Travel

That Airport Feeling

~ Cheryl

So here I am in another airport departure lounge. Yes, they do all look pretty much the same. Still, if I am going to be stuck in Darkest Somerset for a while, I figured I might as well find out what the local escape route had to offer. While this is a fairly small airport, it does have international connections, and not just cheap flights to Europe. Continental flies to New York from here. Of course I’d have to change to get to San Francisco, so I’m probably still better off going to London and flying United.

Possibly of more interest is the Lufthansa flight to Frankfurt. That’s a Star Alliance service, and I’m betting that you can connect from there to Helsinki. I shall investigate that later. In the meantime, as there doesn’t appear to be anything urgent on the email, I think I shall take a wander round. I shall check into Twitter from the phone every so often.

Dublin Bound

~ Cheryl

Today I am heading off to Dublin. RyanAir permitting, I shall be at the Amanda Palmer concert (probably a little late) tonight and at the Neil Gaiman / Amanda Palmer reading tomorrow. As Ireland is a foreign country it will cost me an arm and a leg to use my iPhone while I am there, but I hope to get wi-fi access a few times during the trip. Posting will be sparse until Wednesday evening.

Good to Find Out

~ Cheryl

The Air Canada fare sale that Kevin mentioned last night does not seem to extend to passengers from the UK. Leastways the price they are currently quoting me for Worldcon in August is almost twice what I have paid for the staff meeting trip in April.

However, I did notice that I mis-booked my hotel room. I really should be leaving on the 11th, not the 10th. So I went to the web site to change it, only to discover that they have no record of my booking. I think I shall be phoning Canada later today.

Visa: The Last Word

~ Cheryl

Kevin and I had a long conference call with the immigration lawyer last night, and the upshot of it was that there really is no visa that it is sensible for me to apply for. There are always options, but they would be very expensive and by no means guaranteed to succeed. As we have spent a lot of money already and got nowhere, we are not inclined to pour good money after bad.

This does not mean that I am banned from the US. It just means that I have to be a lot more careful how I come and go. If I can steal a phrase from Douglas Adams, I am going to be spending a year or two dead for immigration purposes. Fortunately Worldcon will be outside the US for the next two years, so finances permitting I will still be able to go, and by 2011 I’m hoping I’ll be allowed to make short trips to the USA again.
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Dublin Booked for Neil/Amanda

~ Cheryl

I now have both my flight and hotel booked for the trip to Dublin to see Neil Gaiman and Amanda Palmer. As I now have a room share for P-Con (thanks Cuddles!) I decided I could afford the Central, especially as the room rates are much lower right now (or perhaps just because it is midweek). That way I’ll be able to to test out the wi-fi in the hotel prior to the con. I’m hoping to do some live coverage of Neil’s event too, but the mobile broadband rates look a bit ruinous, even after the recent kicking that the EU gave the phone companies.

Dublin Again

~ Cheryl ~ 2 Comments

I have just booked flights to and from Dublin for Feb 16-18 for the Neil Gaiman/Amanda Palmer event. I’m not 100% sure I’m going yet – I’m still investigating accommodation and I might need to send my passport away, but for the absurd sum of £5 (plus £9.50 handling fee that they carefully don’t tell you about until you pay) it makes sense to book the flight now and worry about whether you will take it later. Even RyanAir is survivable at £14.50 for a round trip to Dublin.

Of course it will cost me more than that to get to/from Bristol airport, and I may yet decide to check a bag, but I’ll deal with that later.

P-Con Room Share Wanted

~ Cheryl ~ 4 Comments

I have booked my flight for P-Con. I’m flying RyanAir from Bristol. I’m not looking forward to it, but the flight is only an hour so I think I’ll survive.

What I haven’t done yet is book a room. The con hotel is quite expensive (especially as the price is in Euros), so if there is anyone out there who is also going and would be interested in a room share please let me know.

I’m offline for a few hours…

~ Cheryl

… and look what happens. John Updike dies and Realms of Fantasy closes. I can see that I’m just going to have to stay online 24/7 from now on.

Anyway, the trip to London was without excitement, and I’m now in Wimbledon. Tomorrow may be very busy. Don’t expect me online much.

The UK Experience

~ Cheryl ~ 1 Comment

My apologies for the lack of blogging over the past few days. As you will know if you follow my Twitter feed, I have been traveling. It is much easier to update Twitter when I’m on the road than the blog. There is an RSS feed if you are not on Twitter yourself.

Anyway, here’s a quick anecdote especially for Bruce Holland Rogers. When I collected my bags from Left Luggage in Paddington this morning I was served by a nice young man who, from his looks, might have come from Thailand. He had a broad Geordie accent. It isn’t quite in the same league as Pakistani Welshmen, but it is good to see the Melting Pot still functioning.

As I don’t have much food in, I picked up a ready-made meal from Marks & Spencer. It was traditional British cooking: Chicken Balti and a garlic naan.

I’m composing this entry on the train out west. I daren’t read or I’ll fall asleep and risk missing my stop. Jet lag is horrid. It takes me several days after an eastbound trip before I can sleep through the night. Still, I’ve been here more than 24 hours and I haven’t been rained on yet, so I mustn’t complain, right?

On Traffic Congestion

~ Cheryl ~ 2 Comments

Jennifer Ouellette’s latest post takes a physicist’s eye view of traffic congestion and will be interesting reading for anyone who wonders why freeway traffic sometimes slows down for no apparent reason. However, it probably won’t be comfortable reading for Libertarians.

Arrived

~ Cheryl

It was a beautiful day for traveling. The sky was blue, the roads were clear, it was neither too hot nor too cold. We made excellent time, breezing through the MacArthur Maze and Cordelia Junction. As I mentioned on Twitter, we passed a Well Fargo stagecoach along the way. It was on a flatbed being towed by a truck. Kevin thinks there was some sort of event in San Francisco yesterday. It was probably on its way back to Sacramento Old Town.

Our first task of the weekend was to deliver presents to Kevin’s family, which we duly did, meeting up with his mother and her husband at his grandfather’s house. The kittens are somewhat bigger now, but are still recognizably kittens. Sadly they are still very skittish.

Now we get a chance to catch up on email and the blogosphere before meeting up with Gigi for dinner.

Last Word on Travel Woes

~ Cheryl

The bag arrived home safely with all contents intact (though my digital camera still doesn’t work). It got here before I had to leave, and what’s more the delivery guy had no trouble getting here. As you may recall, this is a rarity. DHL, for example, won’t deliver here at all. However, the lost bag system has plenty of space in the record for delivery instructions, they get printed out for the drivers, and my driver at least followed them correctly.

Now I need to go and collect Kevin.

Someone Gets It

~ Cheryl ~ 1 Comment

I got email from United’s Customer Relations people today including a 10% discount certificate and a promise to talk to the mileage plan people about getting me my points for the flight on Saturday.

Also, as per Twitter, my luggage is currently on its way to me from SFO. I have a sinking feeling that it won’t actually get here until I have left to pick Kevin up from his his flight, but that’s just the way the universe works – you can’t fight Murphy once he has his mind set on something.

Customer Relations: U R Doin’ It Wrong

~ Cheryl ~ 2 Comments

United has this system whereby passengers are encouraged to give feedback on their flights. It is something I generally try to remember to do because I like seeing a company prepared to listen to its customers. Also most of my feedback is positive.

Today, however, I discovered something interesting. If your United flight gets canceled and they pass you over to another airline to get you home, then you no longer count as a United passenger and you are not allowed to give feedback on the flight. Also you don’t get the miles for the flight.

I can see exactly why this happens. It is actually a problem with their computer systems. But it really is a very bad way to deal with customers that you have inconvenienced.

What a Day!

~ Cheryl

Well, I am home at last, but it has not been the best of days. Here’s the full story.

My original plan to have brunch at The Court of the Two Sisters was squashed because they were full – I think the courtyard was closed due to the weather, so they had a lot less seating available. The backup plan for beignets at Cafe du Monde was also squashed because of a long queue. So I ended up having breakfast at Starbucks in the hotel, where I did at least get to see the city’s Christmas parade going up Canal Street.

Talking of the hotel, I was hoping to have a photo of the nice “Santa in canoe pulled by gators” display that they had, but my digital camera died.

I had to get a cab to the airport because apparently the hotel shuttles book up 24 hours in advance. That was fine, except, as you doubtless all know by now the plane had technical problems. After much waiting around and confusion I was finally sent over to Continental in another terminal. In the process my number came up on the TSA lottery and I had all the joys of additional screening.

Continental’s flights had plenty of room and ran to time. Also their terminal at Houston turned out to be very nice, though Houston does still make those silly announcements about arresting you if you crack a joke. I bought myself a box of truffles. The burrito I had a Pappasito’s was a bit squidgy, and therefore messy to eat, but it tasted fabulous.

Eventually I got to SFO about 3 hours late. I should give a note of thanks here to Xavier, my teddy-neck-pillow, whose gentle embrace helped me to spend all but about an hour of my time in the air asleep. That was essential if I was going to have to drive home. Xavier would like to apologize to Daniel Abraham whose fine book, An Autumn War got a lot less reading than it might otherwise have done.

Of course they lost my bags, and those of everyone else United routed onto Continental. The ladies in the Continental baggage claim say that the bags are still with United and will be delivered to SFO tomorrow. There’s a web-based tracking system for them, which is a vast improvement.

Thankfully the van was exactly where Kevin had left it and I was able to drive home without incident. Now I am going to get some sleep.

Stuck

~ Cheryl

So, the bad news is that the plane I should have taken out of New Orleans is broken, and the replacement won’t be here for another hour and a half. The even worse news is that there are actually lots of flights from Denver to San Francisco, so I will probably get re-booked on a flight getting me home in the early hours of the morning. At least the roads should be nice and quiet at that time.

OTOH, there is good public wi-fi at MSY so I have been able to catch up with blog reading and email. The time hasn’t entirely been wasted, and I’m not going to miss anything due to the delay. I can sleep in Sunday morning.

If I have any updates I will post them to Twitter.

N’Awlins – Day 1

~ Cheryl

The trip went very well. I was a bit worried about the fog this morning, but SFO ran like clockwork. A colleague of mine who flew out of OAK said he was an hour late leaving. I think I was very lucky. There were flurries of snow in Denver, but it wasn’t settling.

I took Gene Wolfe’s An Evil Guest with me to read. It is a lot of fun. I would have finished it if I hadn’t slept much of the way.

I’m staying in the Sheraton on Canal Street which, if I remember my history correctly, was one of the main hotels of NolaCon. I hope this is not an omen. Thankfully this is a business/academic event with only around 250 attendees so there isn’t much that can go wrong.

We went to Galatoire’s for dinner, and I have to say that I was not impressed. The turtle soup was OK, and the mushroom side dish was lovely, but the rest of my meal was poor. Two of my three fellow diners were also unimpressed. Our waiter explained afterward that they have a lot of older clients who don’t like food to taste of anything much so you have to ask for flavor if you order a dish that is supposed to be spicy. Not recommended.

Bourbon Street is fairly quiet on a Wednesday in December, but that’s only relative. There were lots of people, but several of the sex clubs were closed and there was no band at Maison Bourbon. Preservation Hall was closed too, but that was because Pat O’Brien’s, an Irish pub, had much of St.Peter’s Street packed solid for a block party with a live band actually in the street. The jazz boys wisely decided not to compete. I did find some interesting live music in one of the Irish pubs on Decatur, but I didn’t have time to investigate.

7:00am breakfast meeting tomorrow. Urgh.

Chicago (well, Naperville)

~ Cheryl ~ 2 Comments

We are here, we have found the local Chipotle, all is well. As usual, I slept for most of the flight. Chicago laid on some very nice Scottish weather for us. Apparently Windycon is taking place very near our hotel at the weekend, but we have to fly home on Friday morning for an SFSFC board meeting and SF in SF.