New Zealand 2010: Seattle to Sydney (Wednesday, February 10 & Friday, February 12)

Written in the terminal at Sydney airport, 7:40 am (Sydney time) on Friday, February 12

Wednesday started with finishing off my packing and calling in for a work meeting, which ended up being cancelled.  As I was waiting on the line, Tuesday night’s episode of Lost started downloading, with a projected finish time of 10:35 am, just after when I wanted to leave.  Being the Lost slut that I am, I waited for it to finish downloading and then transferred it to the iPhone to take with me — which took me until 11:01 am, so I had to scramble out the door to get to the light rail station.

I think this is the lightest I have packed for a trip in ages; I pack heavier than this for a weekend country-western dance event.  That’s mostly because I’m travelling with my mother.  Although we arranged to be in the cities on the weekends, so I’ll mange to get out to experience some gay life in New Zealand, I only packed a vest and boots and jock for my leather gear.  It will have to do.  There’s only one leather-ish bar in New Zealand, anyway: Urge in Auckland.

Once on light rail, I called into my second meeting, which we ended just as I got to the terminal at the airport, so it was well timed.  I expect to get a new build or two of the Android version of our software e-mailed to me while I’m here, to do some spot checking. I shouldn’t be able to play music due to international “geoblocking”; (we only play in the U.S.), but I should be able to install and explore the app outside of that.

I flew Virgin America to Los Angeles, with a nice rate of $99 each way, cheaper than other options.  But as a small airline, they have limited flights (just 8 cities at this time, I think), so I had to leave at 12:45 pm, leaving me with a 5 hours layover at LAX.  Mom’s Alaska flight left about the time I arrived, so she had less wait.

Virgin America is tied to Virgin Atlantic and V Australia and Virgin Blue and all that, but not tightly enough to be considered foreign owned (per a recent lawsuit).  They also aren’t tied closely enough for me to get credit for my flights to Australia and New Zealand on their plan.  And they couldn’t check my bag straight through to New Zealand, either (which is odd, since Mom could via Alaska).

The plane had purple lighting in the ceiling, which I think was meant to be calming and such, but made it feel like a nightclub to me.  (Specifically like the defunct Seattle gay bar Manray, whose decor was white wall panels with pastel lighting behind them.)  Each seat had an entertainment center in it, but the movies and TV shows were pay-per-view, and $8 for a movie was too much.  It also had games, but they weren’t especially well done, and one in particular hung my console once and then the controls wouldn’t activate one of the commands.  So I mostly read (the DC Showcase Presents Booster Gold volume) and did crossword puzzles.  The flight to LAX was quite bumpy.

At LAX, I had to get my back and then re-check it on V Australia.  The crew at ticketing was friendly and engaging.  After I checked my bag, I came back to ask about miles and found that they have Delta as a partner, so I was able to get my 17,500 miles or so for this trip credited, which should give me enough for a free flight there, since my Ireland and Amsterdam/Copenhagen/Berlin flights were on Northwest and Delta as well.

Food choices at LAX were piss poor.  The “Food Court” was Burger King and Starbucks, plus a sit-down fish place, and the Burger King prices were $2-3 higher than a regular BK would charge.  Yow.

While waiting for Mom to arrive, I worked on some blog posts.  After she got there, we found a spot with power plugs and I watched an episode of Desperate Housewives Season 3 (thank you, Netflix).

On the V Australia flight — which had gray ceiling lights, a little less like a night club than Virgin America, but which had a bar between first class and business which restored that impression some — Mom and I were separated by an aisle (I had arranged this at V Australia check-in).  The entertainment systems were better than on V America, with a bundle of free movie selections.  (I watched Up, Zombieland, and 500 Days of Summer — all are recommended — and played Zuma.)

They feed you well enough on international flights.  Even though we left after 8 pm, they fed us dinner (I had Japanese curry chicken with bok choy) and breakfast in the morning (I had cream cheese and apricot crêpes). As well, they have a snack area in economy where you can get chips, cookies, cheese and crackers, and water throughout the flight.  Great idea.

Despite V Australia advertising that they have power plugs at every seat (I think; can’t find the reference now), they don’t.  Economy coach gets screwed, so I didn’t use the laptop during the flight.  But with the movie selection, I didn’t need to.  (And of course, this was an almost 14-hour flight, over night.  I did get about 7 hours of sleep, or sort of sleep — the sort you go in and out of as you try to pretend to get comfortable and hope no one passes by and bumps you.  Maybe 5 hours of real sleep.  Maybe I’ll doze some more on the flight to New Zealand.)

On the V Australia flights to and from Sydney, there was a dedicated women’s lavatory in the Economy section, something I had never encountered before.  I’m not sure if it was there as a privacy concession (a woman-only space), a perceived cleanliness issue (no pee dribbles on the floor, but I routinely hear that women make bigger overall messes of public toilets), or just an awareness that women take longer in the toilet than men do and may need extra facilities (go to a concert or sporting event some time and see the long, long line for the women’s toilet).  Regardless, I did use the women’s toilet once, before they announced that it was women-only and where it was.  (It didn’t look any different on the inside.)  I never particularly noticed it getting used more than others.

According to this article, this gender-specific feature is apparently a new idea.  The article doesn’t mention any other airlines having it, even though V Australia does.

We crossed both the Equator and the International Date Line last night.  My first time for each.  So we’ve swapped seasons to high summer and skipped almost a full day.

At the Sydney airport, I cashed a €20 bill I had left from last summer to get some Australian spending money, and bought a horribly overpriced bottle of water (AU$3.90) for Mom and a latte for myself (priced closer to what you’d expect in an American airport, AU$4.45).  And then I sat and wrote this blog entry.

We’ll be boarding in a few minutes, flying Emirates Air to Auckland.  Based out of Dubai, it’s apparently a two-floor Airbus 380 plane.  I’ve never been on one before, so this may be cool.  The flight to Auckland is about 3 hours and a time zone change.

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Updated on March 5, 2010

Added links and made a few revisions.
Added a chunk on airplane lavatories.

Updated on March 8, 2010

Added travel map.

Updated on April 1, 2010

Changed travel map to a live one.

Europe 2009: Berlin to Seattle (Monday, August 3)

I slept poorly last night.  No disco music on Sunday night, but the cough was just making me miserable.  Good hydration helps, but a good bed does as well.  After a couple hours, I went out to the common room and slept there on the couch for a few hours, then back to my room a bit after dawn.

I aimed to leave at 9:00 to catch my 11:25 flight, but didn’t get out the door until almost 9:15.  And it was raining.  That makes for interesting bookends to the trip, having the first and last days be in the rain, plus the rain midway, on Thursday in Copenhagen.

Long, long flight from Berlin to JFK.  I dozed here and there, through parts of all three movies (The Soloist, Monsters vs. Aliens, and Duplicity); I’ve seen the second and had no real interest in the others.  At least they do feed you on the trans-Atlantic flights (for now, anyway), although Delta wanted to charge me $50 for the second piece of luggage, so it became a heft-and-carry-on.  I also worked on the trip report a bit and read a few Fantastic Four issues (from a collection from the end of Lee/Kirby run; little to write home about in those issues).

The entire trip, I’ve been re-reading Armistead Maupin’s Tales of the City, the omnibus collection of the first three volumes.  I think this is my third time though this volume, although it’s hard to divorce it from my past viewings of the three mini-series, so it might only be my second time through; I’m pretty sure I’ve only read the second omnibus once.  My boyfriend and I have been watching them and are about 2/3 through the second mini-series.  I’m right now 1/3 through the third book, right where the DeDe and Prue storylines are about to intersect.  I recall how fucking spooked I was by this book the first time through, since the real-world events that preceded it are some of the first Current Events things that I recall growing up, around age 13.

I have been struck by how much these books are not only products of their time, but also signposts of the mid-70s and beyond.  Beyond the faked (and sometimes simply veiled) society people that Maupin uses, the books (especially the first one) are massively laced with references to current events (the Zodiac Killer), San Francisco (a particular North Beach meat vendor is name checked several times), and pop culture (Pet Rocks, EST, the Walkman, etc.), and of course gay stuff is threaded through everything.  It makes me want to have (or produce) a The Annotated Tales of the City, with footnotes and Wiki entries expanding on all the references.

I’m also aware that Maupin went back to the original newspaper columns and changed things around when compiling them into a book.  What was removed — were plotlines abandoned, were characters dropped?  And what was added?  I presume, for example, that the pivotal destination comment from D’Orothea at the end of the second book — which totally freaked me out when I initially read it — was a book-aimed revision, since it’s a bit too prescient otherwise.  But it would be nice to know for sure.

Customs was done at JFK, and it was a zoo.  They herded us and people from another flight or two like cattle, into a long hallway.  I could see a couple hundred in front of me, and more behind me, all stopped at some barrier.  Perversely, all I could think of was Holocaust references, spotting the sprinkler system shower head above us.  (Maybe I’m sicker than I think.)  I couldn’t find my pen, so I hadn’t filled out the customs form, so once I got to the customs desk, I had to go back over there to get a pen from the airline rep, but she wasn’t a rep and directed me back over there to get a pen from the airline rep, but she wasn’t one either and directed me to get one from an airline rep.  And which point I had a brief explosion — “There isn’t any airline rep!” “I’m sorry, I don’t have a pen, sir” — despite that I could see two in her pocket.  “I’ll help you once the line lets up” as she ushered another 20 people into the room, with no sign of the stream stopping.  She eventually gave me a pen (and I properly gave it back when I was done), and then I had to wait for 200 people in front of me to go through, rather than the 20 who were there earlier.

Utterly destroyed whatever assumed German accent I had left, let me tell you!

Showed that guy my passport.  Filed into the next room.  Showed someone my passport.  Got my bag.  Showed someone my passport.  Dropped off my back for moving to the next flight.  Showed someone my passport.  (Jesus Christ!)  And then they had only one lane open for security check for people going to connecting flights, with a couple hundred to go through it.  They now make us take our shoes off and put them through not in a bin with anything else — even baby shoes have to go on the belt by themselves — which only slows things that much further.  What do they expect to accomplish with this shit other than making people not want to fly, which will only make the airlines have that many fewer customers and complain about costs that much more?

I have no fucking sympathy for the airlines.  Not one shred.  I actively hope a couple of the big ones go under, and gloriously so.  (United, please.  Can’t stand them anyway.)  They’ll blame the consumers, of course, but they’re the ones at fault.  That’s what it will take to wake them and TSA up.

JFK is apparently so crowded for flights that they have to use non-gates.  My flight was at Gate 77, but the signage was for Gates 1-12 and B-something, nothing near “77”.  Turns out that Gate 77 means the plane is parked out on the tarmac and they use a huge people mover to get you to it.  So they loaded us all on it… and then made us sit for as much as 30 minutes, waiting for I don’t know what (late passengers, I guess).  Finally disgorged us onto the plane… and then made us sit, waiting for I don’t know what (late passengers, I guess).  Our 5:00 flight didn’t end up leaving until just before 6:00 pm.

(In Amsterdam’s airport, they announce your name and say you are delaying the flight, and that if you don’t show up right way, they will remove your luggage from the plane.  Good threat, especially if the actually carry through on it.  They should try it in the States.)

I debated getting food at JFK.  If I do, they’ll feed us; if I don’t, they won’t.  Looks like I made the right call and got a piece of pizza (which thoroughly cooled by the time we got onto the plan, grrr), since peanuts will be the only thing we’ll get on the plane.  (Mmm, make that pretzels.  Peanuts are persona non grata on airplanes these days; someone might have an allergy.)  And we’ve been airborne for almost 90 minutes without even beverage service yet.  (You can tell I’m a happy traveler when I’m sick and need hydration badly.)

My boyfriend will be picking me up at the airport.  Hope our late departure will be made up and we’ll get home close to on time.  I’m trying to not nap so I can collapse into bed with him tonight and get good solid sleep.

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Updated on February 9, 2010
 

Europe 2009: Copenhagen to Berlin (Friday, July 31)

I checked out of the hotel, but they didn’t have a locked room for baggage storage, just a roped off area in the lobby (the most unsecure storage I’ve ever seen, not where I wanted to leave my laptop or several hundred dollars of leather gear).  I found that they had lockers in the basement for 20 DKK, though, so I wandered around for a few minutes with my laptop bag until I found someone to point me to them.  They were big lockers, though, so I trekked back upstairs for my bag of leather, then back down, only to find that they took tokens.  So back upstairs and buy the token — which was 2 for 20 DKK.  But I only need one.  20 DKK.  Whatever.   Not that I was the only one to deal with this, as another guest offered me a spare token as I was heading back downstairs again, just a minute too late.  In other words: a little scam.

I went to the Men’s Shop and to X-Rated Leather to take advantage of my contest prizes.

The master’s cap arrived by post this afternoon from the Anco, before I had to leave.  Thankfully!

As opposed to Amsterdam, in Denmark I was better able to isolate both an accent and a “look” for the locals — sort of German with a little lilt to it, and of course hair that is blond to strawberry blond and good facial structure.  The Danes are a handsome people, by and large.  I ended up adopting a little bit of accent, but only a little.

The streets near the Centrum tend to have wide bicycle lanes, twice as wide as in the States.  They usually have a curb about 2 inches high between them and the auto lanes, and another 2 inch curb between that and the sidewalk.  I had much less problem with stepping off curbs by accident in Copenhagen than I did in Amsterdam, although I did find myself sometimes crossing the street and then walking in the bicycle lane for a few feet before remembering that I wasn’t on the sidewalk.

Scooters also ride in the bicycle lanes here.  There were way more scooters here than in Seattle (3 times as many, maybe), but nothing like the number in Amsterdam.

The bicycles typically are not locked up when they are parked here.  I assume this means that everyone who wants a bike has one, so theft isn’t an issue.  But it was surprising to see dozens of parked bicycles, and almost no chains.

I’ve come to despise the cobblestones commonly used here for sidewalk paving.  With all the walking (and dancing!) I’ve been doing, I have developed shin splints, and negotiating the uneven surfaces makes them hurt.

I was surprised by the amount of wood used in Denmark in outdoor, public settings.  Places such as the steps at the Copenhagen Central Station were wooden.  I wonder how often these have to be replaced?

Speaking of steps, the stairs at K3 had phantom bottom steps.  That is, the first step of several of the stairways was flush with the landing, but designed to look like the other steps, complete with edge markings and the like.  This meant that I stumbled on each of those steps for the first several stair ascents and descents, until I started to trust my memory of the staircase and not the visual.

I flew AirBerlin into Berlin-Tegel airport (the smaller and closer-in of the two Berlin airports).  From there, I hopped the 109 bus to the Uhlandstraße U-Bahn (subway), then that to Wittenbergplatz, and then three blocks walk (or drag, in the case of the luggage, getting heavier each leg!) to the Kinky Tulip hotel in Schöneberg.

After a quick nap, I went out to some of the local bars.

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Updated on February 26, 2010

Updated on May 14, 2010

Moved part of this post to the Sounds Kinky-er blog:
http://soundskinkyer.blogspot.com/2009/08/europe-2009-copenhagen-to-berlin-friday.html

Updated on June 15, 2010

Here’s a short bit about “Copenhagenisation”, heavily promoting bicycle riding in urban areas:
http://schott.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/12/31/copenhagenisation/

Europe 2009: Amsterdam and Copenhagen (Tuesday, July 28)

I had to be up by 8:00 am to catch the train to Schilpol airport, but it turned out the Anco’s breakfast isn’t served until 9:00 am, and indeed the hotel bar are was locked and I didn’t know how to do checkout.  (Much less recover my key deposit.)  Turns out details for that were on a guide in my room that I didn’t read; I have no idea where the guide was, didn’t see it at all.  So I wrote a note with the key and pushed it under the bar door.

Grabbed an orange juice and a pastry of some sort at the HEMA at Centraal Station.  Made it to the airport without incident.  Oh, look!  Starbucks!  Yay, familiar coffee!  But I bypassed it in favor of getting checked in, just in case.  Only checked the one suitcase, so when the big carry-on with my leather in it went through the scanner, they pulled out my chainmail harness and asked what it was.  On the other side of security, there was another Starbucks.  Yay!

Customs in Denmark, was it smooth like in the Netherlands?  Not at all.  By which I mean: not at all.  None.  Didn’t even have to show my passport, other than getting on the plane in Amsterdam.

Fewer signs in Denmark are bilingual than in Amsterdam, even at the airport.  After a few minutes fiddling with the iPhone to figure out what train I might need to take, I had to stand in line at the train ticket counter to get help.  Turned out I wanted Copenhagen Central Station.  Figures.

Long walk on tile and cobblestone paths to the hotel.  I’m getting blisters on my hands from this luggage.  I think it gets heavier each leg.

The hotel room at Cabinn City is… small isn’t the word for it.  It’s about 10–12 foot deep and 8 foot wide; about half-size is how it feels, rather cramped — a walk-in closet.  Two single beds (which I pushed together to make a double.  Modular desk, storage, and closet space.  Bathroom has the shower head in the middle of the ceiling; you pull the curtain around and flip a lever on the sink, and then deal with a wet bathroom floor until it drains/dries.  The whole thing feels very IKEA (although that’s actually in the next country over).

You have to put your room key in a slot by the door to work the lights and outlets; they go out after about 15 seconds if you remove the card.  Took me a while to figure that out, and my laptop ran out of power once despite being plugged in.  Also seems like a great way to leave your card in the room, although it also does prevent big electric bills from lights left on.  (But it also prevents you from leaving a small light on to greet you when you return).

I took a quick shower and booted up the laptop to check out the Scandinavian Leather Men site.  Oh look, that leather club sightseeing tour starts at 14:00, and its now… 1:50 pm (13:50).  Quick, scramble into shorts and shirt and jog over there.  (I chose this hotel because it’s only 10 minutes from both the SLM clubhouse and DGI-byen where the dance competition is being held.)

We then spent about 90 minutes walking through Copenhagen: past the oldest gay bar in the city, by the original Carlsberg brewery location, through the King’s Garden, past the royal palace, down to the water across from the Opera House, and to the new Royal Theatre where we had beer and cider.  There, the rest of the group left for a ferry ride, while I headed back to the Hans Christian Andersen castle at Tivoli to check-in for the OutGames.  Along the way, I bought a basket of blackberries from a street vendor, the only food I had eaten since a pastry about 8 hours earlier.  And then back to the hotel for a nap.

I wanted to get a t-shirt from the OutGames, but they made the (poor, to me) decision to limit different colors to different styles.  The general OutGames design is very loud and busy — dancing silhouettes in front of the multi-colored “bubbles” logo — and I didn’t want it.  I preferred just the single color “bubbles” version (“preferred” meaning “would settle for”; still didn’t like it much), but it was only available in blue or yellow on a black shirt for men; women had two other colors, and another two were only on tanks.  I could have lived with the yellow design, but then the price: 150 DKK ($30) for a t-shirt which I didn’t really like a lot to start with?  No way.

All registered attendees get a participation medal, which they decided to make do double duty as a luggage tag.  This strikes me as very odd: it makes for a pretty heavy luggage tag, and not one that I would want to risk getting yanked off my bag in transit (having had other tags broken, ripped, or lost over the years).  I hope they got a price break by doing this, rather than it costing extra for a nifty but dumb idea.

After the nap, dinner was an egg and tomato sandwich and a creme cheese danish from Upper Crust at the train station.  Cheap and quick.

Tuesday evening was a party at the SLM clubhouse.

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Updated on February 23, 2010

Updated on May 12, 2010:

Moved part of this post to the Sounds Kinky-er blog:
http://soundskinkyer.blogspot.com/2009/07/europe-2009-amsterdam-and-copenhagen.html

Europe 2009: Amsterdam (Friday, July 24)

Customs in Amsterdam was surprising.  Surprising in that it was almost non-existent.  Seriously: I stood in line behind one person, showed my passport to get into the baggage claim (and was asked no questions about my stay), got my bag, walked through the “Nothing To Declare” door, and that was it.  I was done.  I get hassled more than this driving into Canada!

I rode the train from the airport to Amsterdam Centraal Station.  This would have gone smoothly, but I misread the schedule and thought I was on a train that didn’t stop at the two stations in between.  So I got off at the first stop, got out of the station, checked my iPhone map, and said “Where the hell am I?”  (I couldn’t see signage telling me which stop I was at.  Or maybe I just couldn’t read it.)  I had to get back on and ride two more stops.  I chatted for a couple minutes with a nice Dutch girl for a few minutes before the first stop, where she exited.

Lugging my bags to the hotel wasn’t easy, between the bump-bump-bump of the brick streets and the rain.  Good solid rainstorm.  Thank you, leather jacket and leather cowboy hat.  Felt like home (but like spring, not high summer).

I’m staying at the Hotel Anco.  Several years ago, one of the Seattle Men in Leather members (Leo) wrote an article for our newsletter about leather travel in the Netherlands and Belgium, and he recommended the Anco.  For €65 per night, I’ve got a room with a double bed and a sink (shared toilet and shower, one floor up), plus free WiFi and breakfast every morning, and I’m a block from Warmeosstraat.  (I think it was supposed to be a single bed when I made the reservation, but shhh, I’m not telling!)  The classic leather stay in Amsterdam is the Black Tulip (but I haven’t chanced on it yet, not sure just where it is; ah, a web search shows it is closer to Centraal Station than the Anco is), but it was another €20 or more a night.

My room wouldn’t be ready for a couple hours (since it was still morning, about 9:00 am), so I had some breakfast and then wandered around Warmoestraat, where RoB and Mr. B and several of the leather bars are.  Nothing was open at 10:00 am on Friday morning, though.  I wandered over to another neighborhood where a couple more leather bars and gay shops are (also not open yet), and then back to RoB (now open) where I bought a new pair of leather braces (suspenders), for the Mr. Leather OutGames contest.

We’re used to streets in the States which are wide — two lanes plus two lanes of parking — and paved with asphalt.  Here in the Amsterdam Centrum, most of the streets are closer to what we would call alleys, but paved with bricks.  They are often as small as one narrow lane and about 3 feet on each side for walking, and some are narrower than that.  Some of it reminds me of Greenwich Village (maybe no surprise, since New York was originally New Amsterdam), and of Philadelphia.  Of course, the canals cross-cutting everything remind me of last spring’s trip to Dublin, where the river bisects the city, with Temple Bar on one side, kind of like Warmoesstraat and the Red Light District are here.

The Red Light district is between the Anco and Warmoesstraat, or at least a portion of it is, centered around Ould Kerk, the oldest church in Amsterdam.  It is rather bizarre, having full glass doors with whores behind them, gyrating and winking at possible customers in the direct view of the church.  The last time I was in Amsterdam (other than at the airport last year), I was 13 and on a tour.  I think we went through some chunk of the Red Light district on that trip — I saw some tour groups in the area this time, even just after dark — but I don’t really remember anything about that piece of the trip, nearly 30 years later.

Back at the hotel, I got my room and a couple hours nap, then went wandering again.  Found that the Web was open, but the Warmoesstraat bars don’t open until 2200 or 2300 (10 or 11 pm)!  They stay open unto 4 or 5 am, but that late of an opening seems very strange.

Somewhere tonight, I lost my nose ring.  (Probably in the dark room at the Eagle.) Beautiful little crescent (no balls) from Palm Springs Piercing.  It’s held in by two rubber rings, but I only had one on (“Danger, Will Robinson!”), because I only have three and the others were on my other, larger crescent ring.  Which I had forgotten I was wearing on Monday when I got to work, so I took it out and put it in my shorts pocket, then put them through the wash, and… guess what didn’t come back out on Tuesday.  Fuck, that leaves me with just the nose staple and the spike for the rest of the trip.

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Updated on February 4, 2010

Updated on May 3, 2010:

Moved part of this post to the Sounds Kinky-er blog:
http://soundskinkyer.blogspot.com/2009/07/europe-2009-amsterdam-friday-july-24.html

Europe 2009: Seattle to Amsterdam (Thursday, July 23)

I spent much of the morning scrambling around the house to get those last few things packed.  Where are my leather braces (suspenders)?  (Never did find them.)  Where is the master’s cap?  (Oh, yeah, left it on the corner of the sling frame.)  What the hell am I forgetting?  Was also changing the sheets, doing the laundry, and doing the dishes, to leave the house in a good state.

(Things I know I forgot thus far: bathroom scissors to touch up the beard, and a pack of Kleenex.  Finding some place to buy those in Amsterdam turned out to be a challenge.  No Walgreens on the corner!)

Rusty is going to be house sitting for me while I’m gone, feeding the cats and such.  He showed up at about 9 am, expecting me to already be gone.  So instead, he was able to give me a ride to the Light Rail station, saving me the time of schlepping luggage to the bus and waiting for it.

The new Seattle Light Rail was smooth (as expected). Coolest part was the stage between Rainier Beach and Tukwila stations, seeing parts of the area I haven’t seen before.  Ride was a little bumpy on that stage, the elevated part, but only a little.

There were only two of us on the train at that hour.  Which means I’m expecting mid-August to be when the Light Rail detractors declare it a failure due to low ridership, and start to talk about shutting it down and ripping out the tracks.  (Just wait.)

They don’t have all the bugs out of the system yet, though.  No announcements when coming to a station.  Oh, wait, there’s one: “Now arriving… Rainier Beach Station.  Please hold on to a handrail (etc.)”  Only problem is, the announcement went off as we left the station.

I’m flying Northwest from Seattle to Amsterdam.  Only problem: there’s no Northwest ticket counter listed on the airport map!  Oh, that’s right: Delta is merging with Northwest, so go to their counter.  Was pleased to see that there was no charge for the international flight for either bag; I was fearing an additional $50 or more.  So I ended up checking two rather than carrying two on.  Had to move some from the suitcase to the smaller bag to get under 50 lbs., but that was easy.

Coming out of the subway and into the South Satellite terminal, they were doing some major work on the escalators.  They had one bank completely off and were directing everyone onto the other set, but spacing us about six feet apart, to balance the weigh (I guess; maybe it was just to annoy us).  Never seen such a thing.  Making it even more bizarre, they wouldn’t let anyone take the stairs next to the closed escalator, either, for “safety” reasons.  What the fuck?

Boarding the plane, there were no less than five uniformed security people in the jetway itself.  And then at the plane door, one of the flight attendants was being grumpy on the phone, something like “That’s not the policy we’re supposed to follow.  I’m not doing that on any other flights!”  Mmmmaybe that merger with Delta/Northwest isn’t going smoothly?  Were the security folks there to deal with problem employees?

The overhead bins on international flights are about a foot higher than on domestic ones.  Can’t imagine how those bleached blonde 5'1" real estate chicks can get their shouldn’t-be-a-carrry-ons up there without help.  (Didn’t I make that same comment on the trip report for Ireland last year?  Checking the blog, it doesn’t appear so.  I’m sure I thought it.)

I think I only slept about 2-3 hours on the flight (10 hours + 9 hours of time change).  That’s the problem with a daytime flight.  Unlike the flight to Ireland, this one was packed full, almost every seat taken, so there was no chance to stretch out and try to recline and sleep.  (Poor, poor airlines.  Losing money because nobody will fly.  Bull-fucking-shit.)

Watched two movies — the bromance I Love You, Man and Jim Carrey’s Yes Man.  Both were okay, and like most rom-coms (and these are on the edge of the genre), they work perfectly fine on a 7" screen in the back of an airplane seat.

My seatmate was going to have a 3-hour layover in Amsterdam, and then another 5 hours to the Ukraine.  Ugh.

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Updated on February 3, 2010

Knock on wood, but the predicted “Get rid of it!” call about Light Rail that I feared would surface hasn’t yet, at least not to any degree I’ve noticed.  I’ve taken it to the airport and back several times now — next Wednesday will be the next time, heading to New Zealand — and ridership has increased every time I've been on it.  And I’ve been noticing more people riding it when the trains go by, although I have no idea how the actual numbers are comparing to projections yet.

Ireland: Amsterdam to Seattle, er, make that to Minneapolis and then to Seattle (Sunday, March 2)

Written Sunday, March 2 at 1:04 pm (Minneapolis time), somewhere over the Atlantic

No such luck with a long layover in Amsterdam

We apparently made up some of the time lost on the ground during our flight  We were supposed to arrive at 12:15 and we were on the ground at 1:00.  Still, my flight to Seattle was to leave at 1:15.  The KLM agent told me they had already booked me onto a replacement flight and sent me to the T4 transfer station.  (Amsterdam has so much international traffic that they have several staffed stations set up specifically to deal with hundreds of rebookings and reroutings.  In the states, you generally have to work with just your airline.)

When I got there, I had to wait for a couple people, and then the agent said if I ran I would still make my Seattle flight, but the gate was… yes, you guessed it, the furthest one from where we were.  I would have to cover 2 blocks of terminal in 8 minutes, with two carry-ons.  Like Hell.  (The last time I tried that, for a redeye flight to Chicago a year ago, 7 of us made it – only because the flight was 15 minutes late leaving – but they had given away all but 3 of the seats, and two solo travelers snapped up two of them, leaving me and my boyfriend and a family of three with no solution.)  So I walked as fast as I could manage, and an agent met me about 100 feet from the gate saying she had just turned away another traveller.  Could I have made it if I had actually ran?  Maybe, but I think karma would have said “No” and left me just a sweaty upset mess.

So she sent me back to the T6 transfer station.  Unlike the T4 one, this one had people in line.  Lots of people.  It took me just under two hours to get through the line (and by then, the number of people in the line had almost doubled; poor people in the line at that point!).  At which point they couldn’t find me in the system.  They eventually did: I had been rebooked after all, as the original agent said, on a flight to Minneapolis and then to Seattle.  Which was scheduled to leave… wait for it… 2 hours 10 minutes after my original one.  Also known as “in about 10 minutes”. Also known as “if you run, you can make it.”  Also known as… you guessed it, back to the same gate, the farthest one away!  Argh!

So I hustled (a little running, but not much) back to gate E22, and got on.  The flight was still boarding 10 minutes after it was supposed to take off.  I think a bunch of people got shuttled onto it late like me.  But at least I’m on the flight.  Unfortunately, that also means another layover in Minneapolis before the next Seattle flight.  Best guess is as much as 4 hours.  I was originally supposed to be back in Seattle at 2:35 pm, now it’s going to be close to 11:30 pm.

So much for any hopes of either a pleasant Sunday or staving off reverse jetlag.

Watched Chicken Little on the flight so far.  Useless waste of an animated film, almost nothing to recommend it.  Will probably watch Cars and Juno, too, unless I can sleep some.

The baby on the Amsterdam flight shut up once we were finally in the air, and then started up again after we landed.  This flight has one of the same sort: wailing until we were in the air, fortunately sleeping now.

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Updated on January 14, 2010
 

Ireland: Dublin to Amsterdam (Sunday, March 2)

Written Sunday, March 2 at 11:09 am (Dublin time), somewhere over England

Boy, it doesn’t take but one experience to show you how much airports suck.

Make that how much American airports suck.

With a 9:40 am flight to Amsterdam, I caught the 7:55 bus to the airport from the City Centre.  I know, that’s less that a two-hour window, and in the States they always recommend a minimum two hours, three if you’re flying international.  (Which is utter bullshit, of course.  The only time you need two hours is if you’re flying a hub airline before 8:00 am on a business day.  And I’ve not seen any reason to need an hour beyond that for international flights, since there’s nothing extra you usually need to do.)

I would guess (based on the number of terminals and the number of posted flights for a Sunday morning) that Dublin’s airport is 1/2 to 2/3 the size of SeaTac, with of course vastly more traffic going International.  At the Dublin airport, they don’t have separate ticket counters for checking in for each airline, which in the States leaves some deserted and some utterly mobbed.  Instead, in Dublin they have check-in areas allocating different departing flights to different areas.  Load balancing!  Efficiency!  Imagine!  And thus my wait for a check-in machine: zero people.  My wait for checking my bags: zero people.  My wait to have the security person check my boarding pass and passport: two people.  My wait to go through security: zero people.  (And they didn’t make me remove my shoes, either!)

In other words, the absolute best check in and security experience you can imagine in today’s environment.  Less than 10 minutes from arriving at the check-in area to being through security, at 8:20 am.

On the other had, Aer Lingus still sucks.  Same lousy legroom, same hawking of perfume and charging for beverages.  And let’s add in that the seats in front of the exit rows don’t recline, so I’m having to uncomfortably turn sideways just to type this.  And the various regular announcements are spoken in English but from a tape in Irish (with a big increase in volume levels), and the speaker is right over my head, so I have to plug my ears every time an Irish announcement comes on, or go deaf.

But that’s not the worst of it.  There’s some sort of a threatened Aer Lingus strike in the air, and that apparently has taken the effect of either a slowdown or a sick out for the baggage handlers.  Which means we boarded on time… and sat on the tarmack.  40 minutes after we were scheduled to take off, they finally fired up the engines… and we sat for another 25 minutes before we finally left.

(And yes, there was the requisite crying baby, wailing the entire time.)

You’ll recall that coming through Amsterdam, we had a two-hour scheduled layover that turned into five hours.  Going back (me today, Mom and Grandma on Tuesday), we’re only scheduled for a one-hour layover.

I’ll pause to let you do the probability math…

Yup.  My flight to Amsterdam is now scheduled to arrive after my connection home departs.  (Even at the 40-minutes late mark, I doubt they could have transferred my luggage in time.)  Which leaves me at a loss for how long my delay will be in Amsterdam; depends on how often Northwest and KLM leave for Seattle (not sure which I’m taking back; check-in in terminal said KLM – Royal Dutch Airlines – but boarding pass says Northwest, which we flew to Amsterdam last week; they are partners, obviously).

Mom did buy Trip Insurance, so that will be my first thing to check when I get there.  I think it doesn’t kick in until there’s a 6-hour delay or some such, though.  (And whether it gets me anything, or just reimburses her, I don’t know.)

The cynical yet hopeful side of me says “Maybe they’ll bump me by 12 or 24 hours, and I’ll have to (get to) go into Amsterdam for a period of time, maybe even having them put me up for the night.”  Damn, I’d hate that.

I’m reminded that the guys I was originally in the row with on the flight to Amsterdam last week expressed that they couldn’t imagine having to get on another flight after the long one to Seattle, implying too much stress and annoyance to handle.  I think I get what they meant, now.

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Updated on January 14, 2010
 

Ireland: Amsterdam to Dublin (Friday, February 22)

Written Friday, February 22 at 11:45 am, Dublin time (somewhere over England, sitting sideways in the airplane seat) / 3:45 am in Seattle

It was looking like the 12:00 time was bogus, since the next listed flight was actually 13:10, but they got us on our original plane and got us out around 12:20.

The coffee was lousy, by the way.   And a “Large” was about 10-12 ounces, so it was way overpriced.   Decent apple cake, though.

Aer Lingus has the least leg room of any plane I’ve ever been on.   My knees touch the seat in front of me.  If my thighs were 1/2 inch longer, sitting would be difficult.   Is this where I make a leprechaun joke, since I’m going to Ireland?

Screaming kid on the flight.  There was one on the flight to Amsterdam, too, but that one shut up for most of the flight.  I honestly think that parents should not only have to buy a separate seat for any kid under 4 years old, they should have to pay double for it.  Anything to convince them to just stay off tightly packed transports until the kid is old enough to not scream like this.  (Yeah, I realize that he’s probably in some distress from pressure changes.  I don’t care: the parents’ “need” to travel with the tot is abusing both the kid and the rest of us.)

No inflight magazine, just a “sell you snacks and perfume and jewelry and other stuff” catalog.  But the snacks listing really shows we’re in a different country.  Beyond the easy stuff like scones and shortbread biscuits, there’s a “Full Breakfast” (sausages, bacon [ham], black pudding & white pudding, tomato, sauteed potatoes, farmhouse brown bread, butter, marmalade, fresh orange juice, and a hot drink; €8, roughly $12).  And two sandwiches: chicken & stuffing, and cheese & spring onions (€4.50 each, about $7.50).  Nifty.

When the beverage service rolled out, I became further convinced that Aer Lingus is a budget airline on the same level as Skybus in the states.  First flight I’ve been on where you had to pay for the beverages.  €2 ($3!) for a soda or a cup of lousy airplane coffee!  Watch for this level of cheapness to hit the main carriers in the states within three years.  I’d love to predict Southwest first, but I’m betting on Delta or American jumping before them.  At least with Skybus (“Pillows are just $10!  Blankets are extra!  But maybe you were lucky and got the $20 ticket for this flight!”) — emphasis on “bus” — you kind of expect it.

What the fuck is up with the flight staff hocking duty free stuff on the flight itself?  No, I don’t want to buy a full-size bottle of liquor or a watch from the stewardess.  What is this, Times Square in the 1970s?  (“Psst, buddy!  Wanna buy a Rolex?”)  This one, I can’t blame on Aer Lingus, since Northwest did it, too.   I wonder how much volume they actually sell?

Ah, the kid finally shut up.
…And then started up again 10 minutes later.
 

Ireland: Seattle to Amsterdam (Thursday–Friday, February 21–22)

Written Friday, February 22 at 10:30 am, Amsterdam time (at a kid’s table in the Amsterdam airport).  That’s 1:30 am Seattle time, I think.

Leaving Seattle and getting to Amsterdam on Northwest was pretty uneventful. Watched Brother Bear (pretty good), Bee Movie (mediocre), and Elizabeth: The Golden Age (nowhere near as good as the first, and scattered with the three subplots – the defeat of the Spanish Armada was almost an afterthought – but Eric Bana was sure pretty to look at) on the flight. Had three meals (or two and a snack, if you prefer); fairly typical airline food, although with airline food being so rare these days, pretty good airline food. Got a pair of seats to myself, which was nice. Slept maybe 2 hours of the 9 total, though (but we got to Amsterdam at the home time equivalent of midnight or so, so what do you expect?). Yawn. I’ll pay for that later.

We were supposed to have a two-hour layover in Amsterdam before catching Aer Lingus to Dublin, but there was engine trouble which first delayed and then cancelled our flight. Grrr. We’re to come back in another 30 minutes, to wait for the next flight (12:00, rather than our original 9:40). I’m expecting/fearing that this will mean everyone on our flight is now on stand-by for the noon flight, and thus probably only 1/4 of us will get on. We may be stuck here in the Amsterdam airport all day. (That’s how it would work in the States, to be sure!)

Bought some mini-cheeses to snack on, and a new pair of cheap earphones at the duty free place, since the ones provided by the airline were crap and my own in-ear ones broke during the flight. Debating whether to buy some overpriced non-Starbucks coffee or not…
 

When E.F. Hutton Talks…

You’ll get to hear people yapping on their cell phones for your entire flight as soon as 2006, per this article.

It’s bad enough that the moment the wheels touch down, you hear a dozen chimes of phones being turned on, so that people can tell someone “We just touched down.”  Neither you nor your loved one could wait the five minutes until we get to the gate, or the ten minutes until you get off the plane?  But now we’re going to have to hear you all the way from Seattle to Dallas?  ;Oy!

(I recall the flight I took from New York in February, 2003.  The stewardess told the Orthodox Jew sitting in the aisle across from me — not that his religion has anything to do with it (probably) other than the particular outfit he was wearing &mdash that he needed to turn off his cell phone.  He held it up, still glowing green, saying “It’s off, look!”  Ten seconds later, it rang.  I swear, if she wouldn’t have lost her job by doing it, she would have taken the phone from him, thrown it on the floor, and stomped on it.  I was tempted to do so myself.)

When I used to take the commuter train to and from work every day, at least once a week, there would be somebody blabbing on about some business deal or another, probably sharing confidential info with the entire car.  One time, after the person had finished his conversation, I waited about 20 seconds, turned to my seatmate, and said in a loud voice and basically repeated the guy’s conversation, something to the effect of “So, I hear company X is going to be doing a deal with company Y to bring product Z to the market.  Guess I should call my stock broker, huh?”  (Oh, what a look I got!)

(Weblog Title Reference: From an old TV commercial.  “When E.F. Hutton talks, people listen.”)

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Updated on May 2, 2011

Fortunately, the enablement of cell phone calls on airplanes is still in limbo.  Mayb it stay there for a good long time.  Having the “Pay $10 a minute” (or whatever it costs) phone available has always been a good balance to me: if you really really need to make that call, you can, but it’s not going to be cheap, so you’ll keep it short.

He’s Not Only Merely Dead, He’s Really Most Sincerely Dead

It used to be that they couldn’t put someone’s picture on a postage stamp until they had been dead for ten years, with the exception being a deceased President, who could go on one immediately (or a year after dying; same thing, really, given the time for designs to be created and the like [see update below for greater detail]).  This always seemed like a reasonable time delay to extend to other adventures in naming things for dead people.

As such, my vow from a few years back to not refer to National Airport by its redubbed name, “Reagan”, goes by the wayside.  (After a year from now.)  (But it’s still going to be Intercontinental in Houston for a while yet!)  Not that I really had anything against the man: having been in high school and college while he was in office, Reagan will always be a valid “face” of the U.S. Presidency to me, and I wasn’t yet old enough, jaded enough, cynical enough to recognize any evils he did for what they were at the time they occurred.  So I largely just give him a “bye” in terms of rating his terms in office.

Of course, I see on CNN that there are moves afoot to put Reagan’s face on either the $10 bill or half the dimes.  I come from the “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it” school of thought here: there’s no need to make a change, the existing pictured people are from long enough ago to not bear any bitterness from any but a tiny fraction of the populace, and there’s a certain historical value in having someone like Hamilton on the $10 bill, as it’s the only way most people will ever encounter his name after 10th grade U.S. history class.

I’m so opposed to this sort of a change that I’ll make a vow now: if this is done any time in the next ten years — before Reagan has been dead for a decade — I will examine the money I get as change and refuse anything with his image on it.  It may mean work for me and a lot of annoyed shopkeepers (especially with the dimes; I only get a $10 bill maybe one time in ten when getting $10 in change anymore, it’s always fives instead), but it will also send a message.  You don’t see Susan B. Anthony or Sacajawea dollars in use very often, do you?  A big piece of that is because people just didn’t want to use them.  If enough people do likewise with Reagan dimes or bills, you’ll see them fade away quickly, too.

[Weblog title reference: From The Wizard of Oz, in “Ding Dong, the Witch is Dead”: As Coroner, I must aver / I thoroughly examined her.  It’s also a cruel reference to Reagan’s Alzheimer’s Disease diagnosis, of course.]

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Updated June 18, 2004

Per this story, a stamp is already in the works.  Look for it on February 6, the first birth anniversary after Reagan died.

Updated February 3, 2011

I still don’t usually refer to the airport as “Reagan”. It’s almost always “National” or “DCA” for me, and when I do slip and call it “Reagan”, I usually backtrack and correct myself.  These days, though, that’s really more habit than reluctance to use the revised name.  After all, it’s not like they removed someone else’s name to apply Reagan’s.

Big City, Small Town

I’m in San Jose, California, for work this week, and I’m struck again by the “personality” of the city.  (I now live in Seattle, but I used to live in the Bay Area, including a year in San Jose.)  San Jose is a big city by accident and has little hope of ever growing past that.  Twenty -plus years ago, San Jose was a small city, more orchards than high tech.  Its population has grown significantly since then, but San Jose will probably never be a world-class city.

• San Jose is probably in the top 20 cities in terms of population (it is third in the state of California), but it is undoubtedly also in the top 20 in terms of surface area.  Sprawl says it all.  Miles and miles.
• The only major league sports team based here is hockey (the San Jose Sharks).
• The tallest building is less than 20 stories.  (Now go drive down Lakeshore in Chicago and count the buildings under 20 stories.)  This is largely caused by the flight path for the airport going right over downtown: buildings simply can’t be any taller.  Without skyscrapers, San Jose simply doesn’t look like a real city downtown.
• There are no fantastic views.  No snow-capped mountains.  No great rivers or sea vistas (unless you count when the Guadalupe River floods each winter).  And as mentioned, little in the way of towering architecture.
• The old song says “Do you know the way to San Jose?”  Being only an hour from San Francisco raises the response “Why bother to go there?”.  Many people who work in San Jose live in San Francisco, simply because it’s close enough that they can.  The San Jose airport (SJC) couldn’t make it as an airline hub; people tended to still fly into San Francisco (SFO) instead.  And then there was the Good Morning America “Good Morning from…” from a few years back: “Good Morning from San Francisco, the heart of Silicon Valley!”  (Oh, the shame.)

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Updated on June 28, 2010

Small revisions and a link to the song.

Flying into San Francisco Airport

In the winter or the spring?  Don’t bother.  You’ll be sorry.

SFO (San Francisco’s airport) has only two runways.  Add a little bit of weather — and in that part of the Bay Area, that means fog, more likely than not — and one or both runways can close down in a heartbeat.  This, of course, causes a domino effect of flights being late or outright cancelled.

In December, 1998, I tried to get back to the Bay Area from vacation in Seattle.  Perhaps you heard about the SFO closures that time.  Some flights ended up landing in Sacramento, Reno, or even Los Angeles.  (One airline even landed in Sacramento and abandoned the passengers — “This is as close as we can get to San Francisco.  You’ll have to get the rest of the way on your own.”  What fun!)  I ended up having to stay in Seattle for two extra days.

In April, 1999, I tried to get back to the Bay Area from a weekend trip to San Diego.  Guess what happened?  Matters were compounded by the airline I was flying — Southwest — being unwilling to tell passengers anything more than “might be delayed,” even when United passengers were coming over from the other terminal to see about flights since their airline had cancelled everything into SFO that morning.  I missed getting on standby to Oakland and ended up on the next-to-last seat on a flight to San José — and then was wedged into a “party seat” with one other man and four obese women (who were fun to talk to, despite the tight quarters: “Honey, you don’t need a seatbelt, you ain’t going nowhere!”) — and then waiting in the cold for a shuttle bus and then the commuter train for about an hour, I made it to my destination (work) about four hours late.  I fortunately had no luggage to check; those who did had to chase it all over the Bay Area, adding yet more time to the delay.

My recommendation?  During the winter and spring — mid-December to mid-April — if you can avoid flying into SFO, do so.  The odds of having weather problems are high, but they drop significantly if you fly into either of the other major airports in the area (Oakland and San José).  And truth be told, neither of the other airports is especially less convenient than SFO (depending on where your final destination is, of course) — and they can even be cheaper!

(Oh, and don’t get me started on how I dislike flying out of SFO!)