Live from Austin!

We arrived at Logan Airport in plenty of time. Given that it was about 35 celcius, I felt it was justified to hire a cab rather than lug suitcases on the T. I did my usual thing and tried to remove all metal from my person and put it in a pocket of my carry-on bag, in a vain attempt to evade the metal detector. Unfortunately, something set off the doorframe detector, and I was given a severe wanding. As mentioned earlier, the security guy even asked me to unbutton my jeans—the buttons at the front set off his metal detector wand, so I think he suspected I might have shoved sharp knives into the front of my underpants. Hey, the terrorists are mad zealots…

The flight was as pleasant as any six hour plane flight can be. They fed us, they remembered that I’d asked for vegetarian food, and there was coffee. So that’s three points for United, zero for American.

We got a shared van ride to the hotel. We were taken on a delightful tour of south San Francisco. It turns out to bear a startling resemblance to Liberty City in Grand Theft Auto 3… in fact, SF in general reminded me of Liberty City, right down to the hilly Italian district, the maze of tunnels and bridges, the subway, and the look of Chinatown. Our hotel even had dubious looking clubs nearby offering “adult” entertainment. (San Francisco Tourist Office may use the above endorsements in advertising.)

Yes, as you can guess, some corners had been cut in the hotel department. We were at a Holiday Inn on the edge of the theater district, which is one of the seedier parts of town. Also, I’m told, one closest to some of the best restaurants. If the bums had been aggressive, like their East coast counterparts, it would have been unpleasant. Fortunately San Francisco’s homeless seem to be a mellow Californian type, and pretty much leave you alone. Anyway, point is, it was the only place near all forms of public transit and less than $100 a night, so I wasn’t complaining.

Public transit in SF is pretty good. There are abundant buses, which run until 01:30 or so, followed by “night owl” services. There are also trams, which are mostly authentic old streetcars that have been repaired and put into service as a tourist attraction as well as a form of transport. Below ground is a network of more trams; and of course, there are the famous cable cars, which climb some of the more picturesque hills. A $15 pass got us unlimited travel on all of the preceding. To go further afield involved the subway, BART (Bay Area Rapid Transit). Aimed at commuters, it heads out to Berkeley and Oakland and the delights of Contra Costa County.

[Previously “friends only"]

Even you haven’t been on a plane since September, it probably won’t surprise you to hear that the entire experience was awful.

It started at the airport, where less than half the check-in booths were staffed, and even the e-ticket counters had a long line of people. The terminal had been rearranged, and new walls added, to funnel everyone through one security checkpoint. Naturally there were only two scanners operating, resulting in more long lines. In addition to scanning, I was patted down, checked with the metal-detector wand, and my bag was drug-tested.

When they started boarding the plane, they checked everyone’s paperwork and ID cards a third time, and used the metal detector wand (again) on a few randomly-selected victims. Naturally they only had one person checking, and didn’t allow any extra time for the process—just the usual fifteen minutes. Hence the plane was guaranteed to be late taking off.

Leafing through the in-flight magazine, I learned that for security reasons we wouldn’t be served a meal, or coffee. Presumably it’s just too much of a risk that someone might take over the plane, armed with a plastic fork and a flimsy polystyrene cup of hot liquid.

When we arrived in Minneapolis, there was another twenty minute wait for the baggage to be unloaded. When it finally appeared, it appeared a few bags at a time, stretched over another twenty minutes or so. After a long time, it became clear that one of our suitcases wasn’t going to turn up. We joined another long queue to talk to the lost baggage staff, and gave them the relevant details.

We then tried to leave the airport. More than half of the exit ramps from the car park were unstaffed, and we had to sit in the car, inching forwards, for another twenty to twenty-five minutes.

The common element, of course, is drastic cost-cutting and massive understaffing—the result of the huge layoffs after September 11th. You might be given to wonder what happened to all the bailout money we (the taxpayers) gave the airlines—the tickets weren’t any cheaper than usual, clearly they didn’t spend it so that they could keep adequate staffing levels, and none of it went to the people laid off, so the only possible conclusion is that it’s going straight into the pockets of high-level management at the various airlines.

The next day, I called to see if they’d found the missing suitcase. The automatic voicemail message said to press 1 if I was calling about baggage I’d left on a plane less than five weeks ago, or to press 2 if I was calling about baggage I’d left on a plane more than five weeks ago. Conspicuously absent was an option to push if the damn airline had lost my suitcase.

Calling the local airport in Rochester was more successful; it has such a small staff anyway that presumably there wasn’t anyone they could lay off. We got to talk to an actual human being, who said my case was there. We went and collected it. They’d given me a voucher worth $25 off a flight, but only if spent before May. Gee, thanks.