There are 246 posts filed in Travels (this is page 11 of 25).
I’m finishing up my first 24 hours in St. Charles. Been a day of sales training, though this time around I haven’t been the one doing the training. That may change tomorrow, though.
Things are starting to get exciting with work. I may be busy very soon now with that, and that’s a good thing. I’m enjoying my job and chances are I will enjoy it even more in the near future.
This is going to be my next cell phone plan. I’ve been mostly happy with my plain-Jane Net 10 service but I’ve been growing increasingly frustrated by Net 10’s lack of a bona fide smart phone. With my crazy schedule it would be nice to have an easy way to keep my calendar with me. Also, as I travel more with my job it becomes more important that I have a WiFi and 3G-enabled phone to keep me occupied in the airports.
Virgin Mobile’s $40-a-month plan for unlimited network and 1200 minutes a month will fit me just fine. With the LG Optimus V phone that runs Android, I’ll have all I need.
* 3G Nationwide Coverage You Can Count On
* All Taxes & Fees Included, except those charged at the point of purchase
* Pay with Credit, Debit or PayPal for worry free monthly service
* Buy Top-Up cards to pay with cash
via Cell Phone Plans – Pay As You Go and Prepaid | Virgin Mobile.
Like many people, I like to pass the time while waiting for my flight to board by doing a little people-watching. Where is this person going? Where’s home? If home’s not here, what brought them to the Triangle? I find it fun to speculate on these things.
What’s really insightful is to hear departing visitors talking into their phones. Last week I overheard a man apparently describing the Triangle area to the person on the call. “You’d like it,” he said. “There are lots of trees. It’s really beautiful. Lots of trees.”
I smiled, because that’s not the first time I’ve heard a traveler rave about our area’s beautiful, abundant trees. We tend to take that for granted, I think.
Raleigh and Durham invested a lot of money in renovating RDU Airport’s Terminal 2, knowing that for many travelers their impression of Raleigh and Durham starts right there. The airport can also be a great source of feedback, too, when those travelers depart. Just listening how they describe their trip can show where we’re doing well and where we can improve. It can also show what assets we possess that we could be better in publicizing.
As a proud citizen of Raleigh I love hearing others’ impressions of the place I call home.
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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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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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.
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!
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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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.
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.
