Recorded in the Rancho Las Palmas Resort & Spa near Palm Springs, CA, we talk about a surprise at the rental car lot and some good and bad TSA experiences. My search for frequent flyer seats to South Africa leads to a discussion about how diversifying or concentrating your “deposits” into frequent travel programs yield different results. The Travel Tech segment reappears with two topics — measuring differences in hotel bandwidth and some travelers’ love affairs with Bose noise-canceling headsets. Here’s a direct link to the podcast file.
Here are the show notes from TravelCommons podcast #48:
- Intro music — Warmth by Makkina
- Recorded in the Rancho Las Palmas Resort & Spa in Rancho Mirage, CA near Palm Springs
- Palm Springs Airport reminds me of San Jose and Santa Ana airports before their big renovations
- A Hertz mistake gave me a convertible Mustang instead of a Buick Lacrosse
- Direct Link to Ed Vawter’s special election edition of Searching the Internet podcast
- Bridge Music — Gold and rose by Myles Cochran
- Monday’s “Middle Seat” travel column in The Wall Street Journal (subscription required) airs complaints from travelers who have had their toiletries discarded by overly strict TSA screeners
- Hilary Baumann tells of her recent TSA experience at Lexington, KY‘s Blue Grass Airport
- Bridge Music — Ika by Falik
- Waited a bit long to score some frequent flyer tickets to Cape Town, South Africa for next March
- Started with American Airlines but they didn’t have the inventory. Ended up with United Airlines, which is in the Star Alliance with South Africa Airways
- United first offered a “back door” itinerary through Hong Kong and Singapore, but I chose the shorter route through Europe
- Having diversified my mileage across carriers let me make this switch
- I give up top tier status on one airline for this diversification strategy
- Depends on what you want — flexibility to use miles or a better chance at first-class upgrades
- Bridge Music — Entry by Cargo Cult
- Been testing the speed of hotel broadband using the Speakeasy Speed Test because it tests both upload and download speeds
- Upload speed is probably more important to business users e-mailing out big files than it is for residential users
- The afternoon downloads at the Downtown Houston Courtyard were 10 times faster than those in the evening
- Bridge Music — Homebound by Jag
- Lots of love in the airplanes for the Bose noise-cancelling headphones
- In the trade-off between comfort and compactness, I choose the Bose, but others go for in-ear ‘phones like the Shure E3
- Closing music — iTunes link to Pictures of You by Evangeline
- Bridge music from Magnatune
- 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