Layovers

With my holiday travels done for the year, what have I discovered. Well, I need to pay more attention to layovers. The first trip was to Alabama. Flew on Frontier from SFO to Nashville (BNA) via Denver (DEN). Flight out of SFO ended up taking off about 40 minutes late, which was not good when we only had a 35 minute lay over. Thankfully, we were seated towards the front of the plane and, according to both our boarding passes and the flight attendants, our next gate wasn't too far from where we were supposed to end up. We rush out of the plane, the jetway attendant's "HEY!" being left behind, and hear "Final Boarding Call for Flight xxxx to Nashville, if you aren't on board in 2 minutes we're closing the door at Gate xxx". Well, needless to say, Gate xxx was not where we were told, but was at the opposite end of the Frontier terminal. With about 4 gates to go, we heard "Final call for Flight xxx to Nashville, we will close the doors when this announcement is over." My final dash for the gate and I make it just time. However, my wife, who has the boarding passes, has not caught up to me. At the same time, another couple walks up and complains that they had been waiting at the other gate and had been rushing to this gate. In any event, we make it on the plane- being out of shape, and running from one end of a terminal to the other at more than a mile high leaves one with a wheeze and a cough that tastes vaguely of blood. It lasted almost the entire length of the 4 day trip. Oh, and our bags didn't make the connection; finally got them a day later.

This past Christmas weekend, flew US Scare courtesy of two vouchers we received after I complained about how awful they were last Christmas. Anyway, luck has us sprinting through the Phoenix airport from one terminal to the other in order to catch our planes. Not as bad as the previous trip, but the US Scare terminals are incredibly misleading- they have 3 terminals, two of which are called A and the third is B. One A terminal is for gates 1-15 and the other A terminal is for gates 16-30. So, unless you land and take over from gates within those ranges, you actually have to run down the terminal, turn and take "people movers" to the next terminal, even though you haven't "changed" terminals. It makes no sense to me. Just call them what they are, three different terminals and be honest with people.

All that being said, the service was much better than I expected, especially for US Scare.

The holiday's turned out to be relatively uneventful, and I got to partake in various regional foods that I cannot go without when I'm there- catfish, hush puppies, and Sonic whilst in Alabama (didn't make it to Krystal this year), and Malnati's deep dish pizza, Portillo's sausage and Old Style whilst in Chicago. Now if only I could find a reliable place for Big Red and Wolf Brand Chili, without ordering it online or going to Texas, that would make me happy.

Just to show that I don't always complain, or plan to use this as a place to vent and complain, allow me a moment to talk about the City of Oakland. Apparently everything is "Under New Management." After we landed at Oakland yesterday and took the Bart bus to the Coliseum stop, I was bombarded with signs all over the place letting me know that it was Under New Management. The first signs appeared across the street from the airport on two hotels. They wanted to let me know that a) they were Under New Management and b) that comes with redesigned rooms. The next was another hotel, telling me the same thing. Finally, I found the same sign attached to a company that offers to mail packages safely; I can only wonder what happened under the old management. All in all, 4 giant signs from the airport to the Bart stop letting me know that they were Under New Management; all that was missing was a Waffle House extolling that they were now Under New Management. So, congratulations to the City of Oakland, I'm glad to see that you are now "Under New Management."