Coming to you today from the TravelCommons studios outside of Chicago. In this episode, listeners add to our list of “Road Warrior 201” tips for this holiday travel season, I give my impressions of the new George Clooney movie Up in the Air, and gather up some stories about airport security into a Jeopardy-like topic I call “Security Potpourri”. Here’s a direct link to the podcast file or you can listen to it right here by clicking on the arrow below.

Here are the transcript from TravelCommons podcast #81:

• 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

• 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
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