The Nicest Thing To Happen In A While

On my flight to Florida last week, I was seated on the aisle across from a mom and her young son and daughter. The boy was about 2, the girl was maybe 6. He sat on the aisle, the little girl was on the window and the mom was in the middle. As I made a return to my seat from the toilet, the little boy dropped his little toy, a miniature of Sully from Monsters Inc. I picked it up and gave it back to him.

About five minutes later, the little boy tapped me on the shoulder and handed me a folded piece of notebook paper. I opened it and found this:


I was confused, so I looked over at the mother.

"This morning, my daughter was drawing pictures at the kitchen table and she took this one and folded it up and gave it to me," the mother explained. "I asked her what she wanted me to do with it, and she said, 'Put it in your purse and we'll give it to someone when they do something nice for us.' "

All together now: Awwwww! I now carry this picture in my bag. Whenever I look at it, I smile.

The Idiocity of Air Travel Today

I was in Minneapolis briefly for something personal earlier this week and then used a free ticket to pop down to Atlanta to surprise Miles, who was visiting his parents for the week. To make this work, I had to buy myself a one-way ticket from Atlanta to Las Vegas for Sunday.

When I was working on this last weekend, one-way airfares from ATL-LAS were quite high, none less than $400. But I stumbled across some other one-way fares from the Southeastern U.S. that weren't so bad. To wit, it was $133 to fly from Jacksonville, Fla., to Las Vegas, stopping in Atlanta.

I called up Delta. Could I buy the $133 ticket and just use the second half? No. How, pray tell, could it be that it costs $450 to fly ATL-LAS but $133 to fly JAX-ATL-LAS, putting me on the same aircraft for the second leg. In what universe is it a third as expensive for an airline to transport a passenger on two planes?

The Delta rep's response: "There is no way to explain our fares."

You're tellin' me, sister. So on Sunday, I fly from Atlanta to Charlotte to Jacksonville on US Air for $120 and then from JAX-ATL-LAS for $133. I'm saving $200 and gathering a bunch more frequent flier miles. And proving that our air travel system is stupid.

Oddly, Miles gets to take me to the airport in Atlanta for a 7 a.m. ET flight, fly his direct ATL-LAS flight in the afternoon, and pick me up at McCarran at 7 p.m. PT. That's assuming all four of my flights lift off and land as expected. Needless to say, I built in a LOT of time for error.

Any good reading suggestion?

Making The Most of Overtime Travel

I woke early enough this morning to get over to the Utah State Capitol. The Quality Inn folks were so great, giving me a shuttle driver who drove me there, waited for me while I looked around briefly and even took the money shot you see above.

I had been to SLC before, but not to the capitol. I've visited 28 or 29 capitals but not all the capitols, although in the past couple of years I've gotten to Salem, St. Paul, Juneau and Boise. The goal now is to have pictures at each.

As capitols go, Utah's was somewhat blah. It's pretty from the outside, especially set against the snowy mountains. But inside, the dome does not allow light and has dull, non-ornate murals. Most have to do with Mormon arrivees, of course, like the second one here of Brigham Young.



Zzzz. No razzle dazzle. This being SLC, though, I suspect they saved all their dimes and invested instead on this, the world HQ of the LDS crowd...


I'm at the airport now, waiting for some unforseen calamity to throw another loop in my trip home. I got the intensive security treatment at the gate, right down to being felt up on my crotch and bum. Really. The guy couldn't have been nicer about it, saying at every awkward juncture: "I'm about to feel a sensitive area. Do you want a private screening?" I declined. This, I gather, is what I get for buying a one-way ticket and traveling day-of, even if the start of this journey was Philadelphia lo these many hours ago. In Philly, they also pulled me aside, but they didn't check to see if I was carrying a doody bomb, alas.

It didn't help when I provoked suspicion by walking to the front of the entrance to the airport to shoot this:


A guard popped out and asked me why I was snapping that photo. I explained the sign was misspelled and walked back in from the cold. I've no doubt he stood there wondering what was wrong with the sign.

Do you know?

Yet Another Miserable Travel Day

Holy crap, we have bad travel luck. Last time it was Miles, you may recall.

I write from a trashed room at a Quality Inn in Salt Lake City where Delta has put me up for the night, prolonging my 9-day trip for yet another night. I really just want to be home. But no. That's would be too easy.

The day actually started out pretty well. I've been, for the past three nights, in suburban Philadelphia visiting another sister and her four kids, ages 3 to 15. They are observant Jews, so Friday night and Saturday were quiet, calm times of card games, eating and napping. On Saturday night, I took 8-year-old Daniel and 13-year-old Arielle to see Bolt, which was probably the funniest thing I've seen since, um, Wall-E. So now you know my mental age. But, seriously, the scene where Bolt and Mittens nearly give up their adventures for a life living fat off leftover food from buffets in Vegas was priceless.

Daniel was particularly thrilled by my visit, so I gave him permission to wake me at 8 a.m. so we could squeeze out as much of our Sunday as possible. He actually gave me until 9:30 a.m., and then he pounded on this thing...


Yes, I slept in the bed right there that looks like Barney shed on it. It was cozier, actually, than the Strawberry Shortcake bed I was in at my other sister's place. Once the lights are out, does it really matter?

So, anyhow, I spent the morning teaching Daniel how to play Texas Hold 'Em. We both began with stacks of 40 pennies; he wiped me out twice. Either the kid is a prodigy or I suck. I will say one thing, though: If you buy those decks of cards that are preused in casinos, beware. I gave each of the kids such a deck as part of their Hannukah gifts at our family's holiday party last week; the Green Valley Ranch deck I gave Daniel had two eights of hearts and no king of spades. Oops. Fortunately, the other decks were fine.

Anyhow, we had a terrific time, as you can see:



Daniel dominated me, but Arielle occasionally commandeered my camera and took a zillion odd photos including several of herself with her mouth wide open, like the first one where she appears to be eating algebra equations...


When you give a child a camera, though, prepare for some rather unusual results...


Yeah. So here's the whole clan as we played Apples To Apples: Jewish Edition just before my departure. The girl covering her face is Tziona, the eldest:


Not to leave anyone out, here's the youngest of the brood, 3-year-old Chaim:


That was all nice. The rest, not so nice.

Miles called from Vegas around noon because he saw online that my direct 3:45 pm Philadelphia-Vegas flight on Southworst was canceled. I called SWA. Some sort of plane mechanical problem. But why didn't SWA call or email me, then? "We have a lot of people we'd have to call," the lady huffed. If I went to the airport, she said, I *might* catch the 4:30ish, one-stop to Vegas or I could definitely get on the 5:30ish one-stop.

Here's where it starts getting good. This being Southworst, I had checked in on Saturday to be in the A Group for boarding. Now I was facing the dreaded C Group for not one but two flights. Could I please have the new Business Select status to board with the A groups? I'm 6-1 and "kinda big," I claimed.

Nope! Southworst would do nothing to accommodate my inconvenience. Not even guarantee me for the next flight.

I asked for a supervisor and, while on hold forever, I found a one-way seat on a 4:30 pm Delta flight to Vegas for $50 LESS than my SWA ticket. You read that right: For a day-of, one-way to Vegas from PHL, they were charging $110, tax included. That's bananas. And proof that the Strip economy is in big trouble.

Mr. Supervisor was just as worthless, so I demanded and received a full ticket refund, then booked on Delta. Off I went to the airport, leaving a heartbroken Daniel begging me to stay. I got on my plane ready for an easy ride to Salt Lake City, then home.

Or not. Just as we're about to head to the runway, the ENTIRE PHILADELPHIA AIRPORT is shut down. We'd find out later that a US Scare Commuter plane had to make a crash landing. The FAA had to investigate. Nobody hurt, but we ended up stuck in the plane for another three hours before we departed. If you thought it sucked for me, how about the guy across the aisle with the black and brown chihuahua in the carrier case under the seat in front of him? He didn't plan on being on that plane for eight hours!

Delta handled it beautifully, I must say. Those of us missing connections were greeted upon our arrivals with vouchers for hotel rooms and a cute little travel kit with a T-shirt and some toiletries. The problems weren't their fault, but they took responsibility.

And then the best part. I was near the front of the line at the Quality Inn tonight, got my key, went to my room. And when I entered, this is what it looked like:


The place was trashed. I thought maybe someone was still in here. It hadn't been cleaned and the animals who had stayed the night before had opened every packet of sugar, creamer, coffee, whatever. Everything was astrew and, best of all, the disgusting people who had left this room like this has also filled out their comment card. "Blow dryer is broken!!!" they moaned. Yeesh.

I called the front desk. The poor guy sounded so overwhelmed by my flightmates I decided to clean up the room myself. Then I walked to the Pilot gas station for dinner: Cheetos and Milkduds.

Oh well. It's been a long day. I hope I get back to Vegas on Monday as planned. But rather than end it with a downer, I'd rather think of this cute little face:


I had kept my sister apprised of my troubled travels, and when I landed in SLC and turned on the phone, there was a text message from her. It read: "Uncle Steven, this is Daniel. I told you you shouldn't have left today! I miss you so much! I love you! Come back really soon!"

Sigh. What I wouldn't give for that purple bed right now.

Virgin Goes Vegas

It's a lousy economic time, as seen once again today by Benjamin Spillman's piece in the R-J about how desperate Vegas hoteliers are to virtually give away rooms this holiday weekend. So here's some happier news: A new airline is kicking off new service to Vegas!

Richard Branson's Virgin America airline starts daily non-stops from LAS to JFK on Sept. 4 with a media event that includes a premiere showing of the first episode of the fifth season of the HBO hit "Entourage" on the inaugural flight from New York to Vegas. That's nice for the NY media, but kinda lame for those of us here! Boo!

Here's part of the press release about the planes and an image of the A320's cabin:

Virgin America's brand new planes feature moodlighting, custom-designed leather seats, and individual touch-screen entertainment systems with movies, videogames and now for the first time -- episodes of Entourage offered free of charge during the initial month of the partnership.

Sadly, the service doesn't seem to be all that reasonably priced. I just checked on fares for a trip we'd like to take to NY in December and the cheapest I could find was $438 roundtrip plus taxes. The same dates and routes, Continental, JetBlows, American, Delta and US Scare all had cheaper nonstops.

Has anyone out there taken Virgin America? Are there any special characteristics to this airline that we ought to know about, that make the higher prices worthwhile?