Category: Travel

Sometimes I Want Nothingness

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The Nothingness

There is something about visiting places with few inhabitants. Maybe I just get tired of city life and I’m simply drawn to the middle of nowhere but some of my favorite places in the world are far away from any kind of city. Sure, everyone wants to go see sites, eat the food, etc. in big cities, but I urge people to take some time to visit the less beaten path. Far west Texas and New Mexico, rural Alaska, Montana, and the Appalachians are just a few of the places in the United States that I recommend.

It’s hard to describe what it is. I just know I love it.

Alaska

Salzburg

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The airport is packed. This fact surprises me, I was expecting a quiet evening in a regional airport. Come to find out, Friday is London City Airport’s busiest day. Squeezing past the crowds I make my way to the departures area to look out the window. This is the airport of the regional airplane. Bombardier Q400s, BAe Avro RJ85s, and Fokker 50s sit on the tarmac waiting to take businessmen and women from Canary Wharf to places like Paris-Orly, Amsterdam, Zurich, and for me, Munich.

Boarding is called and I make my way across the tarmac to my waiting crane-tailed bird. The doors close and the pilot taxis to the runway. We hold, waiting for another aircraft to land. It howls by us and exits the runway as we enter. A jerk as the brakes are set. The engines roar to life and the pilot holds position while maximum thrust is achieved. Suddenly the plane leaps forward and we are off. 45 seconds later and we are in the air at an unbelievable angle. I look out the window to see London out the left side of the plane.

I can say I did all of this for the image above but I would be lying. I did a lot of it just to experience that take-off and it was well worth it.

Spokane to Seattle; The Long Way

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A lot of people think I’m nuts. Maybe I am. Or maybe I’m crazy like a fox. My weekend was spent flying between Spokane, Washington and Seattle, Washington. Doesn’t sound crazy right? What’s crazy is that what should have been an hour flight on a lawnmower with wings was really a bunch of flights taking me from Spokane to Denver to San Francisco and finally to Seattle. Yeah, I guess I am crazy. That is, until I tell you it cost me $44 before taxes. See, crazy like a fox. The route looked something like below.

All told, I flew around 7,000 miles and rounded out my mileage balance on Continental Airlines. Why? A good friend and I stumbled across the fare a while back and decided it was too good of a deal to pass up. At first I bought a few of them, but ended up only keeping one, figuring I didn’t really have the time or energy to do a bunch of these back to back. The only hiccup in the whole trip was on our positioning flight to Spokane from San Francisco. The plane had a maintenance issue and was delayed, getting us into Spokane a little later than we had originally planned.

Continental ERJ Landing at IAH

What did I do on the flights? Watched some television shows I had stored on my iPhone, caught up on a bunch of reading, wrote a little, and talked to other passengers. Flying is relaxing to me, so I actually got a little bit of rest as well. It was a fun trip that transited a lot of airports and got me the miles I wanted at a price point that is very, very reasonable. I guess I am better at “mileage running” than the guy in this video.

The Future of Air Travel Thanks to the TSA

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There is no soft spot in my heart for the TSA, in fact, I have posted a lot about my disdain for their methods. After reading Jeffrey Goldberg’s latest piece on The Atlantic, I can’t say I’m holding out hope that things are going to get better any time soon.

Here’s a small excerpt from the article, though the whole thing deserves a read.

The pat-down at BWI was fairly vigorous, by the usual tame standards of the TSA, but it was nothing like the one I received the next day at T.F. Green in Providence. Apparently, I was the very first passenger to ask to opt-out of back-scatter imaging. Several TSA officers heard me choose the pat-down, and they reacted in a way meant to make the ordinary passenger feel very badly about his decision. One officer said to a colleague who was obviously going to be assigned to me, “Get new gloves, man, you’re going to need them where you’re going.”

The take-away from this single paragraph and really the whole article, is that the new pat-downs have little to do with security and a lot to do with intimidating people into using the backscatter machines. When a traveler opts-out of going through the x-ray machines, they will be subjected to a verbal demoralization as well as a pat-down that can be best described as borderline fondling.

Does any of this really increase security? After last week’s events in which explosive materials were found in ink cartridges being shipped to the United States, I would say it is all show and little substance. From what has been reported, the bomb plot was foiled thanks to information from a former Guantanamo Bay prisoner. That’s right, it wasn’t some TSA agent taking away your bottle of water while you got the frisking of a lifetime, it was information. Imagine that.

It may feel like there is not much we can do but I plan on making the TSA agents as uncomfortable as they make me in these situations. Maybe if their own employees complain enough, we’ll see some changes in these new pat-down procedures. Me, I’ll be opting-out of the backscatter every time I am at an airport that uses one. When they ask me why I opted out (had this happen the last couple of times) I am thinking about replying with an overtly sexual remark. Is that wrong? Probably. What’s worse is being groped so much that you finally submit to the backscatter machine.

In all seriousness, the TSA has the upper hand. You and I have destinations to get to and they are the gatekeepers. I have no problem taking out my laptop or taking off my shoes, but this is bordering on the ridiculous. Wait, it is ridiculous. I am sure we could do a much better job of making air travel safe by actually asking questions when people go through security and analyzing facial expressions, demeanor, etc. rather than taking naked pictures of everyone or worse, shaming them in front of others.

Let’s start sending notes to the men and women who work for us in government and ask that a serious look be taken at the procedures used at airports and oversight of the TSA. If someone in either House wants to make this their pet project, I’ll back them 100%.

For those of you who fly out of IAH, you can technically clear security at any checkpoint so long as your airline does not require you to go through a certain one (some international flights do). A number of the checkpoints do not have the backscatter machines, feel free to use those.

An Idiot Abroad

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There is a new documentary coming out on Sky1 in the United Kingdom called “An Idiot Abroad”. Ricky Gervais has taken a non-traveler and sent him to explore the Seven Wonders of the World. Hilarity ensues.

In some of my travels I have encountered people like the subject of this show. They’re not really idiots, they just do not have the desire to travel or leave their comfort zone of their home country. I’m sure some of it has to do with self-preservation and not putting oneself in harm’s way. Going abroad is intimidating for a lot of people, so I don’t hold it against this guy. The show does look hilarious though.

[A warning – there is nudity and foul language in the previews below]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aUTH1coLIWE
An Idiot Abroad – Preview Part 1

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TChZa-GfAtA
An Idiot Abroad – Preview Part 2

TSA Doing Bag Checks on NYC Subway?

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This news from Gothamist is bothersome. The TSA has partnered with NYPD to provide the New York transit system with “random and unpredictable security measures, like mobile screening in rail environments and at mass transit stations across the country”. The last few words are the most interesting, “across the country” implies that the TSA will be rolling this out across the U.S.

Yes, this is the same TSA who had an agent leave their post unattended, resulting in Newark-Liberty Airport being shut down for six hours. Can we imagine for a minute, what would happen to any of the transit systems across the country if the TSA had such a breach at one of them? It would be pandemonium, people looking for ways to get home and finding no options.

The big question I have is whether or not the TSA actually has the authority to conduct such searches. If they don’t, then hopefully someone stands up against this on a legal base. If they do, then I’d like to know who granted them such authority.

Frequent Flyer

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I occasionally get asked why I fly so much or why I go to Europe for the weekend. Well, a few months back a documentary was made about my slight obsessive compulsive behavior when it comes to flying. It is a hobby, just like any other, except it goes around the world at 600 mile per hour. Flight has always been an interest of mine, but it was not until college and then traveling for work that I became interested in doing it for fun. There is just something about knowing that the furthest points of the Earth are only a flight away that fascinates me.

On the scale of how much I fly, I am a lightweight compared to some of the people in the movie (and know a few of them). Just like the video says, there is a whole community devoted to mileage running and travel. Watch and enjoy, maybe you’ll learn a little about my obsessive compulsive desire to travel.

My Year in Cities, 2009

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Here is a list of cities that I visited last year. There were good chunks of the year where I was not traveling and then spurts of nothing but travel.

  • Marfa, TX
  • Alpine, TX
  • El Paso, TX
  • Portland, Oregon*
  • Dallas, TX
  • Austin, TX*
  • San Antonio, TX
  • Chicago, IL
  • Baltimore, MD
  • West Palm Beach, FL
  • Miami, FL
  • Las Vegas, NV
  • Quito, Ecuador
  • Frankfurt, Germany
  • Brussels, Belgium
  • Paris, France

One or more nights was spent in each city. Cities marked with a * were visited multiple times on non-consecutive days. Here are my lists from 2008 and 2007.

TSA Picking on Bloggers and News Reporters

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I apologize for my many posts on the TSA and the current security issues at airports but the situation has deteriorated so quickly that it is hard to keep up.

Over the past couple of days a couple of bloggers and news reporters have been served subpoenas because they published TSA Security Directive SD-1544-09-06. Both Steven Frischling and Chris Elliott were served subpoenas by the DHS to learn the identity of the source who had provided the TSA directive. Mr. Frischling believes that the TSA is taking security seriously and that is why they want the name of the source. I agree with him, but the methods that the DHS and TSA have used seem extreme. Most of the directive is just procedural stuff and would have come out as people flew, so why all the fuss?

The TSA wants to make sure they close as many holes in their organization as possible to insure functional security. If people are leaking things that will eventually become public what is to keep them from leaking confidential information? In that regard I understand the need to know the identity of the leak. However, coming down full force on these reporters is not the way I would go about it.

Hopefully the hassles from the TSA will stop and this administration will realize that making “Top Secret” documents public is not as much of a priority as having safety cover the different methods of travel. Mr. President, fire the TSA.

Full Body Scanners Go International

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The New York Daily News is reporting that Amsterdam-Schipol International Airport will start putting full body image scanners in place in the wake of the attempted terrorist attack on Northwest Airlines Flight 253. On top of that, the Dutch are pushing for the full body scanners to be deployed in airports across the 27 countries that make up the European Union.

While the average traveler sees these machines as a necessity to prevent terrorism, and yes, in this case they may have worked, I see them as a nuisance. Even more annoying than the machines are the people who want them in place but do not want profiling of any kind to be used at airports. So, it’s alright to look at someone nude on a computer screen but picking people out of a line because they fit a profile is horrible?

Where do we stop though? If a terrorist is able to carry out an attack after passing through the machines, what’s the next step? Does everyone have to have every article of luggage and every part of their body searched before the get on a plane? What about airport workers? At some point, the searches and nuisances will get so bad that people will just stop flying… Then what?