Recorded in the TravelCommons studio after a week in the Bay Area and a tough struggle to get back home in the teeth of the first winter storm of the season. A listener passes along the story of a trip as an inadvertent stowaway. I walk through the timelime of my efforts to get home to Chicago and, in the Travel Tech segment, talk about two wireless applications I use every day. Here’s a direct link to the podcast file.
Here are the show notes from TravelCommons podcast #49:
- Intro music — Warmth by Makkina
- Recorded in the TravelCommons studios outside Chicago
- Back in the Bay Area and had a real struggle getting home in the face of the “thunder snow” storms that blew across the US this week
- Had good hearty German food with a couple of TravelCommons contributors at San Francisco’s Suppenküche restaurant
- Having some very good Hertz karma
- Bridge Music — The Void by Saurab Bhargava
- Tested the free WiFi at the Hotel Monaco in Chicago using the Speakeasy Speed Test and found it a bit slow
- Received my new Nikon D-80 digital SLR, which made me check out the travel pictures on This Blog Title for Sale and Frick’s World
- Direct link to the View from Here out the window of the SFO Marriott
- The FBI dropped its case against the researcher who created a web site that printed valid-looking boarding passes
- A listener sends in a story about flying to Chicago without a ticket
- Bridge Music — Aware by Saurab Bhargava
- Bad weather threatening Chicago made me try to get home early, but the airlines were already canceling flights
- A timeline of my efforts to get home to Chicago amid cancellations and delays
- Bridge Music — Conversations by Saurab Bhargava
- On my struggle to get home, I used my BlackBerry to check American Airlines’ mobile flight status site at least 50 times
- Yahoo! Mobile has a good listing of other airline status sites
- To download Google Maps, point the browser on your mobile device to http://www.google.com/gmm
- Closing music — iTunes link to Pictures of You by Evangeline
- Bridge music from Saurab Bhargava
- 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
5 comments on “Podcast #49 – Working Hard to Get Home, Wireless Apps That Help”
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Hey Mark-
Thanks a bunch for the shoutout on the podcast, which was another fine episode, as usual.
I thought that you, as a flatlander, would recognize quickly the end of the handle as my state of residence, but I can’t assume too much. 🙂
Just a quick semantics note, my blog is “This Blog <i>Title</i> For Sale”. You wouldn’t believe how many referrals I get from Google searches on that, yet it’s the only blog with that title that I know. And to think I thought I was being unimaginative when I came up with it.
I was bemused when you brought up Hertz and how your assigned car is usually a surprise. The reservation generally is for a certain class, and if your company is like mine, it’s for a compact car. And I can assume you are a 5 Star Gold member, meaning you’ve earned automatic upgrades with your rental. So why is it a surprise when you get to the stall? I can pick my seat on the plane, why can’t I pick my car? And why is it the presumed upgrade turns out to be a Hyundai Sonata? That’s a premium car? And oh, by the way, how about that Ford Five Hundred? After years of design and development, Ford has succeeded in building from scratch a car that feels and performs just like………..a Taurus.
My time is up! Keep up the great work and have a great holiday.
Rich Fraser
Watertown, WI
richmanwisco.com
Oops. You can throw a flag for improper use of the italic tag.
I also appreciate the shout out and as a subscriber to Rich’s site I thought his name was Rich Manwisco or Richman Wisco. Now I know he is just a rich guy from Wisconsin.
I flew Airtran this week for the first time in years and with no rank in the Airtran frequent flier program (if they even have one) I must say it was painful boarding in Zone 6. Well next week it’s back on Delta. Hopefully that should wind down the travel until 2007, hopefully……
I wish our crack IT department could figure out how to connect a Crackberry or a Trio to our Notes server, hey we just got a VPN in the last 12 months, you’re fortunate.
It was sweet and sour with Hertz this week. Got a Mustang in Memphis and a Chevy Cobalt in San Francisco.
In SFO, my colleague also had a reservation with Hertz, so we schlepped over to his stall number to check out his ride and it was …. a Taurus. Back over to the Cobalt. I can’t remember the last time I had a car without electric windows or door locks. We kept forgetting that we needed to manually lock every door. Surprised that we didn’t find someone sleeping in the back seat.
Mark – just got caught up on the last 2 episodes…thanks for the shout out! I was on a United flight from EWR to ORD tonight and suddenly I’m hearing the intro to The Void on my iPod and wondering what just happened. I had one of those odd “is this really what I sound like?” moments. Anyway, hopefully some listeners liked the sounds.
In other news, I had 2 “firsts” in flight tonight. The first was that during boarding of the 4:45 flight from EWR to ORD, the agent announced that “since over 90% of the flight are premiers or above, we’re going to have to board by seating area AND row”, followed by “seating area 1: rows 15-24, rows 10-15, seating area 2, 3, 4, etc”. To your point in podcast #50 about airlines doing less and less for us “regular” elites, it’s gotten so saturated now that we have flights that are almost completely elites – defeating the point altogether! Well, at least I’m not back at square 1 and having to board in seating area 4. I’m not sure those guys even got on the plane…
The second “first” of the night was that not only was my flight NOT delayed by over an hour, which would be a good day for the EWR-ORD flight, it actually ended up landing 40 minutes early (not a typo). How does a scheduled 2 hour flight land 33% earlier than anticipated? Is it me, or are these anticipated ETA’s just way off?
Anyway – keep up the good work and thanks for playing the tunes.