Prescription Suitcase

When I was growing up, family vacations were a big deal in our house. My parents, brothers and I would all pile into the family station wagon and take road trips on a regular basis – some were short, some were long. There were campgrounds, motor homes, motor inns, national parks, amusement parks, and countless are-we-there-yet?’s and roadside historical markers. Air travel was a part of the deal sometimes too, since we lived in Washington state and my mom’s family lived in Florida. (I’m a strange bird – a west coast girl who’s visited Disney World more times than I can count and visited Disneyland exactly once. Go figure.)

Now that I’m both an adult and a professional road warrior, my travel paradigms have shifted somewhat. I fit neatly into the “business traveler” box these days, and those family road trips are just distant memories for me now. All the same, my life on the road has allowed me to discover a new generation of traveling families. Not a journey goes by that I don’t meet parents and children on their way somewhere, so I wanted to dedicate a post to the modern family road trip.

Since my husband and I don’t yet have children of our own, I decided to interview my older brother, Sean, who just became a dad, about his recent trip to L.A. for his sister-in-law’s wedding. On September 5^th, Sean, his wife, Sara, and their four-week-old son, Jonah, traveled from their home in Virginia to Pennsylvania, Baltimore, Los Angeles, and back again. (I get worn out just thinking about it!) We talked mostly about the practicalities of traveling with a baby, but there is definitely some sound advice for parents of children of any age in here, too.

Here’s what Sean and I discussed….

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I’ve got some good stuff in the queue for everyone in the next couple of weeks… here’s a taste:

* An interview about traveling with little kids.
* Some of my favorite travel sites on the web.
* Reviews of the products, items, and gadgets I never leave home without.
* My favorite hotel rewards programs.

Stay tuned for more cool travel wisdom!

A couple of weeks ago, as I sat in the Atlanta airport after yet another missed connection resulting from the fact that Delta Airlines can’t seem to get their stupid planes in the air on time, I googled the term “air passenger bill of rights” and discovered the Coalition for Airline Passengers’ Bill of Rights. (If you follow the link, you’ll notice that their blog and web site were recently hacked. A temporary blog has been set up here, and you can access their main website here.)

CAPBOR’s web site contains some background information on their mission and how they got started: the coalition was formed by passengers who were stranded on the tarmac at the Austin, TX airport for NINE HOURS in December of 2006. They are working to pass legislation that will give airline passengers more recourse in the event of delays, lost baggage, and other snafus that result from dealing with airlines who truly do not give a rat’s you-know-what about customer service. The proposed Bill of Rights is here, and you can read the current proposed legislation here.

 Yesterday, CAPBOR held a “strand-in” on the National Mall in Washington, DC to draw attention to their mission to get this essential legislation passed. You can read about the strand-in here. The article I found contains some whining from representatives of the airline industry about how this legislation will place an undue burden on the airlines. Wah.  To them, I say: what about the “undue burdens” you’ve placed on me with your overbooked flights, missed connections, lost suitcases, and filthy airplanes?  How many of my weekends have you ruined because I couldn’t get home on time at the end of a work week?  I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: if I did my job the way the airlines did theirs, I’d get fired.

I’m actually working at home in South Carolina this week.  Nice change!

Mo Rocca is one of my favorite media personalities.  I always root for him on NPR’s Wait Wait… Don’t Tell Me! and I enjoy his contributions to CBS News Sunday Morning, too.  Loved him on VH1 and The Daily Show, as well.  It wasn’t until fairly recently that I discovered his blog, Mo Rocca 180, but now I’m a faithful reader.

I found a great post today on his blog about his experience trying to dispose of a banana peel on a recent flight.  Apparently, the flight attendant wouldn’t take it from him until he wrapped it in a napkin, and she flat-out told him that she had “banana peel issues.” I have to admit that I’ve witnessed some unusual flight attendant trash collecting behavior on the many flights I’ve taken.  I, like Mr. Rocca, am one of those folks who likes to keep the flight attendants happy, so I just roll with the quirks.  On one flight, I was trying to get some work done, so I had my laptop out and I was also plugged into my mp3 player so I wouldn’t be distracted by the insipid conversation going on in the row behind me.  I had a row to myself and I had chosen the window seat because there was still a little daylight outside.  I was drinking a Diet Coke (courtesy of the flight attendant) and had placed the cup and can on the vacant aisle seat’s tray table to give myself a little more space and avoid spilling soda on my laptop.  I finished my drink before she came back through for the trash collection, and since my plastic cup was empty (with the empty can parked inside it) I figured the flight attendant would just grab it as she went by.  She didn’t.  I nudged it a little closer to the aisle side of the tray table, thinking that perhaps she just hadn’t seen it on her first pass, and went back to my work.

When she came back by, she asked if I was done and I assured her I was.  She kind of shook her little trash bag at me and said in a pleasant-but-slightly-snarky tone, “I need you to drop it into the bag for me.”  So I rearranged my laptop, shifted in my teeny-weeny coach seat, shoved the armrest up, picked up my trash, and leaned over to put it into her bag.  I figured she, like Mo’s flight attendant, had issues with touching something potentially icky.  I suppose a plastic cup that a passenger has drunk out of could have a few germs on it, but isn’t that what hand sanitizer is for?  I use hand sanitizer religiously when I fly because some airplanes look like they haven’t been cleaned in years.  One would think a flight attendant would have his or her own supply on hand…  also, who’s to say that the flight attendant who prepared my beverage wasn’t incubating some nasty germ and transferred it to via the convenient vector of an innocuous plastic cup of Diet Coke?

The mystery deepens.

I’m in Aberdeen, Maryland for a couple of days this week.

Note: I write this from the Kansas City airport terminal, where I am waiting patiently for my (delayed) flight to Atlanta where (goddess willing) I will catch my (also potentially delayed) flight home to South Carolina.  There is a lady sitting to my left holding a cute little dog and a nerdy kid a few seats down to my right who is listening to music on his laptop (with headphones) and singing along.  He sounds like a bad American Idol audition just waiting to happen.  My ears!

Air travel gone bad can bring out the worst in even the most mild-mannered, benign person.  I’m pretty laid back most of the time.  Some people have even mistaken my naturally mellow state for shyness.  But when faced with a delayed flight, missed connection, or lost luggage, I get a little cranky.  Add a few inconsiderate passengers, along with a pinch of surly, unhelpful airline employees and a heaping tablespoon of lousy of communication, mix well, and watch me turn into one heck of a nasty [insert expletive here -- one that rhymes with "witch."] It’s not a pretty sight.

I’ve gotten a lot better at keeping my temper in check.  Now that I travel a lot, I’m beginning to accept the fact that delays and other annoyances are pretty much a constant in this day and age, and it just isn’t healthy for me to go bananas every time something goes haywire.  It’s made it easier to keep my cool when staring down a mammoth-sized “travelanche.”

When you travel as much as I do, though, you witness thronging hordes of humanity, and after a while you start to notice that the majority of the thronging hordes are not that polite.  Rude fellow passengers just seem to make a bad situation (air travel in the 21st century) worse.  With that in mind, I’ve decided it’s time for Frequent Flygirl’s Guide to Air Travel Etiquette. That’s right, ladies and gents: it’s time to straighten up and fly right.  Without further ado…. (more…)