your PC or do it across the network with any number of iPhone or Blackberry apps. I’m personally amazed that people are still buying those travel scanners.
• Mika Pyyhkala sent me a note singing the praises of Southwest. First, he loves how easy it is to gift someone with a Southwest award
  • I just had the best experience. I booked the flight I thought my friend wanted from PHX to IAD, and sent him the PNR locator. He could then log in himself under Travel Tools on the WN web site, and either view or change the itinerary to times that were more convenient. Imagine what the process would be on say UA, US, CO, or DL.
  • While the media harps on bag fees, change/cancel fees are ****exponentially*** more money and more important to me. I probably check a bag 3 times a year, but often need to change my tickets. The media does not give Southwest credit for their consumer friendly change/cancellation rules, or point out how unfriendly the legacy carriers’ rules are in regards to that.
  • I travel at least twice a month from BOS to Washington. I’ve taken 20 flights since Southwest launched the service and had only one incident where a gate agent was rude to me. I sent in a complaint and they gave me a voucher for the entire value of the ticket. And they didn’t just send a form letter — it sounded like they actually investigated the issue I raised.
  • I am knocking on wood that writing this does not now bring me bad luck.
• Mika, I have to agree with you on Southwest’s treatment. Having suffered through dealing with the crankiest set of AA gate agents and flight attendants that I’ve had in a while, it makes me appreciate the spirit and pleasantness of just about every Southwest employee I’ve encountered. My mother is a big fan of theirs too. Living in Denver, she was a loyal Frontier flyer until I gave her a Southwest award of mine that was about to expire. She came off that trip singing their praises and immediately switched her loyalties to Southwest. For Southwest, not a bad return on an free trip.
• If you have a question, a story, a comment – the voice of the traveler, send it along. The e-mail address is comments@travelcommons.com, you can send me a Twitter message at @mpeacock, or you can post them on the web site at travelcommons.com.
• Bridge Music — Opium Head by Solace

Changing the Way I Travel

• Moving from consulting to a corporate job is a significant change in so many ways — I’m not even going to try and list them all here – but the way I travel is one of the biggest changes. My new company has offices in Phoenix, AZ, Dallas, and Naples, FL – but because of personal reasons – my son is finishing up high school, trying to sell a house in this market – we agreed that I wouldn’t move from Chicago right away. As the CEO said to me, “Mark, you travel all the time as it is, why change things?”
• So while I keep traveling, the way I travel is very different. As a partner in a consulting firm, I managed multiple project teams and sold new business. This meant usually travelled to multiple places a week. At the front of each episode, I give a quick rundown of the places I’ve been since the last episode, sometimes highlighting an especially whacky itinerary – like the time I flew from Chicago to London for a day meeting – flew to Heathrow overnight, took a lunch meeting, and then hopped the afternoon flight back to Chicago – and then continued on to Denver where I drove through a blizzard to facilitate a two-day workshop. And there have been more than a handful of weeks where I spent the front half of it on the East Coast and the back half on the West Coast.
• But now, I’m traveling to one place – one of our offices – for 3-4 days at a time. You’d think that this would be less stressful – and I guess it is in some ways – not as much packing & unpacking of my bag, not as many TSA lines to grit my teeth through, not as many flight delays… But the act of travel – going to and from airports, flying, navigating to new places – fills the time.
• Without that, returning to the same hotel every night, there is empty time to fill. Work fills some of it. And you can only watch so much TV. Indeed, the travel is more like a commute, but without your family at the back end. The one saving grace of travel – experiencing new places, seeing new things – goes away.
• But talking to others about this, I appear to be one of the few people who likes to change things up on business travel. At a dinner this week, one guy talked about a recent stint of commuting between Dallas and Hong Kong 3 weeks out of 4. “Every trip, I flew the same flight, sat in the same seat, stayed at the same hotel and tried to get the same room.” Wow! We’ve talked about travelers who get in ruts before, but this guy had dug his deep and furnished it!
• But he had his reason – “After a while, the flight attendants, the hotel clerks got to know me. They’d greet me by name – ‘Hi Mr Jenkins’ – invite me to board early, upgrade my room, give me a free drink. It was nice.” In other words, he’d assembled a bit of a replacement family – some familiar faces to greet him at the end of his commute. Kinda the “Cheers” syndrome – you wanna be where everyone knows your name.
• It’s a common desire. One colleague had stayed for over a year straight at the Trumbull, CT Marriott, working on a call center project at a nearby corporation. She got the full “Cheers” treatment – greetings, upgrades, leaving laundry over the weekend, Christmas cards from the front desk staff. She was still getting cards two years later – “Come back; we miss you”. Heartfelt or kinda stalker creepy? You judge.
• I dunno – maybe I’m a bit of a misanthrope, but I’m happy with the family I’ve got. I use Skype videochat when the phone isn’t cutting it. And if I’m not getting to see new places, I’ll dig a little deeper into these places I’ll see again and again. In Phoenix, it’s been local sports – saw my first Fiesta Bowl and caught a local hockey game – which was interesting because there were more fans for the Buffalo Sabers than the home town Coyotes. Baseball spring training opens next week, so maybe I’ll get to catch a Cubs or White Sox game.
• In Florida, I make it a point to drive to a beach at least one evening. I take my shoes off and walk through the sand a bit. Haven’t gotten in the water yet, but I will soon.
• o So while the litany of destinations at the beginning of the show will get a bit more repetitive, I’ll guess I’ll have to work a bit harder to keep my travel from getting dull. If a hotel clerk greets me by name before looking up my reservation, I know it’s time to move on down the road.
• Bridge Music — Spaces by General Fuzz

New Year, New Programs

• At the start of each New Year, I take a look at my airline mileage and hotel “frequent sleeper” programs and, because all the elite “counters” for miles and nights have reset to zero, decide where I’m going to invest my time. Because for frequent travelers, it is an investment — the elite status is just as important – if not more so – than the actual points or miles.
• Most of the time, I let things ride – enjoy the status I have while building for the next year. Probably the last big change I made was swinging from American to United after I hit 2 million miles on AA. Up to that point, I had always split my miles between American and United, maintaining mid-tier status on each – Platinum on AA and Premiere Exec on UA. But hitting 2 million miles on AA meant lifetime Platinum status. Since there was nothing to lose on AA, I doubled down on UA – made 1K my first couple of years and then made Global Services in 2009.
• But now with my new job comes new destinations. I’m no longer regularly traveling to LGA, DCA, and SFO. Instead, I’m heading to DFW, Ft Myers, and PHX. ORD to DFW is AA’s trunk line – they practically have flights every hour between their two big hubs. No surprise there. But looking at Ft Myers, the only non-stops from Chicago are AA from ORD and SWA from MDW. I was surprised that there aren’t any UA non-stops. Hmmmm… Even AA’s ORD-PHX schedule is better than UA’s. I didn’t notice it when I was flying the big city routes, but it looks like UA got more aggressive than AA about taking out flight capacity. So since the New Year, I’ve swung my mileage over to AA and am working on Executive Platinum. Of course, UA made the decision a bit easier when they didn’t renew my GS status, even after I flew over 180,000 actual miles – or as the pros call it – BIS – butt-in-seat miles.
• The new job is even affecting my hotel choices. The hotels most convenient to my offices – the closest and the ones where we have the best rates – are in the Hilton chain – Hilton Suites and Doubletrees. By the end of January I had already hit Hilton Honors Silver and am on a fast track to Gold. I’ve been Marriott Platinum for 7 or 8 years, but it looks like that too will be changing.

Closing

• Closing music — iTunes link to Pictures of You by Evangeline
• OK, that’s it, that’s the end of TravelCommons podcast #82
• I hope you all enjoyed this podcast and I hope you decide to stay subscribed.
• The bridge music is from Magnatune
• If you have a story, thought, comment, gripe – the voice of the traveler — send ‘em along, text or MP3 file, to comments@travelcommons.com or to @mpeacock on Twitter, or post them on our website at travelcommons.com. Thanks to everyone who has taken the time to send in e-mails, Tweets and post comments on the website
• Follow me on Twitter
• Direct link to the show

• Intro music — Warmth by Makkina
• Coming to you today from the TravelCommons studios outside of Chicago, Illinois, back in town after a quick trip to a very snowy Philadelphia. My wife was a bit iffy about this trip – “It would be very bad if you got trapped in Phila.” But while it was a miserable weekend for travelers coming out of the East Coast, watching the stream of Twitter updates from United Airlines on Sunday, I could see them bringing the airports back on line on Sunday. Come Monday, I think there was more snow on the sidewalks of Center City Phila than on the runways at the airport. Phila was lousy at snow removal when I lived there during the late ‘80’s and it didn’t look like they’d improved much since then.
• This week continues my string of flight weeks. I’ve been flying to somewhere every week since Labor Day week – the first week of September. Since the November episode, I’ve been bouncing across the country — Phoenix, New York, LA and multiple visits to Philadelphia. I haven’t looked at my calendar, but I think at 4 months, this is the longest streak of flight weeks that I’ve had.
• In past TravelCommons episodes at this time of the year, I’d be saying that I was done traveling for the year and looking forward to lying around the house for 2 weeks. But this year is different. I won’t get a chance to break the streak – but at least it won’t be for work
• We’re going to burn off some frequent flier and frequent sleeper points the week after Christmas – heading to Honolulu and then to Kauai.
• We hadn’t really planned it. Then United launched a weird little “stealth” promotion. I got an e-mail saying that they had reserved a number of seats for mileage awards on the morning flight from Chicago to Honolulu on the 26th (Boxing Day for those in the Commonwealth) and on the afternoon flight returning on the 2nd. They were opening a special web portal at 9am on a certain day to take seat requests – 1st come, 1st serve. Then, 2 days later, they’d send you an e-mail letting you know how many seats you got, after which you had two days to call a special number and book the seats or lose them. Weird, but getting prime-time seats to Hawaii at 40,000 miles a seat – it seemed a good deal.
• And as it so happened, on the appointed day and the appointed hour when the portal opened, I was not traveling, but instead, sitting in a project room in front of my PC with a solid network connection. I put my request in for 4 seats and got ‘em. So, after Christmas, instead of scraping ice, we’ll be eating it – shaved ice, that is.
• Bridge Music — I’ll Be Home by Christmas by Kati Mac

Following Up

• Skye Ho, a long time T/C listener, pointed me to a story in the Onion that I think is very apropos for the holiday travel season – “In its ongoing effort to cut transportation costs and boost profits, United Airlines announced Tuesday that it was exploring the feasibility of herding passengers into planes and stacking them like cordwood from floor to ceiling.”
• “Research shows that we lose millions of dollars each month by having them all sit upright in individual seats for the duration of the flight,” said CEO Glenn F. Tilton, speaking to reporters at United Airlines’ corporate headquarters. “However, if we were to remove these seats, we could just sort of stack them all in there, one by one, as they file into the plane.” My flight home last week from LAX and my flight out to PHL Monday morning felt like pilot tests for this concept.
• On the website, Ray Medina responded to Arnoud Heijnis’ request for help in managing expense receipts. Ray writes –
  • My company uses SAP for our expenses. I carry an envelope to every trip with the name of the customer. Throughout the day, I place the receipts in my wallet. Then, every night I enter the information into SAP and move the receipts from my wallet to the envelope so the wallet is cleared for the next day. When I return from my trip, I scan the receipts to submit to my company along with the SAP expense summary. After I submit everything, I put the envelope in my filling cabinet.
  • It takes time to get the routine down, but once you have it, you have it!
• Thanks Ray. That’s pretty much my system, except that my company uses Oracle and I’m lucky enough to have a secretary who makes copies of the receipts for me. Other than that, my workflow is pretty much the same.
• Since the last episode, I’ve been trying Evernote on my iPhone – taking a picture of the receipt and tagging it with a couple of words. Actually, I think I lasted only about 3 days. Getting out of a cab, calculating a tip, getting my bags, checking to make sure that I didn’t forget anything (remember the thread we had going for a couple of episodes about forgetting stuff in these transitions)… taking a picture of the cab receipt was just about the last thing on my mind. I found it easier to just be disciplined about recording receipts every day or so.
• Building on last episode’s holiday travel tips, a number of listeners posted some good “201” tips – the next level up from Travel Tips 101
• Lori Humm writes
  • Don’t just pick your seat when you book your ticket; pay attention to the size of the airplane. Most of the regional jets can’t even fit a rollerbag briefcase. Every week I watch people shake their heads in disbelief as they board the plane and realize that there really is no room. And no, there’s also no room under the seat. Carry the laptop separate in a padded sleeve and be willing to surrender the bag to gate check. (Full disclosure: I’m the one that got my laptop stolen last year because I didn’t grab it out of my bag at gate check.)
• Leo Vegoda writes
  • If you cannot get a direct flight but have a choice of transit airports then choose carefully. For instance, while in past years there might not have been much difference between changing at ORD or a New York area airport on a West coast to East coast flight, ORD is definitely the best choice this year. Fewer flights and a new runway mean its on-time rankings have risen quite a bit.
• Ian Morgan writes
  • I agree wholeheartedly with your point about allowing a bit of extra time at this time of the year. It still amazes me how many of my colleagues try to do a 40 minute connection in Frankfurt in December!!
  • The simple thing that I always do is to Google the place I am going to see what’s on. Not only can it be interesting to experience different local festivities if you have a bit of downtime, it can also make the difference between missing a flight or meeting or making it on time. If there is a large festival on in the city centre, or a demonstration planned, you are going to need to allow more time to get to/from your meeting/hotel etc. Indeed, when in Athens last January, I was aware that there were almost daily clashes with police in the city centre: I changed my hotel to a downtown location. At least this way it means that you aren’t sat watching a cab meter clock up whatever local currency is in use, and you don’t have to endure the cab driver’s personal take on the situation after getting off a longhaul flight!
• Thanks to Lori, Leo and Ian for those tips –definitely 201-level “been there, done that so you don’t have to” –type advice. Good stuff.
• If you have a question, a story, a comment – the voice of the traveler, send it along. The e-mail address is comments@travelcommons.com, you can send me a Twitter message at @mpeacock, or you can post them on the web site at travelcommons.com.
• Bridge Music — Blue Christmas by Tom Keiffer

Up In the Airworld

• o In episode #78, we talked about the upcoming movie Up In The Air, where George Clooney stars as an extreme frequent flyer.
• Ever since the preview trailers hit the Web, people have been asking me — “Is this what your life is like?” So, a couple of Fridays ago, my wife and I found the one theater in Chicago showing Up in the Air (it’s in very limited release until Christmas).
• Watching the opening sequence — a montage of Ryan Bingham, the character played by George Clooney, going through his well-practiced drill of packing, checking in, and getting through security – grabbed me immediately. Pack up, zip zip zip, walk with purpose through the terminal, hit the premium check-in kiosk (which was a bit of an off-note, because any self-respecting road warrior prints their boarding pass at home so they can go directly to the security line), let the overcoat and blazer drop off your shoulders in one motion… It was like watching a replay of my Monday mornings — but with a much more attractive version of me.
• As the movie continued, I started to pick up some niggling reality problems — international business class lie-flat seats on an MD-80, an underground tram in O’Hare, Bingham doesn’t forget his hotel room number, but every time we see him going into a hotel room (usually in the company of his love interest Alex, played by Vera Farmiga) we see him juggling a half-dozen room keys – you’d think he’d pitch them during check out like the rest of us. But, except for the fact that none of Bingham’s flights seem to be delayed, the film does a good job of capturing the highs and lows of frequent business travelers.
• Bingham’s lifestyle — 322 days on the road, leaving him “43 miserable days at home” in Omaha — is a common one for young road warriors. Bingham’s empty apartment in Omaha looks almost exactly like my first apartment in Dallas, except that Bingham’s has more stuff – I had a futon and a stereo in the living room, and a mattress and box spring on the floor.
• Most young frequent travelers enjoy this freedom for 3-5 years — I’ve had staff flying to, say, Amsterdam for the weekend instead going back to an empty apartment in Chicago, or, when on a project in Europe, use their home leave allowance to visit Morocco rather than their belongings in Cleveland. But eventually, they settle into relationships and a more settled way of life.
• I do know a number of guys, though, (and they are all men) who never make that transition. They continue to live their lives in the air, using business dinners and client meetings as stand-ins for more meaningful relationships; motion – a meeting in Orlando, a dinner in Tampa, another meeting in New York, a dinner in Philadelphia – as a reason for being – as Bingham says “we’re sharks, not swans.” Their biggest fear is the same as Bingham’s — that one day the music will stop, the travel will end, and that they’ll be in stuck in an empty apartment with no way out.
• In one of Bingham’s motivational talks, he says “Relationships are the heaviest components of your life”, counseling his audience to avoid them because they slow you down. You can’t live a life in the air when you’re weighed down by relationships.
• If the front half of the movie snaps with the efficiency of a frequent traveler, the back half shows the dark side. Millions of frequent flier miles later, Bingham is dragging himself through airports with a little less crispness, weighed down by disappointment and loneliness. The melancholy air that pervades the movie is real. It is the same sense of melancholy that rules airports late on a Friday night — when the real-world Binghams are walking off their planes, looking forward to nothing more than their Monday morning flights out.
• Bridge Music — Walk A Thousand Miles by Matthew Ebel

Security Potpourri

• It’s the last episode of the year or maybe I’m getting a bit of an early jump on the “hang loose” ethos of Hawaii, but I had some bits-and -pieces of recent experiences with airport security that I can’t get “grow up” into a stand-alone topic, so instead, here’s a bit of a Jeopardy-like “potpourri” topic.
• Last year – July of 2008 to be exact – the Ponemon Institute – any relation to Pokemon? – issued a research report that claimed 12,000 laptops are lost every week in US airports. I wrote a post that was a bit skeptical of the numbers – “I’ve never lost a laptop,” I wrote, “and I don’t know anyone who has lost one in an airport. I know people who’ve had them stolen out of rental cars, who’ve left them in a plane’s overhead bin, but no one who has lost one in an airport.”
• That is, until one of my recent trips out of ORD when I watched an older gentleman in front of me in security put on his shoes and walk off to his gate. Repacking my briefcase, I saw his PC sitting there – lost and forlorn – in a grey bin.
• I know how it happened. He had unpacked everything on the X-ray belt and headed over to the metal detector, but was sent back because he still had his shoes on. I saw a yellow Lufthansa boarding pass in his hand and guessed that he was European – used to taking his belt off, but not his shoes. I had already started feeding my bags into the X-ray, so we slotted his shoes between my bins. On the other side of security, he must’ve been distracted by trying to find his shoes and forgot about his laptop.
• I flagged down a TSA screener, pointed out the forgotten PC and the gentleman walking away down the terminal. She ran after the man and brought him back. He looked at the PC, then opened his briefcase – nice PC sleeve, but it was missing a key component. The TSA screener looked at me and said, “Thank you soo much”. I sensed that I saved her the hassle of filling out a lot of paper work.
• I recently paid $30 to avoid my own TSA hassles. My Illinois driver’s license was up for renewal and, because I hadn’t run into anything in that past 4 years, all I had to do was send in a form and they’d mail me back a 4-year renewal sticker to put on the back of my license. Nice, convenient service – except that the last time I did that, I spent the next 4 years telling TSA screeners and rental car booth bodies that – no, my license hasn’t expired, flip it over and you’ll see the renewal. It’s not really their fault – they’re just reacting to an expiry date on the face of the license. But avoiding that explanation every week for the next 4 years… it seemed worth it to make the extra visit to the DMV. The only downside – other than the $30 – a really bad driver’s license picture that will stick with me for the next 4 years.
• And then, on one of my recent trips to LAX, I was standing outside Terminal 7 waiting for the Avis bus, and an airport cop tells me to “move down a bit”. There’s a suspicious package sitting on the bench nearby. Suspicious? How far down did I need to move? The cops didn’t look too worried – they were standing right by it. Their dog didn’t look like he was reacting to anything. So I slid down half the island behind a big concrete truss – far enough, I figured, to miss the major force of any blast, but not so far that I’d miss the rental bus.

Closing

• Closing music — iTunes link to Pictures of You by Evangeline
• OK, that’s it, that’s the end of TravelCommons podcast #81
• I hope you all enjoyed this podcast and I hope you decide to stay subscribed.
• The bridge music is from Mevio’s Music Alley
• If you have a story, thought, comment, gripe – the voice of the traveler — send ‘em along, text or MP3 file, to comments@travelcommons.com or to @mpeacock on Twitter, or post them on our website at travelcommons.com. Thanks to everyone who has taken the time to send in e-mails, Tweets and post comments on the website
• Follow me on Twitter
• Direct link to the show

Watching the opening sequence — a montage of Ryan Bingham (George Clooney) going through his well-practiced drill of packing, checking in, and getting through security — was shockingly realistic.  It was like watching a replay of my Monday mornings, but with a much more attractive version of me.  As the movie continued, I started to pick up some niggling continuity problems — international business class seats on an MD-80, an underground tram in O’Hare.  But, except for the lack of any flight delays, the film does a good job of capturing the highs and lows of frequent business travelers.

Bingham’s lifestyle — 322 days on the road, leaving him “43 miserable days at home” in Omaha — is a common one for young road warriors.  Bingham’s empty apartment in Omaha looks almost exactly like my first apartment in Dallas, except that Bingham’s has more than one piece of furniture in the living room, and his mattress and box spring are in a bed frame rather than on the floor.

Most young frequent travelers enjoy this freedom for 3-5 years — flying to, say, Amsterdam for the weekend instead of their empty apartment — but eventually settle into relationships and a more settled way of life.  I do know a number of guys, though, (and they are all men) who never make that transition.  They continue to live their lives in the air, using business dinners and client meetings as substitutes for more meaningful relationships.  Their biggest fear is Bingham’s — that one day the music will stop, the travel will end, and that they’ll be in stuck in an empty apartment with no way out.

In one of Bingham’s motivational talks, he says “Relationships are the heaviest components of your life”, counseling his audience to avoid them because they slow you down. You can’t live a life in the air when you’re weighed down by relationships.  But millions of frequent flier miles later, Bingham is dragging himself through airports with a little less snap, weighed down by disappointment and loneliness.  The melancholy air that pervades the movie is real.  It’s the same sense of melancholy that rules airports late on a Friday night when the real-world Binghams walking off their planes, looking forward to nothing more than their Monday morning flights out.

• Intro music — Warmth by Makkina
• Coming to you today from the Courtyard in Downtown Philadelphia – just kitty corner from the amazing piece of architecture that is Philadelphia’s City Hall. Whether you think it’s impressive or impressively kitsch, there are few city halls that are so “in the center of things” as Philadelphia’s.
• The Thanksgiving travel season just seems to keep getting longer – more smeared out. Walking to my car in ORD last Friday afternoon after three incessantly rainy days in Seattle, I could see the holiday traffic already starting to build – lots of families, small kids pulling junior-sized rolling bags. I dunno, if you’re going to have your kid play business traveler, why not go all the way, get them a black or charcoal grey half-sized Tumi and let them feel the power the way that the primary colors of the Dora the Explorer bag will never let them experience.
• Me, I just want to feel the power of that tryptophan high from Thanksgiving Day turkey, maybe extending it with leftovers through the weekend, just being a couch slug until next Monday, when I have to fight with the tail end of the smeared-out holiday travel traffic and head back west again.
• Bridge Music — Miss America by Beyond 7

Following Up

• Just to continue on my rental car rant from the last episode, I booked a car a couple of weeks ago in LAX — $19 daily rate, but with an additional $15 in taxes & surcharges. 44% of the total cost was taxes & surcharges. Go figure.
• Arnoud Heijnis, a long time T/C listener, sent me a note earlier this month with the subject line – Expense Mayhem:
  • Work has forced me in to being a frequent traveller and although I’ve got most basics down and start to enjoy the efficiency I have made my own. However there is one thing that I still need to master. It may sound simple and you might think “what’s the deal” but I have a challenge doing and keeping track of my expenses.
  • I know most people carry one of those transparent filing sleeves, as do I, however I continuously get caught off guard, especially when going from trip in to trip, which my company wants to see split. I have tried many things, apps for the iPhone, apps for the BlackBerry, different filing folders etc. But haven’t gotten to a system which is really satisfactory to me.
  • My challenge is that I have receipts coming in from events in the evening when I don’t have my laptop bag at hand, at the airport, hotels, different settings etc. When I finally hit my desk for the two days of doing expenses I try to decipher the mayhem of receipts, hotel bills, car rental printouts etc. I’m usually pretty successful however feel that I’m not as efficient as I could be.
  • I was wondering if you could enlighten me with some tips and tricks from a seasoned traveller
• Arnoud, thanks for the question. Keeping track of your travel expenses, and then getting them accurately into whatever system your company uses for reimbursement is a question close to the hearts and wallets of every frequent traveler. I average $5-10,000/month in travel expenses, so it’s real money to me. And there’s more than once where I missed filing a couple hundred dollar receipt, which then reinforces that uncertainty – am I getting paid back for everything I buy?
• I’m probably at the low-tech end of the scale. I use the transparent sleeves that Arnoud mentions, as well as a specific sleeve in my wallet that’s reserved for receipts I collect when I don’t have my briefcase with me – for taxi receipts, parking receipts, restaurant receipts. I also keep a business card in there (because it’s a nice fit) where I jot down cash expenditures – these are the ones I forget the most.
• I’ve known a couple of folks who’ve tried Evernote on their iPhones – taking a picture of a receipt and then tagging it with the right project or account. I dunno – I keep thinking about trying it, but it never gets above the B level on my to-do list, which means it doesn’t get done.
• The method of capture, though, isn’t near as important as the discipline of doing data entry every day, or every other day max. You can re-create your day, even yesterday in your mind. But wait ‘til the weekend, and, unless you’re an elephant, you’re hosed. I get into trouble when I wait ‘til the end of the week to bang in my expenses. Every other day over an end-of-the–day beer is a best practice for me.
• If any other listeners have suggestions for Arnoud, please send them in or post them as comments to the website.
• Leo Vegoda sent me a link to a story from the beginning of November about a Phoenix couple that’ve been stealing luggage from SkyHarbor airport since 2005! The couple is accused of stealing nearly 1,000 items. After searching the couple’s 14-room home, a Phoenix detective said “there were suitcases everywhere. Floor to ceiling. Everywhere”.
• In his note, Leo pointed out an interesting fact in the story – “Most of the luggage is reportedly black and similar looking” – referring to my riff on replacing my squeaky wheeled bag – “not sure if going for black sounds like a good idea”
• It definitely wasn’t a good idea for a new colleague. Vishal was traveling to every week to DC for a project – the usual consulting grind – take the 6am American flight from O’Hare to Reagan National, catch the Metro to the client, crank all day, check into the hotel around 7, go out to dinner, and then hit the sack. So it was probably around 9:30 or 10pm when Vishal finally discovered that he’d pulled someone else’s black roller bag – same color, same model — out of the overhead bin of the morning flight – some 12-13 hours ago.
• Sometime the next day, Vishal got reconnected with his black bag. He found the owner’s business card in one of the front pockets (an important travel tip for you new road warriors out there) and connected with him at lunch. Over the past two podcasts, we’ve talked about forgetting things in that moment of transition – when you’re leaving the plane or the rental car. Facing an overhead bin full of black bags after getting up at 3:30am to make the 6am flight… That afternoon, Vishal walked down to a tourist store in DC, bought himself a little red & blue Obama bandana and tied it around the handle of his bag. Not a political statement. In this case, I think the “Change” on the bandana refers to fresh underwear.
• If you have a question, a story, a comment – the voice of the traveler, send it along. The e-mail address is comments@travelcommons.com, you can send me a Twitter message at @mpeacock, or you can post them on the web site at travelcommons.com.
• Bridge Music — On Condition of Anonymity by the West Exit

Holiday Travel Tips

• A little over a year ago – episode #68 to be precise – I did a piece that I called “Road Warrior 201” where I skipped the usual tips – don’t check luggage unless you absolutely have to, wear loafers or slip-on shoes make security screening easier – and gave some of my intermediate level, I guess non-obvious tips. Listening to the holiday travel tips in the most recent episode of Craig and Linda Martin’s Indie Travel Podcast – where they gave the TravelCommons podcast a nice shout-out – made me think about re-visiting the topic in time for the holiday travel season.
• Over my last couple of trips – returning from Seattle and this flight out to Phila – I paid attention to the families, the ones getting a jump on the Thanksgiving holiday. The families that made it through the terminal and through security were the ones who were paying attention. The parents took advantage of the time in the security lines and prepped their kids. They had the Nintendos already put away in the backpacks, their coats off and their shoe laces undone. They got their kids’ attention – putting away the Nintendos is probably a good help – told them what they needed to do, so that when the kids got to the screening station, they weren’t wandering around — they were loading up their bins and ready to walk through the metal detector. Even the most hardened business traveler will give a family with young kids a break if they look like they’re trying. So the tip – make good use of the long security lines – get prepared.
• One of the “201” tips from last year’s podcast was to factor in the potential costs of a missed connection due to weather – when you’re responsible for room and board – when choosing between a connecting or a direct flight. If you tried, but you’re stuck with a connection, as we come into the winter season – at least in the Northern Hemisphere – give that connection a bit of space. In hubs like Denver or Dallas, airlines will offer connection times of as little as 45 minutes. Don’t take it! Think about it – that means you have 15 minutes to get off your plane packed with once-a-year holiday travelers, weave through the terminal packed with families wandering along four-a-breast, and find your gate before your flight begins to board. Any sort of traffic or weather delay and that 15 minutes is gone. Give yourself a holiday break and save the stress — go for the 90-minute connection. Worst case, you have an extra 45 minutes to read a book or grab a beer. Cheap insurance against sleeping on the airport floor.
• Another stress reliever – if you’re on a direct flight or on the final leg to your designation, don’t sweat about getting your carry-on into the cabin. On winter holiday flights, if you’re seating area 3 or higher – odds are, between winter coats and packed flights – there’s no overhead bin space for you. Let the agent gate-check the bag for you. You won’t have to pay a checked bag fee and it’s very unlikely that they’ll lose your bag – it’s only traveling a couple hundred feet from the jet bridge to the luggage bay. Yes, it’ll add 30-45 minutes at the end of your trip waiting at the luggage carousel, but popping a vein in frustration will shorten your life at lot more than that.
• Another “201” tip from last year — if you have to call an airline or hotel and you don’t have a special status 1K or Platinum number, choose the unpopular path on the phone tree. Travel companies don’t staff their customer service centers for peak loads – like the day when a Chicago blizzard cancels 400 flights. It’s too expensive. So on those days, you’ll wait forever for an agent if you’ve followed the typical path down the phone tree. On those days, choose the “Spanish” or “Int’l Travel” option because most everyone else is choosing English and domestic travel. Once you connect with someone, they’ll take care of you. They all work on the same systems in the same service centers.
• But, above all, be realistic – it’s going to be crowded. Steel yourself for it, get your inner karma tuned for it, and give yourself extra time. Figure out how much time it’ll take and add another 50%. At worst, you’ll have some extra time to watch the planes take off. But it’ll allow you to breathe a bit easier when the snow begins to fall
• Bridge Music — Subtle Vice by Solace

Frequent Flyer — The Documentary

• In episode #78, we talked about the upcoming movie Up In The Air, where George Clooney stars as an extreme frequent flyer. Dave of the Sand and Tsunamis blog left a comment on the TravelCommons website pointing to a 20-minute documentary about “mileage junkies” called, fittingly enough, Frequent Flyer. I caught up with the creator, Gabriel Leigh, over Skype and talked to him about his film.
• Interview with Gabriel Leigh
• Gabriel’s documentary Frequent Flyer can be found on the Vimeo video site. And on Weds, Nov 25th, a 13-minute version of the film will be on the PBS FrontLine site. Watch it – I think you’ll enjoy it.

Closing

• Closing music — iTunes link to Pictures of You by Evangeline
• OK, that’s it, that’s the end of TravelCommons podcast #80
• I hope you all enjoyed this podcast and I hope you decide to stay subscribed.
• The bridge music is from Magnatune, the we are not evil label. Miss America by Beyond 7, On Condition of Anonymity by the West End, and Subtle Vice by Solace. You can find these and more at magnatunes.com.
• If you have a story, thought, comment, gripe – the voice of the traveler — send ‘em along, text or MP3 file, to comments@travelcommons.com or to @mpeacock on Twitter, or post them on our website at travelcommons.com. Thanks to everyone who has taken the time to send in e-mails, Tweets and post comments on the website
• Follow me on Twitter
• Direct link to the show

• Intro music — Warmth by Makkina
• Coming to you today from the TravelCommons studios outside of Chicago, Illinois, at the end of one of those travel weeks where I lost control of my schedule – the 6am flight to DC on Monday, the 6:30am flight to Houston on Tuesday by way of Dallas, the 6:30pm flight to LA, and then, refusing to take the red-eye, returning home Friday afternoon. Makes next week’s 4 days in Washington seem like a cake walk.
• Seems like I’m getting more of those.Two weeks ago, my travel week was Monday in Stamford, CT; Tuesday in Providence, RI; Wednesday in Philadelphia; Thursday back in Chicago, and then Friday in San Diego, returning at 6:30am Saturday courtesy of the red eye. I used to be able to sleep on red eyes, but not so much anymore. And with a flight time between LAX and ORD of less than 4 hrs, there’s not a lot of time for sleep – even after scoring a first class upgrade. I was pretty worthless on Saturday – I went straight to bed after getting home and then took a nap later in the afternoon. The red-eye is false economy – I’m not saving time; just snowplowing the problem into the next day. Hence, my lack of enthusiasm for another red-eye this week.
• I will say this, though. With winter coming in Chicago, I’m starting to look around for strategically located clients – Miami, Phoenix, LA. There are times when travel does have its rewards.
• Bridge Music — You Are The Reason by C. Layne

Following Up

• Robert Fenerty dropped us a line giving his point-of-view on many of the things covered in the last TravelCommons episode:
  • Mark, aboard a flight to Prague, and with 5 weeks of international travel ahead of me, I’m also peering ahead to Thanksgiving. On the other hand, I’ll soon have United 1k status and am looking forward to seeing Versailles, Madrid, and the Dominican Republic. As for keeping touch with my family, I really enjoy giving people a “Skype tour” of my hotel room. I find that the wet running clothes or the ironing board next to the TV provide an easy segue to the events of the day. I’m lucky enough to have a client that pays for resort hotels, so there’s usually something interesting to see and talk about. That could be a dinner plate-sized showerhead or a view of a golf course.
  • As for losing things and making mistakes, my weakness is at the moments of transition. As I leave the car to enter the shuttle, my mind is racing ahead to claim check, the coupon, the passport, and the luggage in the trunk. But not the headlights, which I’ve left on. Perhaps the answer is to pause, consider the requirements of the moment, and not the future. Incidentally, the parking attendant who jumped my car told me about a Prius that idled on and off in their parking lot for a week before running out of gas.
• Bob, thanks for the note. Reading your itinerary — Versailles, Madrid, and the Dominican Republic – I get a bit jealous. But then I recall times when I had trip itineraries of Paris, London, Dublin, Zurich and other folks would say “Oh, that’s so glamorous”, but the reality was that I was spending my days in Paris, London, Dublin, and Zurich in conference rooms that looked very much like conference rooms in Cleveland, Nashville, Indianapolis, and Atlanta – except with different brands of bottled water and no air-conditioning. Of course, I’m hoping Robert is doing a much better job of work-life balance than I did.
• Leo Vegoda “@-signed” me on a Tweet from Seoul’s Inchon airport. Leo wrote – “Check in & security at ICN a breeze. Noodles and beancurd delicious. LAX are you listening?”
• I was thinking about this when I walked into LAX Friday morning for my flight back to Chicago. The lines in Terminal 7 were a zoo at all the screening stations. It looked like a number of Japanese and Mexican tourists weren’t completely clear on the TSA’s 3-1-1 liquid carry-on limits. I saw 1 TSA screener fill an entire gray bin with liquids – toothpaste, shampoo, water bottle, sour cream (?) – from one family. Another woman kept unlocking and relocking her pink rolling bag to pull things out – first, her PC, then a bottle of water, then a jar of honey (?). It was not pretty.
• Of course, a big part of this is LAX with all its little terminals hanging off the access road, and none of them with enough real estate to house a proper screening set up.
• Walking into this, I took a deep breath – I wasn’t tight on time, but shuffling through security lines wasn’t the way I wanted to start the day. Sometimes when the main floor of Terminal 7 is bad, I’ll go up to the screening station on the bridge over from the parking garage. I went to ask Airserv women – the contractors at the start of the line checking boarding passes – if that line was any shorter and she spotted the Global Services mark on my United boarding pass and said “But you’re Global Services so you don’t have to worry about that.” She took my boarding pass and driver’s license, walked me past all the lines, dropped the line tape, gave my boarding pass to the TSA guy and escorted me right to an X-ray machine. It was the ultimate – and very timely – line cut. No noodles and beancurd like Leo had (a bit too early for that), but it did give me time to grab a cappuccino before getting on my flight home. And reinforced, once again, the value of being “super elite”
• I’ve talked in past podcasts about using white noise applications to drown out the cabin noise that my Bose noise-canceling headphones don’t cover. I use a couple of applications on my iPhone – White Noise and Naturespace. White Noise was the first one I used – I liked their Amazon rain forest.
• But then I flipped over to Naturespace because I thought the stereo quality, “aural spacing” of the sound in the headphones was a good bit better. But now I’m back to White Noise after the latest upgrade because I really like one of the new sounds – the Tibetan Singing Bowl.
• Maybe it’s just me, but this is the perfect white noise for me. Others I’ve played it for thought it sounded like a huge swarm of mosquitoes, but it’s come in very handy on the string of 6am Monday morning flights I recently had.
• And just a quick note, for those of you who check out the show notes, I’ve switched over from summary bullet points to more of a transcript. It’s a lot more words, but actually a good bit easier for me. Since the show is usually just me talking – as opposed to many other shows that are interviews or conversations among multiple hosts – I script out a good bit of my show. That may be disappointing to those who thought I was naturally this glib, but it saves me a lot of post-production time – editing out ums, ahs, and narrative dead-ends. Since I have the script, I figured that copy-pasting it is easier than trying to summarize it – sort of the show notes version of Mark Twain’s “I’d have written a shorter letter if I had the time”. So anyhow, starting with TravelCommons #78, you can wade through the gory details of each show by clicking through the “Read the rest of this entry” to the show notes page.
• If you have a question, a story, a comment – the voice of the traveler, send it along. The e-mail address is comments@travelcommons.com, you can send me a Twitter message at @mpeacock, or you can post them on the web site at travelcommons.com.
• Bridge Music — Fire In The Day’s Field by the Seldon Plan

Skipping the Rental Car

• Two weeks ago, I had to get from downtown Washington DC to a Northern Virginia suburb for a client dinner. I looked at the Metro map, rang up some car services, but finally gritted my teeth and rented a car. That’s pretty much my attitude toward car rentals these days — the choice of last resort. It wasn’t always this way. But with cost and fee increases, shrinking fleets, and more inconvenient locations, I work hard to skip the rental car counter.
• The biggest issue is cost. Rental car prices have soared — increasing an average of 60-70% over last year. But prices are just part of the story. Additional fees and taxes can add another 50% to the number that finally hits your credit card. The concession recovery fee that airports and train stations charge is usually one of the bigger charges. Avis hit me with 11.11% concession recovery fees on recent trips through Seattle-Tacoma and LAX airports, and a 10% fee for renting at Philadelphia’s 30th Street train station. Picking up the car in town doesn’t always dodge this fee. Hertz leveled a 13% concession recovery fee on a rental from the San Francisco Marriott hotel. On top of that, the rental companies add on a customer facility charge, a vehicle licensing fee, and an energy recovery fee. And then the state and local governments’ turn. My Sea-Tac rental receipt shows a 9.5% sales tax plus a 9.7% rental tax. California adds 3.5% tourism assessment fee. My Philadelphia rental had 4% passenger car rental tax (split between the state and the city) plus a $2/day state surcharge. Just across these four examples, fees and taxes added 27-51% to the final cost of my rental.
• Another problem is being able to get a car. The easiest way for rental car companies to make more money is to increase each car’s utilization — the number of days it’s rented. Makes sense, but when demand for cars increases just a bit, the pickings start to get slim. Last month, I flew from LAX to Washington-Dulles and planned to rent a car because it would be a bit cheaper than the round-trip cost of a cab to/from DC. I landed at Dulles around midnight. Wheeling my bag across the empty Avis Preferred parking spaces, I saw a huge Ford F150 4×4 King Cab pick-up truck. ”They can’t be serious,” I thought. Oh yes, they were — that was their idea of the intermediate size car I had requested. This wasn’t going to fit in a parking garage in downtown DC. I walked back to the rental bus and asked the driver to take me to the taxi line.
• Of course, the drive back to the airport taxi line wasn’t a short one because airport authorities have been aggressively relocating rental car companies to “improved” consolidated facilities that are a 15-20 minute drive from the airport. Frequent travelers work hard to reduce the time spent getting from one point to another — maintaining airline status so they can use the short security line, carrying on their bags so they don’t have to wait by the luggage carousel. Renting a car used to be a quick transaction — walk off the plane, across to the parking lot, and into your rental car. It’s still that way at smaller airports like Nashville and Little Rock, but at airports like Cleveland, Baltimore-Washington, and Phoenix, you need to pack a lunch.
• I used to enjoy renting cars. Now, I avoid it. Hikes in prices and fees have made taxis and private car services more competitive, and moves to push rental lots way off property have made the alternatives a lot more convenient. Last year, at the tipping point where the cost of rental car was the same or maybe even a bit more than the cost of a taxi, I’d take the rental car. I enjoyed the flexibility of having a car, and even looked forward to finding a fun car in the Avis lot or under the Hertz Gold canopy. Now, I’ll pay extra to avoid them. While I work every year to make sure I keep my Marriott Platinum status, I fell out of Hertz’s President’s Circle without a care.
• Bridge Music — White Oak by Fernwood

The Best Way to Drop Wires

• Working in airplanes, airports, hotels, Starbucks, and the back seats of taxis, frequent travelers are always trying to figure out the best way to work wirelessly.
• This week, Boingo introduced an app on the BlackBerry platform for its WiFi service. At first, I didn’t think much of it, but then I got thinking – why would I want WiFi if I have 3G? I see more and more 3G modems hanging off of laptops. Is WiFi fading out?
• I spoke with Christian Gunning of Boingo and asked him just this question as I was sitting in Houston-Hobby airport waiting for my flight to LA
• “It’s not an either/or,” he said, “the two technologies are complimentary.” In high-traffic/high-“loiter” areas like airports, 3G cells get maxed out by people entertaining themselves with streaming multimedia. While one cell can handle 600 voice calls, data quickly consumes those slots, pushing the capacity down to 50-80 calls. Moving that streaming data over to a Boingo WiFi hot spot gives much better throughput.
• Makes sense, but what about the cost? I can get a 3G mobile plan from AT&T or Verizon for $60/month. I can get close to that in a couple of days with WiFi – paying $10 for a day pass in the airport, another $10 at Starbucks, and then another $10 in the hotel at night.
• Christian pointed out that Boingo’s monthly WiFi plan costs $10 for unlimited bandwidth – as compared to the 5GB caps typical for 3G modems –covers 58 airports, Starbucks, McDonald’s, and many hotels. Their smartphone plan – for iPhones and Blackberries – is 2 bucks cheaper. And as they continue to sign reciprocal agreements with other network companies, their coverage expands.
• He makes a compelling case for the continued relevance of WiFi – it’s built into every recent laptop, its higher bandwidth is better for multimedia, and the performance isn’t as variable as 3G.
• My cut at it is – unfortunately, a frequent traveler needs both. WiFi is great when you’re sitting in an airport or in a Starbucks; it’s no good when you’re inside the airplane waiting to take off or in long cab ride – because you’ve sworn off rental cars – or in a hotel with lousy broadband, because it’s not just 3G cells that can get flooded with streaming videos of , uh, artistic content.

Closing

• Closing music — iTunes link to Pictures of You by Evangeline
• OK, that’s it, that’s the end of TravelCommons podcast #79
• I hope you all enjoyed this podcast and I hope you decide to stay subscribed.
• The bridge music is from Magnatune, the we are not evil label. You Are the Reason by C Layne, Fire in the Day’s Field by the Seldon Plan, and White Oak by Fernwood. You can find these and more at magnatunes.com.
• If you have a story, thought, comment, gripe – the voice of the traveler — send ‘em along, text or MP3 file, to comments@travelcommons.com or to @mpeacock on Twitter, or post them on our website at travelcommons.com. Thanks to everyone who has taken the time to send in e-mails, Tweets and post comments on the website
• Follow me on Twitter
• Direct link to the show

The biggest issue is cost.  Rental car prices have soared — increasing an average of 60-70% over last year.  But prices are just part of the story.  Additional fees and taxes can add another 50% to the number that finally hits your credit card.  The concession recovery fee that airports and train stations charge is usually one of the bigger charges.   Avis hit me with 11.11% concession recovery fees on recent trips through Seattle-Tacoma and LAX airports, and a 10% fee for renting at Philadelphia’s 30th Street train station.  Picking up the car in town doesn’t always dodge this fee.  Hertz leveled a 13% concession recovery fee on a rental from the San Francisco Marriott hotel. On top of that, the rental companies add on a customer facility charge, a vehicle licensing fee, and an energy recovery fee.  And then the state and local governments’ turn.  My Sea-Tac rental receipt shows a 9.5% sales tax plus a 9.7% rental tax.  California adds 3.5% tourism assessment fee.  My Philadelphia rental had 4% passenger car rental tax (split between the state and the city) plus a $2/day state surcharge.  Just across these four examples, fees and taxes added 27-51% to the final cost of my rental.

Another problem is being able to get a car.  The easiest way for rental car companies to make more money is to increase each car’s utilization — the  number of days it’s rented.  Makes sense, but when demand for cars increases just a bit, the pickings start to get slim.  Last month, I flew from LAX to Washington-Dulles and planned to rent a car because it would be a bit cheaper than the round-trip cost of a cab to/from DC.  I landed at Dulles around midnight.  Wheeling my bag across the empty Avis Preferred parking spaces, I saw a huge Ford F150 4×4 King Cab pick-up truck.  ”They can’t be serious,” I thought.  Oh yes, they were — that was their idea of the intermediate size car I had requested.  This wasn’t going to fit in a parking garage in downtown DC.  I walked back to the rental bus and asked the driver to take me to the taxi line.

Of course, the drive back to the airport taxi line wasn’t a short one because airport authorities have been aggressively relocating rental car companies to “improved” consolidated facilities that are a 15-20 minute drive from the airport.  Frequent travelers work hard to reduce the time spent getting from one point to another — maintaining airline status so they can use the short security line, carrying on their bags so they don’t have to wait by the luggage carousel.  Renting a car used to be a quick transaction — walk off the plane, across to the parking lot, and into your rental car.  It’s still that way at smaller airports like Nashville and Little Rock, but at airports like Cleveland, Baltimore-Washington, and Phoenix, you need to pack a lunch.

I used to enjoy renting cars.  Now, I avoid it.  Hikes in prices and fees have made taxis and private car services more competitive, and moves to push rental lots way off property have made the alternatives a lot more convenient. Last year, at the tipping point where the cost of rental car was the same or maybe even a bit more than the cost of a taxi, I’d take the rental car. I enjoyed the flexibility of having a car, and even looked forward to finding a fun car in the Avis lot or under the Hertz Gold canopy. Now, I’ll pay extra to avoid them. While I work every year to make sure I keep my Marriott Platinum status, I fell out of Hertz’s President’s Circle without a care.

Here’s a direct link to the podcast file.

• Intro music — Warmth by Makkina
• Coming to you today from the TravelCommons studios outside of Chicago, Illinois. It was a light travel week for me this week – just out to Philadelphia for Tuesday, Weds, and Thurs and then back to Chicago, but a heavy work week, which unfortunately pushed this episode of TC out from my intended recording date of Weds, Sept 30th to today.
• Looking at my calendar, I find myself in the midst of one of my 6-week-straight sets of travel. It started 2 weeks ago when I had to be in LA and DC the same week – I just hate doing the transcon thing in the middle of the week. Last week was Philadelphia and NYC – not too bad. Next week, DC and Boston, then another week in Philadelphia, and then another LA and DC week. The way it’s looking, I’m going to be traveling every week until Thanksgiving.
• Which is, of course, the perfect time for my suitcase to break. I think I mentioned a couple episodes ago that the bearing on one of the wheels is shot, giving me a nice “Squeak, Squeak” soundtrack as I walk down the airport concourse or go trundling through a prospect’s office space as I did last week in NYC. It was embarrassing – lots of “prairie dogging” – heads popping up from the cube field, looking to see who’s making that annoying sound. There’s a sure-fire sales technique for you.
• But now one of the handle supports has broken, making the suitcase twist every time I pull it onto a plane or cross a street, and making it just about impossible to attach my computer bag to it. So I’m going to have to suck it up and buy a new suitcase.
• It’s not like I haven’t gotten a lot of mileage out of this bag – 6 years at, say, 100,000 miles a year. Or that it cost me a lot – maybe $200 at a TJ Maxx. And it’s held up better than a colleague’s $700 Tumi – his is only 4 yrs old and last week dropped an entire wheel sub-assembly – the wheel and all the surrounding bits that keep it in the bag – while he was sprinting for a flight in LGA.
• No, it’s just the hassle. And how excited can you get shopping for my umpteenth black 22-inch rolling bag. Maybe I’ll go for a new color – something that will stand out in the overhead bin, something that will express some individuality – something like, I dunno, navy blue!
• Bridge Music — Making Circles by the Seldon Plan

Following Up

• Sometimes when you’re traveling and things start to go sideways, you want to vent – just blow off your frustration – but to whom? Certainly not to any airline personnel – at best, you’ll be ignored; at worst, you’ll be kicked off the plane and/or arrested. If you’re traveling with a colleague, you can kvetch a bit, but too much and you look like a whiner – not a reputation that will propel you far up the career ladder.
• For me, Twitter has become a little bolt hole into which I can scream my frustrations – from broken United planes to the conga line of frustrations that is Washington’s Dulles airport, I package my woes up in 140 characters and shove them into the Twitter-verse. Has probably made a few of you guys “un-follow” me, but that’s OK. It’s a small price to avoid getting busted by those gentle and caring guys who populate the Chicago police force.
• For Lori Humm, a longtime TravelCommons listener, the TravelCommons comments section can provide a needed outlet. Reacting to the latest addition to the TSA’s security play-acting, Lori writes…

Mark – I’m about to lose my mind. Apparently, my airport, Richmond, is about to be the test bed for ANOTHER level of security. We already have the body scanning machines and now this – screening of powders.

I’d love to hear your thoughts on the addition of powders to security, especially given your pride (and constant defense of) your tooth powder! I moved to using all powder cosmetics to avoid carrying any liquids at all, and am starting to resign myself to being make-up free if that’s what it take to avoid being sidelined for additional screening.

By the way – still doing the Richmond-to-Baton Rouge weekly haul – this makes my 15th month. If that doesn’t make someone lose their mind, this additional screening certainly will.

• You know the TSA just doesn’t get it when they announced the powder screening as Implementing New Enhanced Threat Detection Capability . In the TSA’s blog, Blogger Bob, as defensive and oblivious as usual, says “We haven’t received any specific threats that led us to this new procedure” , but we thought it made sense to put in place some new annoyances for travelers and get some practice in before the holidays. Just kidding – about the last bit. Blogger Bob did actually write that, unlike the liquid ban, there’s nothing specific that caused them to launch this powder parade accompaniment to the shoe carnival. I’m not so sure that my snarky annoyance comment is too far from the truth.
• But, having said that, I’ve yet to see anybody get flagged over for a powder check. I have seen a bit of an increase in random wipe-&-tests – the guy behind me Tuesday at Midway had his shoes wiped and I had my computer bag wiped at ORD last month, but that’s not a big thing. No unpacking and re-packing bags, no rustling through your toiletries kit – just a couple wipes on the outside surface with a test pad and they run it through what I guess is some sort of spectrograph. Takes 1 minute – they’re usually done before I get my shoes re-tied.
• I gotta say, though, that the tougher part of that note is the 15 straight months of flying between Richmond and Baton Rouge. I may complain a bit about flying from LA to DC, but 15 months of connecting through Atlanta, think about it – Hartsfield twice a week – I’m not sure anybody should be hassling Lori about anything.
• And the final follow-up, we’ve have an ongoing thread through it seems like most of this year’s episodes about in-flight electronics. Flying out here to Philadelphia on Southwest Tuesday morning – OK, I know that I said that I wouldn’t fly SW again for a long time after they left me hanging in Little Rock, but they’ve got a double credit promo going right how and I have 12 flight credits in the bank, so with this trip, I’ll get the 4 more credits I need for a free ticket, which I’ll then give to my mother for a spring trip to visit us, so, in the vein of “don’t cut your nose off to spite your face”, suck it up if you’re close to a free ticket.
• So, anyhow, in the back of SW’s in-flight magazine, they had the best layout of allowed in-flight electronics of any airline. Whereas the South Africa Airlines rules about no in-flight smartphones was buried halfway into a paragraph full of rules, Southwest has a nice graphic layout that has 3 sections – Always Allowed, Allowed Above 10,000 ft, and Never Allowed – really nice. Nothing really controversial – Smart phones in Airline or Game mode are in the Allowed Above 10,000 ft section. However, I was surprised to see Noise-Cancelling Headphones in the Always Allowed section. Given that these have “on-off” switches, most by-the-book flight attendants see the red light on my Bose cans and tell me to switch them off. But on SW, I guess, they’re good through the entire flight. But still, one more example of the lack of consistency in rules – which I’ll say is one of the main drivers of traveler frustration.
• If you have a question, a story, a comment – the voice of the traveler, send it along. The e-mail address is comments@travelcommons.com, you can send me a Twitter message at @mpeacock, or you can post them on the web site at T/C.com.
• Bridge Music — Oh Yeah by Eliyahu Sills

Lost in Distraction

• We’ve talked in a number of episodes about things being left behind by travelers – the study about the number of laptops left behind in airports, people walking away from TSA checkpoints without their shoes, the overflowing box of power adaptors that just about every hotel can pull out when you ask to borrow one.
• A couple of weeks ago, when unpacking from my last New York trip, I discovered that I’d left a pair of olive slacks in my hotel room. It was one of those “head smacking” moments – how could I be so stupid?
• Sometimes I feel like I’m leaving a little trail of belongings behind me as I travel.
• Most are small – pens, books, magazines, enough toiletries to make up a couple of complete kits.
• But some are big – the olive slacks, my original pair of Bose headphones, an entire suitcase in the trunk of a cab.
• OK, I’m not sweating the books or the tooth brush, but, come on – an entire suitcase? Other than creeping senility, what’s my problem?
• At least for me, it’s answering my cell phone. Every time I’ve forgotten something big, it’s been because of a phone call.
• The Bose headphones? My flight had landed in SFO, I was standing up, pulling my suitcase out of the overhead and the phone rings. Of course I answer it, and now I’m juggling my phone, my jacket, my suitcase, my briefcase while trying to slide out into the aisle. Distracted, I completely forget about the headphones in the seatback pocket. I don’t remember them until the next day when they’re long gone, a birthday present for the son or daughter of one of the cleaning crew.
• My olive slacks? One of those days when I just couldn’t get out of my hotel room because of serial phone calls. The phone rings, I answer it, 15-minute conversation, I hang up, re-start my packing, only to have the phone ring again. Another 15-minute conversation, then another call comes in on call waiting. I look at my watch – damn, I gotta get out of this hotel room if I’m going to make my flight home. I didn’t do my usual room scan and walked out light one of my favorite pair of pants.
• When I’m not distracted, I’m usually pretty methodical about leaving hotels or planes. I think my wife thinks that my hotel routine is border-line obsessive-compulsive. I empty the bathroom out, pack up my toiletries, then go back in, check around, turn off the light and close the door. Then, over to the bed, I throw all the pillows on the floor (which, sometimes is 8 or 9 pillows), snap the bedspread to send any hidden socks flying.
• Then, clear all the flat surfaces – it either goes with me or, like the room service menu, goes into a drawer. This is how I didn’t leave behind my iPhone charger this past week. I was clearing off the desk, which ends up being a tangle of hotel modem wires, lamp cords, promotional material, and my own tangle of electronics. I thought I had everything packed, but was making one more scan – cleaning off the flat surfaces so I could give the room one last scan. And there, as I was clearing off the desk, I found I had forgotten to pack my iPhone charger. I had missed seeing it in the midst of the Ethernet cord coming out of the hotel modem.
• Coming off a plane, I tick through a mental inventory, even patting myself down to make sure I have my wallet and iPhone. I look, but don’t put my hands into the seat back pocket – it can be ugly in there.
• But all this takes some concentration – avoid getting lost in distraction.
• I was thinking about this the other day when one of those iPhone commercials came on. There’s an app for this; there’s an app for that. I thought “if there’s an app for everything, there’s gotta be one to keep from getting distracted.” Then I realized there is one – kinda – and it’s built right in. It’s the Off button.
• Bridge Music — Is That Called Love by Liquid Zen

A Movie About Us

• <1st audio clip from trailer>
• I love that line – “I fly 350,000 miles a year; it’s 250,000 miles to the moon.” From the latest trailer for “Up in the Air”, a movie with George Clooney starring as a consultant who fires people. He’s good at his job, which keeps him on the road over 300 days a year. He lives – thrives — in “Airworld”, the travel bubble we’ve talked about on prior episodes where frequent travelers seem to float over the places they visit, insulated by airline clubs and hotel concierge lounges and special lines that whoosh the statused elite along to their next destination.
• I’ll post a link to the movie’s web site. It’s just starting the fall film festival cycle, building word-of-mouth for its release during the Christmas season.
• The trailer has some good lines, like this advice on security line strategy that Clooney’s seasoned traveler gives to a newly-minted Ivy League grad
• <2nd audio clip from trailer>
• Going through both trailers on the movie’s website, you can see the premise is a bit deeper. The George Clooney character is using his frequent flying lifestyle to avoid relationships – nothing too heavy
• <3rd audio clip from trailer>
• While fictional, there’s more than a bit of truth to this. I’ve know a number of guys – and not the gender-neutral Midwest “guys”; they’re all men – over my career who used the need to leave Sunday night for LA or to stay over the weekend in Europe as ways to avoid problems at home – or, once divorced – which all of these guys eventually were – used the same excuses to avoid the barren new apartments.
• Oftentimes when talking to new consultants, giving them some thoughts, some advice about the traveling lifestyle that is part and parcel of consulting, I talk less about who to avoid in the security lines and more about the need to manage their personal lives with at least the same amount of effort as they do their frequent flyer statuses. I know I shouldn’t be, but I’m always surprised by the number of guys who don’t.

Closing

• Closing music — iTunes link to Pictures of You by Evangeline
• OK, that’s it, that’s the end of TravelCommons podcast #78
• I hope you all enjoyed this podcast and I hope you decide to stay subscribed.
• The bridge music is from Magnatune, the we are not evil label . Making Circles by the Seldon Plan, Oh Yeah by Eliyahu Sills, and Is That Called Love by Liquid Zen. You can find these and more at magnatunes.com.
• If you have a story, thought, comment, gripe – the voice of the traveler — send ‘em along, text or MP3 file, to comments@travelcommons.com or to @mpeacock on Twitter, or post them on our website at travelcommons.com. Thanks to everyone who has taken the time to send in e-mails, Tweets and post comments on the website
• Follow me on Twitter
• Direct link to the show

• Intro music — Warmth by Makkina
• Recorded in the Convention Center Courtyard in downtown Washington, DC
• On a bit of an Amtrak bunny hop up the US East Coast — DC to Phila to NYC
• Most of my travel in August has been personal — Aspen, CO and Door County, WI
• Bridge Music — People Go A Lotta Nerve by Neko Case

Following Up

• Timo from Tampere, Finland wrote in about Ryanair not allowing any use of smartphones — even in flight or airplane mode — on a flight from Tampere, Finland to “the misleadingly named Frankfurt Hahn airport”
• Ryanair — what a mess with all their add-on charges and anti-customer service
• Interesting that Ryanair severely limits the use of smartphones while simultaneously trying to launch an in-flight mobile phone call service
• South African Airways plans to petition the SA Civil Aviation Authority to allow smart phones to be used in “flight” mode
• Recent WSJ.com article discusses the results of Alaska Air Wi-Fi pricing tests. In-flight wi-fi is very price-sensitive. Will carriers get the return they need on their investment in fleet-wide wi-fi rollouts?
• New celebrity sightings — Twitter followers know that I recently ate a couple of tables away from Lance Armstrong and shared a 1st Class row with LeAnne Rimes on a flight to LAX
• Bridge Music — Give It Up by Jimmy Mancus

My, What Pretty Eyes You Have!

• Federal judge ruled Clear Registered Traveler can’t sell its former customers’ biometric data – the fingerprints and iris scans that were used to identify travelers at checkpoint machines at airports across the country.
• What’s the best way to destroy my Clear card? My biometric data was stored on the card’s smart chip
• But what about the biometric data stored with Clear and the TSA? I just want my data destroyed, but two US Congressmen want it kept around.
• I’ve learned a lesson — I’ll never give the government this kind of data again.
• Bridge Music — Orange Blossoms by JJ Grey and Mofro

What I Miss When I’m Off The Road

• Not much this evening — first flight in two weeks and it’s delayed for 2½ hours because of a broken nose gear steering mechanism.
• Will somebody explain the United Airlines the benefits of preventative maintenance? What good is being super top-tier elite on an airline that can’t get their planes in the air? It’s getting so bad, I don’t know why they bother setting a departure and arrival time. Just put an AM or PM on the board and shoot for the best.
• What I miss most when not traveling is the variety — seeing and experiencing different things each day. While I loved sleeping in my own bed and not having to do the TSA shuffle, two weeks of the same train ride into the same office, seeing the same skyline (though I love the Chicago skyline), eating at the same lunch places started the soles of my feet itching.
• You also get a better understanding of other people when you spend time with them face-to-face. While you can do a lot over a voice or video conference, there’s nothing like being there in person to get an appreciation for the differences, the challenges, and the personalities.

Closing

• Closing music — iTunes link to Pictures of You by Evangeline
• Bridge music from the Podsafe Music Network
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• Direct link to the show