Spent the holiday week digging through the TravelCommon archives and assembled a “Best of TravelCommons 2005” episode. Starting with a medley of hotel bathrooms, we revisit some rants on the TSA, the 3-episode Sean Penn arc, and excerpts from some of the best stories of 2005. Here’s a direct link to the podcast file.
[sc_embed_player_template1 fileurl=”http://travelcommons.com/podcast/travelcommons_27.mp3″]


Here are the show notes from TravelCommons podcast #27:

  • Intro music — Warmth by Makkina
  • Home for Christmas week, recover from a tough 4 weeks between Thanksgiving and Christmas
  • Thanks to everyone who has left, or tried to leave, a review on the TravelCommons page of iTunes
  • Bridge music — Pictures of You by Evangeline
  • Medley of TravelCommons Hotel Bathroom studios
  • from T/C #5 – Why I record in bathrooms
  • Medley of TSA rants
  • from T/C #5-7 – Sean Penn comments
  • from T/C #7 – Steve Frick of Frick’s World is a little uncomfortable recording in the bathroom
  • from T/C #14 – Willie Evans from the Scots Band Evangeline talks about writing a travel song
  • from T/C #17 – My kids’ view of travel
  • from T/C #15 – Allan Marko tells a story about rapid airplane repair
  • from T/C #3 – Flyers from Cleveland to Chicago looking for an early exit
  • from T/C #11 – Packing light leaves no margin for error
  • from T/C #23 – Patrons at the hotel bar drinking shots
  • from T/C #19 – Different colors in Bologna, Italy
  • from T/C #13 – Imaginative way to sleep on red-eyes
  • from T/C #21 – Decisions on vacation photos
  • from T/C #4 – Disappointed web search
  • from T/C #24 – Fun with Rental Cars
  • from T/C #7 – Air sickness without the bag
  • Closing music — Ramblin’ Man by the Allman Brothers Band
  • Feedback at comments[at]travelcommons.com, the comment board on podcastalley.com, or right here in the comments section below
  • Direct link to the show

4 comments on “Podcast #27 – Best of 2005

  1. Anonymous says:

    Enjoyable podcast as always.
    I’ve done a bit of traveling in the past few weeks (3 trips in 4 weeks) – much more than I’ve been doing (although I used to travel every two weeks or so for 5 years) and I’ve been finding a disturbing new trend – – outrageous charges for internet access.
    I remember when internet access was a standard part of buying a night in the room (like a bed, bathroom, etc…). Now hotels are charging $15-20 a DAY to acess the internet in the room. Of course, I can surf in the lobby for free, but this stinks! What is going on? Is this like the “enivormental” savings of not washing the sheets nightly – another way to pull money out of patrons? I am not enjoying this trend. What is next – being charged per minute of showering?
    Anyone else annoyed?
    Amy

  2. mark says:

    What’s really annoying/amazing about this trend is that you typically get Internet access for free at lower-end hotels (e.g., Courtyard, Best Western, Holiday Inn Express), but end up paying $10-15/day at more expensive, higher-end hotels. And given that hotel room utilization is going up — more people traveling, less rate pressure on hotels — I don’t see it changing anytime in the near future.
    However, there is a bit of a guerilla movement emerging using the little travel wi-fi routers (e.g., Linksys’s WTR54GS or WRT54GC). Somewhat akin to the open wi-fi access movement (people hanging wi-fi antennas out their windows for anyone to access), some travelers are using these routers to light up a 1-2 room radius with free wi-fi. I use NetStumbler (www.netstumbler.com) — a free wi-fi sniffer — to search out these access “bubbles” (as Linksys calls them) before I plunk down my own $10.
    Regards,
    Mark

  3. Anonymous says:

    If you’re going to have to put adverts in your podcast… at least make them obvious. Don’t just segway in halfway through a sentence. Put them at the end or between 2 song bytes.
    – Dan

  4. mark says:

    Good point. Still working through the insertion process. The set point only has a resolution to 1 second, which leaves a lot of wiggle room. I’ve been trying to leave a bit of a 1.5 second gap between my “This Week” and “Follow Up” segments to facilitate an easier insertion and put a “Sponsored By” at the front of the ad to make it a bit clearer. However, I’d appreciate any additional thoughts/suggestions. This 5-week ad campaign has been a bit of an experiment.
    Also, let me know which episodes are botched and I’ll go back and refine the insertion point a bit.
    Thanks for the heads-up,
    Mark

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