Rx for holiday travelers
Thanksgiving. Labor Day. The Fourth of July.
Leisure travelers look forward to these holidays with anticipation - it’s a time when Mom, Dad and junior pack up their suitcases and board a plane, minivan or cruise ship for some well-deserved time off.
Not so for business travelers. For them, it’s those three holidays in particular - but [...]
Avoiding fly traps
Gayle Miller suspected she was in trouble when a ticket agent at Las Vegas McCarran International Airport dangled a measuring tape in front of her luggage. Sure enough, her big bag exceeded the new limit. “No one has ever looked at that bag twice when I’ve checked it in,” complains the Ann Arbor, Mich., pharmacist.
TSA needs your help
You can leave your hat on at the airport. But as Phil Doherty discovered, you should also expect a Transportation Security Administration (TSA) agent to pull you aside when you do. “It happens without fail whenever I wear my straw hat,” says the contract engineer from Mechanicsville, N.Y. “When the hat’s on, they give me the once-over. When it’s not, they leave me alone.” Since its creation last year, the TSA has refused to answer specific questions about its screening criteria, arguing that if it told the traveling public what made someone look suspicious, it would tip off the terrorists. Fair enough.
How to fly for free
This column regularly dispenses advice about how to cut costs when you travel by air — an important public service during these cash-strapped times. But wouldn’t you really rather travel for free?
Below are some strategies on how to do this, as well as tips from people who make a career of it.
First, meet Mark Talbot, [...]
Apple a day keeps United away
Q: I spent 30 minutes trying to book a ticket on United Airlines’ Web site only to have the site freeze repeatedly at the “pay for ticket” stage (I kept getting a “document contains no data” message). So I called United’s Premier desk to book the ticket. I had all the needed information at hand [...]
Terror fears boost insurance
The terrorist bombing on the island of Bali last month that claimed the lives of nearly 200 people, many of them tourists, made Alicia Nieva-Woodgate reconsider her planned trip to the Far East. “I thought: What if something like that happens again?” the San Francisco sportswriter says. “I just wanted to be prepared for the worst.” So before she leaves for a three-month adventure to Cambodia, Vietnam, India, Thailand and Burma in December, Nieva-Woodgate is buying a $199 travel insurance policy that covers medical expenses, lost luggage and the cost of returning home if a terrorist incident interrupts her trip.
Lighten up
Are airline flight attendants too fat? Possibly. Passengers, crewmembers and several studies suggest that these airline employees have been packing on the pounds lately. Not that it’s any of our business. How much someone else weighs is a private matter - unless their mass affects the safety of our next trip. And then it does, indeed, become an issue. We already know that flight attendants are prone to eating disorders.
Five worst airports
No airport is perfect. Each one has its flaws, whether it’s Palm Beach International Airport’s confusing access roads, Juneau International Airport’s maddening fog or Las Vegas airport’s omnipresent cigarette smoke.
Frequent travelers understand that. They deal with it.
But when an airport is so imperfect that we go out of our way to avoid it, when we [...]
Tracking turtles on the Treasure Coast
The turtle eggs drop like marshmallows into a neat pile on the sand. Plop, plop, plop. After each fall, the six-foot-long loggerhead, half-buried in a dune above, waves her enormous back fins as if she’s swimming away. “I can’t bear to watch this,” groans a woman holding a newborn baby, who is standing a safe distance from the midnight birthing scene. “One of these is enough for me.” During sea turtle nesting season at Archie Carr National Wildlife Refuge near Vero Beach, Fla., which happens from March to September, thousands of marine turtles take the beach here, laying up to one hundred eggs each under cover of darkness. The new mom among us cringes when she hears that number. One hundred eggs.
Canvassing Key Largo
What’s the difference between a registered voter and a parrot? In Key Largo, not much. We’ve been foiled by the talking birds a few times during the campaign. We knock on someone’s front door - candidate Kari Haugeto, our five-month-old son, Aren, and me - and the bird answers through an open window, “Hello?” Kari then steps up to the mosquito screen, unable to see through the heavy storm shutter, and says, “Hi. My name is Kari and I’m running for the Key Largo Wastewater Board. I’m…”
A midwinter night’s dream
Rolling dunes and towering cliffs with nary a soul in sight. Waves crashing on the shore. A posh room for two in a historic hotel, a spicy omelet of smoked turkey, chipotle, and cheddar cheese for breakfast, and complimentary Christmas candies - for only $149 a night. That’s what Peter Flynn, a Saugus, Mass., attorney, will enjoy on his winter getaway.