Travels

There are 243 posts filed in Travels (this is page 11 of 25).

Pheasant Run Resort

Pheasant Run's indoor New Orleans

I’m in St. Charles this week to conduct training for my company. This trip, I decided to roll the dice with a Hotwire hotel: the Pheasant Run Resort. I’d read mixed reviews of the hotel on the Internet, with some really hating the hotel and others really liking it. After a few days here, I have to say I really like it. The place certainly has some character!

I arrived Sunday evening (what some call Super Bowl Sunday), and was shocked to find the hotel practically deserted. Expecting to find guests in the hotel bar, watching the game, instead I found one couple – and I almost overlooked them. My coworkers pointed out that greater Chicago in February isn’t exactly a vacation destination.
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Porno scanner

I made my first trip through the porno scanner at RDU’s Terminal A. Didn’t quite mean to, but I didn’t look up from my rush to get through security to realize in time why the line I chose was so short. Almost all the other travelers were choosing to use the metal detector but I failed to notice until my bags were on their way through the X-ray.

I stood on the mat as instructed as the TSA guy said “and your pockets are completely empty, right?”

“Yes,” I said, absent-mindedly.

“Do you have a belt?”

“Yes, I do.”
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Southwest Airlines screws the pooch

In a single, boneheaded move, Southwest Airlines just lost me as a loyal customer. The airline’s simple rewards program just got a lot more complicated.

Fans are hopping mad and are burying Southwest’s Facebook page with their comments. It’s sad, considering how much cheerleading I’ve done for them over the years.

The Baltimore Sun’s Consuming Interests blog has a good breakdown on what the changes mean.

Southwest Airlines Co. overhauled its frequent-flier program to add rewards with no black-out dates and redemptions for international flights on other carriers.

The first major revamp of the Rapid Rewards loyalty plan since it began in 1987 should add “several hundred million” dollars a year in revenue, Chief Executive Officer Gary Kelly said yesterday at a briefing at Southwest’s Dallas headquarters.

Southwest, the largest low-fare airline, spent almost $100 million on the project and aims to win new customers and deepen ties to existing business travelers, who generally pay higher prices. The carrier unveiled a related website for passengers today to explain the changes, which take effect March 1.

“If we get our fair share of frequent fliers, the opportunity is huge,” Kelly said. “We’re very confident this is a good investment.”

via Southwest Loyalty Program Gets First Revamp in 23 Years to Boost Traffic – Bloomberg.

Needle recovered

We recovered the needle Rocket swallowed this morning, thanks to my father-in-law Neil’s metal detector. It was in the “batch” Rocket provided yesterday morning, so it had actually been out of him a full day.

I had checked that bag at the time he provided but thought there was nothing in it, as I had been looking for a 2 inch long needle rather than the one inch kind that it actually was. At any rate, I’m glad we’re not taking that particular “gift” home with us!

Needle Dog

Rocket's needle

We’ve been spending the Thanksgiving weekend at Kelly’s parents’ home in Virginia. Yesterday, the kids were helping string popcorn in the kitchen. Rocket took advantage of an opportunity to eat a piece of popcorn and swallowed the needle that was threaded through it. Everyone watched helplessly as the thread disappeared down our dumb dog’s throat.

We loaded him up in the car and headed to the Swansons’ vet in Haymarket. After Rocket got an x-ray, we were told that there were two options to remove the needle: surgery or an endoscopy. Estimated cost was $3000. Ouch! We couldn’t get the endoscopy done there; it could only be done in Leesburg at The LifeCenter. So, I loaded the dog in the car, said goodbye to Kelly and Linda, and drove 30 miles to Leesburg.

The vet there gave me positive news. There was a good chance the needle would pass without surgery. If we chose to proceed with an endoscopy, it might run from $1200 to $1800. After talking it over with Kelly we decided to try the endoscopy.
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Recruiter’s office

I took our dog to the emergency vet in Leesburg yesterday (the topic of another post). The vet’s office just happened to be near the building where I once signed up for the Navy. In the fall of 1987, I walked into the Navy Recruiting office that was upstairs in this building at 26 Plaza Street. It looks like the Marine Corps still has an office there, but no sign of the Navy anymore. Now it’s the home of a tattoo parlor called Insane Ink.

It made me smile to see the building again.

Back from Iowa

I’m back from Iowa now, three hours early thanks to not taking the airline’s word about there not being any earlier flights. The baggage check employee in Cedar Rapids swore up and down that I couldn’t get into Raleigh from Chicago any earlier than I already was, so I spent almost two hours at the Cedar Rapids airport, waiting for my original flight though I could’ve easily gotten on one leaving early. When I arrived in Chicago, I saw I had a one hour gap until the next flight to Raleigh, so rather than spend three hours at O’Hare I snagged a seat on the earlier flight.

And what a difference it makes to be home. Iowa was extraordinarily windy and bitterly cold. The temperature didn’t crack 30 degrees F the whole time I was there today. Yet when I stepped off the plane at RDU this evening the temperature here was 62 degrees (down from today’s 72 degree high). What a great welcome back, North Carolina!

Time for bed and then tomorrow I return to the airport to pick up my bag, which will spend the night there tonight. More about my Iowa trip later.

Iowa bound

I’m in the Chicago airport on my way to Cedar Rapids, IA. This is a follow-up trip to my last trip, and I hope it’s a formality after what we did two weeks ago. It does provide my first-ever trip to Iowa, however, and I’m looking forward to it for that, among other things.

It was hard leaving the family today, and I dread having to pack for my trips, but I am really loving my job. If I have to make a few trips here and there to make things happen, I’m ok with that. I don’t expect I’ll continue to be this busy. It’s the end of the year and that’s a typically a busy time for sales.

This time I’m flying American Airlines, and RDU is one of the handful of airports that have the new porno-scanners. AA uses Terminal 2, and I don’t recall seeing the porno-scanners in Terminal 1, so there was a possibility I could’ve been scanned. So far I have not been selected to pass through one but I intend to submit to alternative screening (i.e. “fondling”) should I ever get tapped. I think our airport-security bureaucracy has crossed a line of decency with these scanners. Also, as my buddy Ken Thomas pointed out, these machines don’t really make us safer.

This trip, I’ve decided to bring the Nikon along. The business associate I’m meeting is a pretty good photographer and has offered to take me on a quick photo-safari around the area this week. Hauling the camera around is a bit of a pain but I hope it provides me the opportunity to learn a few tricks.

Rochester

I wish I could’ve seen more of Rochester, NY this week. I was locked in a conference room most of my time there and after work officially ended I was going out to eat with my sales guy and the consultants we were working with. Still, I caught a few glimpses here and there.

Rochester has about half the population of Raleigh, so the scale is smaller. It has seen days as a boomtown, though, through the power of the Erie Canal, the Kodak film empire built by George Eastman, and the success of the Xerox corporation. Those boomtown days are still evident in the public places named for the giants of that time, and the stately brick buildings that have stood for a century.

And yet, Rochester seemed to me to be down on its luck. Though my hotel was in the heart of downtown there didn’t seem to be many restaurants or bars nearby. People wearing hoodies seemed to be hanging around, waiting to hassle some unsuspecting tourist walking by. My coworker got hassled the same way on a walk over to visit a client. During my last night in town, I heard multiple sirens go by the hotel, yet during the day I saw few police patrolling the sidewalks. I’ve been through some rough cities and towns before from my Navy days and from business travels, but even I did not feel comfortable walking around outside my hotel.

It’s a shame, too, because there are so many interesting things to see in Rochester. I have yet to see the High Falls, or visit the George Eastman house: a mecca for photographers. Or look around Lake Ontario, or the finger lakes. Or the rolling countryside, for that matter. All that will have to wait until next time. And I hope there is a next time, because Rochester offers so much to see. Maybe next time.

Getting paid to have fun

Wow. Last week’s business trip was exhausting and very last-minute, but incredibly energizing at the same time. Before I left I was really nervous about the trip, which puzzled me as I’ve gone on countless similar trips before. This time, however, I was flying blind for most of the trip. Never before have I had to learn so much on the fly and maintain my cool. And you know what? I did it. It wasn’t perfect but I did it.

Now I think I’m addicted again to being in the thick of things. It’s becoming apparent that I could be very successful at this and it’s got me thinking about how I should prioritize my time. There are many after-work things I could be doing (the most important is being a father and husband, of course) and these activities will suffer if I am traveling regularly. Beyond the time commitment, I have plenty of creative ideas to add to my job: things that would keep me working well past a traditional 8 hour day.

In short, I think I have finally found another job where I get to exercise all of my talents. I’m getting paid to do what I like to do for fun.

That makes me an incredibly fortunate guy.