Travel

End of the Road

~ Cheryl

One of the more “interesting” aspects of the USA’s visa waiver scheme is that entry is not guaranteed. Even if you have done nothing wrong according to the posted rules of the scheme, any immigration official can turn you back for any reason whatsoever. Indeed, no reason need be given, and there is to recourse. That’s just the way it is. You can probably guess what is coming.
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Evil Terrorist Coffee Cups

~ Cheryl ~ 3 Comments

One of the things that strikes you as a visitor to the Bay Area is that there are no refreshment kiosks on BART. Every other commuter railway system that I am familiar with has stations festooned with take-away coffee and fast food stalls. It brings in money for the railway (because they rent space to the retailers) and it is good for the commuters because they can get breakfast on the go.

But not on BART. Not only are there no refreshment stalls at stations, it is illegal to eat or drink on a BART. You can be fined $250 for doing it. One of BART’s directors, Lynette Sweet, thinks this is silly, and has been trying to get them to change their minds. At a meeting yesterday BART managers explained why this was a bad idea. Terrorists might use coffee cups to sneak liquid explosives onto trains.

Now it isn’t illegal to take drinks into the BART system. You don’t get screened when you go through the turnstiles. The only thing that is against the rules is consuming the drink whilst on BART property. So there is absolutely no logic to this argument. It is, however, a sign of the times. If someone in a management position wants to force people to do something, their first recourse is now to say that the regulation is necessary because of the threat from terrorists. Kudos therefore to BART director Tom Radulovich who told managers:

You know, it’s just fearmongering and you should be ashamed.

If only people said that in Washington.

The Chronicle has more on the story, including a heap more lame excuses from BART managers. None of them hold water, for the very simple reason that the Bay Area has another commuter rail system – CalTrain. That does allow food and drink to be consumed on stations and on trains, and the world hasn’t ended because of it.

Which Country Am I In?

~ Cheryl ~ 2 Comments

It was raining in the Bay Area when I left. When I got to Heathrow the weather was like California only about 10 degrees colder. I am confused.

I had a really smooth trip. The flight went fine. Passport control and baggage claim were very smooth – the move to Terminal 1 seems to have been good for United from that point of view. And then I just walked on and off trains in sequence managing the whole journey back to Darkest Somerset in a little over 3 hours from touchdown.

Settling back in has not been so smooth. My wireless modem may have given up the ghost. Fortunately I have a (non-wireless) backup so I could still get online. I’m mostly caught up, but I can’t go through my blog feeds because Google’s UK site appears to be offline. I always log into google.com as a matter of course, but when I’m in the UK that automatically redirects to google.co.uk, and that site is down. Or at least I can’t get to it. Very odd.

Arrrrrrrrrrrrrr!

~ Cheryl ~ 1 Comment

Got that? Good. That will be all for today. Much as I enjoy piratical high jinks, I don’t think it wise to indulge in them when you are embarking on international travel. The TSA has no sense of humor. And it will be tomorrow by the time I get to London.

Green Light for N’awlins

~ Cheryl ~ 3 Comments

Well, hurricane Ike is pretty firmly pointed at Texas. Apologies to all of those currently in its path (not to mention all of those in the Caribbean that have already felt its wrath), but it seems like Kevin and I have lucked out this time. We’ll be heading off to New Orleans early tomorrow. I expect to find some new music to collect, put on a lot of weight from eating good food, and get even further behind with processing video recordings. If I meet any ghosts, vampires or voodoo sorcerers I shall be sure to let you know.

Trip Planning Update

~ Cheryl

The good news is that New Orleans and its people appear to have got off relatively lightly as compared to Katrina (though the people of Bihar in India have been a lot less lucky). However, the storm did do quite a bit of damage and there are problems with basic services such as electricity. Speaking earlier today, Mayor Ray Nagin asked citizens not come back to the city until services were restored.

Obviously in such a situation the last thing that the city needs is a bunch of stupid tourists getting in the way, but because of this Northwest have been very reasonable and have allowed us to re-book for the following weekend. That’s going to be pretty tiring for me as I’ll be back from New Orleans and have to turn around almost immediately and head to England, but so it goes. The bottom line is that we do get our vacation and we don’t make nuisances of ourselves. That sounds good to me.

Gustav Moves In

~ Cheryl ~ 2 Comments

Today’s news is full of the evacuation of New Orleans. From what I can see, hurricane Gustav is not expected to make a direct hit on the city, but it will pass close enough to cause major damage. Hopefully the local and federal authorities will manage to make a slightly better job of managing the situation this time. Possibly the threat of major loss of life due to a badly managed natural disaster during the Republican National Convention will succeed in concentrating minds.

As for us, the Northwest web site shows that the ticket re-booking restriction waiver is only in operation for flights up until Wednesday. We are booked for Thursday, so we have to go or lose our money. In any case, the terms of the waiver only allow re-booking for times when we won’t be able to travel, so we are screwed either way. Given that, I suspect we might as well go anyway, though we won’t know whether the city will actually be open for business next weekend for a few days yet. As much of the point of going was to give New Orleans some badly needed tourist traffic, I’d be happy to go, but if the storm causes major damage the city authorities might want tourists to stay clear for a week or two while they clean things up. There’s no point in going just to gawk and get in the way.

By Rail and Road

~ Cheryl

The plan for this weekend had been to go up to Yuba City to see Kevin’s family. However, with Kevin’s eyes still playing up, he’s not fit to drive. So I had to drive instead. This is not good. I do actually quite enjoy driving, though I’d prefer two wheels to four. However, I don’t drive very much, and I know that my reactions are not good. Also Kevin’s minivan handles like an arthritic elephant who is the worse for wear on rum. I wasn’t looking forward to driving it on busy Bay Area freeways, and if I had pranged it we’d be in serious financial difficulty.

So the compromise plan we came up with was as follows: we would get the train from Fremont to Sacramento (it helps that we live pretty much next door to the railway station) and rent a car from there onwards. The roads north of Sacramento are pretty empty, so there wasn’t much risk of my getting into trouble. And Hertz gave me a rather nice Hyundai Elantra that was surprisingly nippy and had way too much poke for the silly California speed limits.

Thus far the trip has gone very well. We’ve seen Kevin’s mom and grandfather, and a gang of feral kittens that had us ODing on cute. We got to use the hotel’s hot tub in peace. And now, I think, it is time for some serious sleep.

Rocky Mountain High

~ Cheryl

As you have have guessed when the previous post went online, I’m here. The flight went fine. Many thanks to David for sharing a cab. The room looks fine, though it may not have quite enough girly space for both Gigi and me. Internet access is free. I’m now going to take a quick look around before getting back to work.

Travel Report

~ Cheryl ~ 1 Comment

I’m composing this post at Oakland airport. I’m here ridiculously early because the bus to BART only runs once an hour and doesn’t always turn up so a certain amount of risk avoidance has to be done. This has, however, given me an opportunity to check out the facilities (and get some exercise wandering around the terminals).

Oakland is doing a lot of rebuilding, and the end result will, I think, be rather nice. Right now, however, there are an awful lot of “under construction” signs. I’m flying Southwest, which means Terminal 2. When you first get into the gate space it looks like everything is under construction. I ended up walking all the way through to Terminal 1, where I finally found an open Starbucks that had a queue rather longer than that for Terrorisation Security. However, I later found found that if you walked right to the end of Terminal 2 there were actually a lot of shops and food outlets. There are also some nice views out over the Bay, which is a smart touch.

On the other hand, the choice of food is pretty much carbs and dairy or carbs and dairy. Farah, if you are reading this, I do not recommend using Oakland.

The airport is a lesson in unforeseen design choices. There are a bunch of seating areas that are designed for the use of people who need to work while they wait. They come in two types. The first are armchairs with power sockets in the arms. The second are tables with bar stool seating, with power sockets in the tables. Neither are usable by people trying to work unless you are very lucky, because both types of seating are preferable to the normal gate seats. The armchairs are big and comfortable – much better than the terraced seats you normally get. And the table space quickly gets filled up by people with food. To actually be able to make use of the power sockets you need to get to the gate very early.

I, of course, do not need a power socket, and I’m composing this on the Asus, which continues to attract “aw, isn’t it cute!” comments from passers by.

Talking of the Asus, I did have a look to see what WiFi options were available. A search turns up two options: something called Boingo, which is a paid service, and something called Free Public WiFi, which might be free but every time I try to connect I get an error message telling me that there are no free connections. Definitely a case of getting what you pay for.

Wipe Out

~ Cheryl ~ 2 Comments

To a certain extent you can get through crazy travel schedules on sheer force of will. You have places to go, things to do, so you go there and do them. The hard bit comes when you stop, because that’s when you crash. And that is where I am now. I have no energy, no enthusiasm, and no brain cells. I still have things to do, but they all exist on the far side of a swamp and I can’t wade through to them. I’m trying to avoid doing anything that involves brain cells because I’m liable to make silly mistakes. I do need to go the bank to get cash for the Worldcon trip, but when I tried to do so this morning I realized that I didn’t have the energy to walk to the bus stop. Fortunately it is the start of a new month and one of the things I have to do is take backups. This involves little more than sitting and waiting for the computer to do things, which is about all I am good for right now.

Too Much Traveling

~ Cheryl

I woke up this morning in plenty of time, but put on a different watch from the one I had been wearing yesterday. After breakfast and a bit of email wrangling I looked at the watch and had a panic. When I got to Paddington and saw a clock I realized that the watch I put on this morning was still on Finnish time, and I was way early.

Still, this did give me time to check out United’s new home at Terminal 1. It is a bit of a hike from Heathrow Central, but check-in and security is very smooth. There aren’t quite as many shops as at T3, but there is a Chocolate Box, which is a Very Good Thing. Lunch is Pret rather than Starbucks, but I suspect that sushi and smoothie are much better for me than coffee and pannini. There are desks with power points in the general waiting area, and my pay-as-you-go broadband works fine.

Tar-Flavored Travel

~ Cheryl ~ 2 Comments

I am back (briefly) in Darkest Somerset. I’m not happy with SAS. Firstly my flight was delayed for an hour due to a dead aircraft. This is normally not a problem, but when you have only 2.5 hours to get from Heathrow to Paddington to catch the train you are booked on, and missing the connection will cost you $100 in additional train fares, it is a bit worrying. Thankfully I made it with about 15 minutes to spare.

Rather more importantly, SAS somehow managed to break a bottle of Finnish tar liquor that was safely packed inside my luggage. How they did it I do not know, but the bag now smells delightfully of tar. I always pack my clothes inside plastic bags just in case of accidents with toiletries, so my clothes are all OK, but I do have to apologize to Sean Williams. My copy of Earth Ascendant is still readable, and smells wonderful, but Finnish tar liquor is not pink.

Apologies too to Irma for wasting her lovely present.

When I got back here I discovered that my uncle had dropped in for the day and was taking my mum and I out to dinner. We ended up at the Enmore Inn, where the food was quite nice, but I was particularly taken by their special table. They’ve had an extension built onto the pub for the restaurant, and the well is now inside the building. There is a glass cover on the well, and a table with a glass top placed over it. The inside of the well is lit up, so you can see the water and the skeleton inside it. I would have preferred to see a tentacled monster at the bottom, but I was impressed with their imagination.

Catching Up

~ Cheryl ~ 3 Comments

I am currently back in Helsinki. Many thanks to Otto and Paula for the tour of next year’s Finncon site and finding the excellent Thai restaurant. Since we got back to the apartment I have been deeply anti-social as I have had hundreds of blog posts and emails to wade through. I think I am pretty much done by now, though very little has been responded to. I wrote about 2500 words of con report on the train from Tampere, but I’m only up to Saturday night.

This morning I got to see Tampere cathedral, complete with its fresco of naked children. I have pictures but I’m not sure whether I should post them in case my web site starts getting blocked. I also finally got to see the Lenin museum, which was very Soviet and serious, but had managed to find one photo of Lenin smiling. Many thanks to Irma for the guided tour.

Tomorrow I fly back to London. The weather forecast for Darkest Somerset appears to be torrential rain for at least the next three days. Finland has been warm and sunny all the time I have been here. Go figure.

Not So Secure, Then

~ Cheryl ~ 5 Comments

One of the things you do not want to happen when you are sat waiting for a flight is for someone to phone you up and tell you that your credit card details have been stolen. Not the card, I hasten to add. I try to take good care of such things. But I got a call from a retailer where I had used the card to tell me that a pile of credit card payment data had been in with a bag of cash that someone had made off with. And what surprised me about this was that this data apparently contained not only my name and the card number, but also my PIN number. So much for Chip and PIN security, then.

I phoned the bank immediately and canceled the card. There do not appear to be any fraudulent transactions on it, which is just as well as the card is from a UK bank so I’d be liable if there were.