A Plan for Getting There

Posted on March 20, 2014March 20, 2014 by Dusty Roads

Now that the activities for Tennessee are planned and my time off approved I have to make sure I can get there. I’ve been watching the airfares and they are all over the place. Up one day and down the next!

I think it’s time to commit. Southwest doesn’t fly to Knoxville, the closest airport. There are a couple of nice flights and connections but they are out of Logan and I avoid Boston and Logan airport like crazy. I’d drive to Hartford, CT first!

Finally I found a flight from Providence to Knoxville for under $400.00. Yup $380.00 to be exact for round trip so I grabbed it. I don’t have to get up in the middle of the night either! The flight leaves at 9:23 am. There’s a layover in Washington D. C. so I’ll have time for lunch then arrive in Knoxville just before 3pm where I have a rental car reserved.

I can’t check into the resort until after 4pm so this works out perfect because MapQuest puts the drive from Knoxville to Gatlinburg at 59 minutes.

The return trip wasn’t quite as perfect but still not bad. Check out is 10 AM but my flight isn’t until 6pm so I’ll have the whole day to poke around in, take my time driving to Knoxville and finish up sight-seeing. Even with such a late flight and a layover in Washington again, I will still be in Providence by 11:30 and home by midnight.

The cat sitter is lined up and ready to go. She’ll make 2 visits everyday except the first day when I’ll only need her to stop in for the afternoon. My kitties will be in good hands.

It’s so nice to have everything in place…and paid for. I love paying for everything ahead of time. Then I don’t have to count pennies while I’m away.

Now I just have to make myself relax and wait for the big day to roll around. 🙂

Olympic Fever

Posted on February 9, 2014February 9, 2014 by Dusty Roads

The 2014 Winter Olympics are underway in Sochi. News coverage has been considerable. Does everyone have Olympic Fever?

Russia is using the Olympics to showcase its post-soviet resurrection and why not? Doesn’t every country that hosts an Olympic Games put their best foot forward? Too bad the Russians haven’t been able to accomplish that.

When the press arrived in Sochi to unfinished construction, toilets that wouldn’t flush and hotel door handles that wouldn’t lock, the Sochi Olympics got their first black eye.

The Russian response boiled down to this: Some reporters are sabotaging Sochi’s Olympics accommodations for splashy headlines. Russian officials know this because they have surveillance cameras in hotel rooms. And at least some of those surveillance cameras are focused on hotel showers. Oh Oh! Voyeurism at it’s finest!

You can’t clean your teeth because the security scare has you packing your tooth paste in your checked luggage if you get to bring it at all, so what’s a little body order to go along with bad breath?

I wish the Olympics had all star commercials like the Superbowl. Coke has a cute commercial with a Puffin and the Polar Bears. I liked that one.

Every year a new event gets tried out. This year an event called Slopestyle, a snow boarding event, was getting some exposure but before the first bell the competitors were backing out. American Snowboarder, Shaun White called the course “Unsafe” and withdrew. According to news reports he’s just one of the contestants to express concerns with the course for the new event.

I have no bone to pick with the Olympics. They all seem to have their share of problems and bad press no matter where they hold them. I wish all the competitors the best. Leave your tooth paste in your checked bags, avoid the showers and may the best man and/or woman win.

You can’t Escape Karma

Posted on January 28, 2014January 28, 2014 by Dusty Roads

The pictures from my phone camera finally got here so now I have a story to tell.

First, a little background. In a way I think it’s payback for something that happened 30-40 years ago. I had a chance to go to a seminar in Vancouver , BC and they let us bring a guest. I invited my mother.

Now my mother is a feisty little thing and when we were returning to the hotel one night she walked into a wall. Let me explain. The hotel had a large wall of glass. The doors were also glass and opened in the center. My Mom wears glasses and in the dark it was hard to see where the glass wall stopped and the glass door began. The doors opened for me but my Mom walked into the glass wall…and bounced! Like a cartoon character she bounced backward several steps. I should have said.. “Are you all right?” but instead I laughed. I laughed so hard I thought I’d cry. Bad daughter!

With that history I think the universe caught up to me on this San Diego trip.

As many of you know, New England had a “blizzard” Tuesday night. (It kind of fizzled but they still called it a blizzard). My Southwest flight was out of Providence on Wednesday morning. Not knowing what the driving would be like I left home very early for the 30 minute drive.

I witnessed a 3 car accident right in Providence but other than that the drive was uneventful. I was in the gate area by 9:30 am for an 11:30 flight which was then delayed to 12:15 and then 12:45 and then 1:15. About then the desk attendants began rebooking connections for Fort Myers, Fort Lauderdale, Salt Lake City, Denver, every destination except San Diego.

When I was asked I was told the San Diego connection was running behind so I’d have 30 minutes to get to my gate after landing in Baltimore. No need to rebook a new connection.

Except when we landed in Baltimore I was being paged. I was the last passenger and they were holding my flight. I was stuck in a middle seat for a 5 hour plus flight. Just what I didn’t want. Luckily my seatmates were very nice and the flight passed pleasantly.

Arriving in San Diego I had to let everyone off ahead of me before I could make it to the rear of the plane for my carry-on. Finally, Back pack on and carry-on in front of me I made my way down the aisle and out the plane door to the jetway except something snagged my backpack and I was stopped dead. My momentum wanted to carry me forward and as I tried to catch myself my foot slammed into the crack between the plane and the jetway and it was all over.

I landed flat on my face.

Southwest employees came running. One had my sneaker, one had my arm and helped me sit down. They wanted to know if I’d hit my head, was I hurt and so on. I’m sure they saw lawsuit floating above my head. All I wanted to do was get on my way.

When the dust settled and I recovered from my embarrassment and took stock of my injuries I did have a bump on my head, floor burns and bruises on my left arm and right knee, a wrenched back and a groin pull. Walking was quite a challenge for a few days.

I’m happy to report that I am on the mend and moving a bit better. And I feel this should have paid off any bad karma for laughing at my mother’s mishap all those years ago.

Blue Skies

Posted on January 22, 2014January 22, 2014 by Dusty Roads

Talk about coincidence. I recently started reading Robyn Carr Books. I got hooked on her novels with a series called Virgin River Series.

I have been trying to track down all of the novels in that series. She’s a little bit of a departure from my usual reading. The Virgin River Series follows the lives of the residents of Virgin River. A little rural town in the mountains near Oregon. The series is a little like a soap opera in a book but there’s no infidelity, rather mishaps like a lost hunter, a forest fire, a school bus crash and so on. Things that could happen in any small town. The same characters are in each novel and you can follow their lives. Things like how they met their spouses, their births of their children, and how little misunderstanding an get twisted around until , in the end, it all works out.

While browsing in a used book store for another of her novels I ran across a book titled Blue Skies. It was by Robyn Carr but it wasn’t part of her Virgin River Series. When I couldn’t find any of those that I hadn’t read, I decided to pick up this book.

Little did I know that it would be a great supplement to what was going on with Southwest. Southwest Airlines is currently dealing with the embarrassment of having one of their passenger jets land at the wrong airport. Blue Skies is about the start up of a low cost airline as the other larger carriers struggle with the changes and realities of air travel since 9/11.

As I was reading I thought that one of the airlines in the book reminded me of Southwest. It had been a start-up not that many years ago and was dealing with the issues of growing into a major carrier. It had gone from a tiny local carrier to a much larger one and with the growth came the employee unrest, budget issues and all of the other headaches.

The principal characters leave the struggling Aries Airline to join another start-up. Of course the book is about the characters and the airline is just the back drop but it’s a fun read. At one point Nikki reminisces with her friend Dixie about how air travel has changed, how back in the day the crew were like “rock stars” and treated with respect and people dressed in their Sunday best and were polite. (I remember traveling like that)

Dixie’s comeback was and they made the “stews” weigh in before each flight and issued padding if you weren’t endowed enough.

I guess the romance of flying depended on where you were on the organizational chart.

It’s a fun book and easy reading but it was perfect timing considering the Southwest debacle.

Mother Nature’s at it Again

Posted on January 21, 2014January 21, 2014 by Dusty Roads

So much for “clear skies”. The Northeast just went under a blizzard warning for tonight and tomorrow until 1pm. Up to 12 inches of snow and bitter cold is predicted. My co-workers who are flying JetBlue out of Logan (Boston) are scrambling. Flights are already being grounded. Even so some airlines are charging extra to re-book .

Work emails are flying telling us what the company will pay for and what to do if we have to arrive a day early.

I spent 45 minutes on hold for Southwest Airlines. According to their web site my plane tomorrow is on- time and scheduled. Once I got through to a real live person I was assured that I would be notified of any change but as of this minute the flight was scheduled to take off on time.