Tripping: Denver/PNW

What would this blog be without random travel observations?

Denver

• Denver International Airport strikes me as a larger-scale, updated repetition of the Dulles model — right down to its location miles away from anything.  Driving Peña Boulevard must be what the Access Road felt like 40 years ago, before development transformed northwest Fairfax County.
• That said, every terminal at DIA is nicer than even Terminal B at Dulles.  Starting from scratch in the modern era helped DIA do terminal design right, baggage systems aside.
• False economy, thy name is Advantage Rent-A-Car — and the TV blaring Nancy Grace to the line didn’t help my opinion. Nor did the Dodge Caliber we received with a nasty gouge in the roof and an unreliable fuel gauge. Yes, all the rental car agencies are on the same loop and require a shuttle bus. But had I rented from Hertz with my (free) #1 Club Gold membership, we’d have been 3/4 of the way to our hotel by the time we got our Advantage car.
• The RTD light rail is well-designed, but their operations after the Rockies game and Friday night’s storms demonstrated why Americans flee mass transit when they have any other choice. One track’s overhead wires were down south of the I-25/Broadway station, so they single-tracked that stretch, and a backlog on the northbound side needed to be cleared. The logical choice would have been to hold our packed southbound train on the three-track Broadway platform, where we had options (up to and including ad hoc taxi pairings, like I’ve done from the Yellow Line in Pentagon City) if the wait got too long. Instead, they moved us a hundred yards south onto an incline, then announced the problem and stopped with no departure estimate. Trapped, we cursed the RTD until the train started moving again 10 minutes later. Dumb decision, angry customers, bad rep for mass transit. Customer focus matters, and they showed none.
• Special demerits to the on-airport Circle K for charging 44c/gal over the local average for regular unleaded. Don’t reward this behavior. Instead, take the last pre-airport exit from I-70 East onto Chambers Road, turn left (northbound), choose one of several gas stations there, and just be sure to top off to cover the ~10 miles you have left.  Continue on northbound Chambers until it T’s out at 56th, turn right, then continue to a left onto the Peña Blvd/Airport onramp.

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$15 to life

There’s no reason for people like me to be loyal to an airline anymore.

I’ve earned nearly 30,000 miles with American Airlines over the past six years since I graduated from college, and closer to 70,000 with Star Alliance airlines in the same time — first US Airways, then United when US’s merger talk got heavy. The *A programs have gotten me to Jacksonville, Montreal, Toronto and (this fall) Nebraska for free. But last week, United announced that it would match US in no longer crediting 500-mile minimums per segment. Had that rule been in effect all this time, I’d have earned maybe two-thirds of that total.

The AA miles? I’ve been trying to spend those for about a year. But with the current high loads, there aren’t any seats. Then Wednesday, American announced that it would both reduce domestic capacity further by 10-12% and begin charging all non-elite passengers $15 for the first bag checked.

Checking baggage so you can take a week’s worth of clothes, a change of shoes, and a full bottle of shampoo on a weeklong trip is not optional. It’s a requirement for transporting conscious human beings rather than self-propelled lumps of cargo.

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Weekend travel scoreboard: Indiana '08

As always, by popular demand…

• 24-hour Claritin D 1, Josh’s sleep 0
• Alarm clock 0400, us 0
• TSA CHO opening 0445, waiting travelers 15
• Decent bookstores at CLT 0, wallet 1
• Vaguely worrisome emergency climbs CLT-LEX 1, mid-air collisions 0 (phew)
• Hertz: Ford Fusion C-pillar ~15 inches, blind-spot vision 0
• Free day coupon 2 (woohoo!), NeverLost GPS 1, old busted iQue 0
• Philip 1, calendar 0
• Sketchy guy trying to rip off the Circle K for $112 of gas 1, cops called 1
• US Airways delay LEX-CLT 55, information to passengers 0, angry passengers 40
• Open food/news vendors at LEX 0, money spent by said angry delayed passengers also 0
• Tailwinds CLT-CHO 1, advance arrival 22 (woohoo x2!)

Scoreboard: Yankee Stadium

No, my blog isn’t limited strictly to customer service rants these days.

On Thursday, I made the run up to Yankee Stadium for the Yankees’ day game against the White Sox, making it my 11th major league stadium. I’m no Yankees fan, but the place is an integral part of baseball history, and it’ll be gone at the end of 2008. This is the time to see it, and so I caught jetBlue up and Amtrak back.

• Alarm 0400, Josh 0
• Dunkin Donuts IAD $4, Josh 2 (donuts? OK.  $1.69 for a half-pint of orange juice, not so much)
• jetBlue 1300, airlines that don’t provide DirecTV and respectable legroom 0
• Port Authority $5, Long Island Rail Road $7, subway $7, Josh’s transit pass collection 2 (AirTrain and LIRR sell a combined ticket)
• Bottled waters 5, high temperature 94, Josh 0
• Central Park chillout 45, Josh ++
• Josh 4, NYC subway confusion 2 (only a couple of missteps, neither costing more than 5 minutes)
• Stan’s Sports World $7, travel bags safely checked 1
• Stadium collections: MLB 11, NHL 8, college football 10 (regularly-scheduled)
• Tradition 5, modern accommodations 2 (Hammond organ++)
• White Sox 8, Yankees 0 (middle 2nd)
• White Sox 8, Yankees 8 (end 2nd)
• White Sox 13, Yankees 9 (final)
• Penn Station KMart $16, non-foul shirt and deodorant for the ride home priceless
• New Jersey 40, Amtrak schedule 0 (darn you)
• bedtime 0000, Josh’s day 20 hours