Circus Circus, Tahoe and High Sierra Snow (part 1)

A few years ago, I took the boys on an adventure to Bend. Hearkening back to that, today's post reflects on a trip I took last month with the older one.. visiting colleges. We were gone a week, so I'm splitting this up into multiple posts. Part 2 here. Part 3 here.

Why
My son T is in his senior year of high school and hasn't decided on a college plan quite yet. He knows there is a real money constraint, though, so he's been looking through that lens. The experts say to just apply where you want to go and see what the money is later. I think T looked at that as setting up for disappointment. He wanted to see University of Nevada, Reno (UNR) and University of Colorado, Denver (UCD). Since both schools are in areas that experience colder weather than we do here, I thought a mid-winter trip could help him recognize the climate difference. We also wanted to go when school was going on so he could get a sense of what the real vibe on campus was like. Having settled on a trip around MLK, Jr. Day, we started planning.

Planning
I started working on a plan to pull the multi-city trip together in November. I tried Kayak, Google and a few other ideas, but the prices felt kind of high. So, I tried a travel agent to see if that made a difference. It did, but not in the way I expected. The price was about the same, but the accommodations and flight times weren't all that great. I'll get to that later, but in the end, we were able to slip out of town mid-day the Wednesday before MLK, Jr. Day and return the Tuesday night after, missing only 3 full days of school/work.

Flights

we were in upper left corner window

Over the course of less than a week, we flew 3 different airlines, visiting the 6 major cities in the Rockies and US Pacific Northwest: Portland, Seattle, Denver, Reno, Salt Lake City and San Francisco.

We took Delta from Portland to Reno by way of Salt Lake City. Of the 3 airlines, these flights were the least pleasant. The planes were over-full and the seats were closer together than on the other flights. They had in-seat televisions, which for a fee allowed you to watch programs. The SLC airport was nicer than I expected, though. We enjoyed a local-feeling brew-pub between flights.

We flew United from Reno to Denver by way of San Francisco. Our travel agent had set up this leg to depart Reno at 6:AM, meaning we had to return a rental car and checkout of a hotel in time to hit security by 5. On a Sunday morning. Sucky. United was okay, just the routing was dumb and the seats wouldn't tilt back, making sleep difficult.

Our last leg (home) routed us through Seattle on Alaska. Ordinarily, I love Alaska. Unfortunately, our plane from Seattle to Portland was a 20-person puddle jumper propeller plane. Still, this leg was the best of the three, even with the bumpy final flight.

Hotels

Denver, CO

We stayed at two different hotels, obviously; one in Reno and one in Denver. They were quite opposite in terms of amenities, too. Our hotel in Reno (Ramada Reno Hotel and Casino) had seen better days. It was off-strip, but not near the airport nor the University. The elevator made noise, there were sketchy folks lingering outside the casino (did I mention it had a casino?) and the pool was closed. The desk folks were great and the servers in the hotel restaurant and bar were very nice. With a room rate under $100 a night, though, it was really all that we needed. In fact, it probably helped that it lacked many amenities; it may have contributed to how much time we spent seeing Nevada and California. We did have a top floor room with a fantastic view of the Sierra Nevada mountains, the University and the strip.

The hotel in Denver (Hilton Garden Inn Denver Downtown) was very nice. Again, we had an upper floor room but with a view on the downtown side. Loaded with amenities we didn't use like a pool, weight room, etc,but we did hit the hot tub and get room service once.

That's it for today. I'll dedicate individual posts about Nevada and Colorado later. On the cars front, there have been lots of things going on. I'll get to posting on all that too. Like I've said before, if I'm not posting, its because we're having adventures... that will be posted on later. :)
Thanks for following along.

United Sucks

After a couple of weeks of move chaos, and no sooner had the boxes been unpacked, I took a 5 day trip to Boston for a huge family reunion. Today's post covers the travel part of that trip.

Size Matters

I don't fly very often. When I do, I usually fly the same airline round trip, so I don't really have a sense of how different the airlines are. On this trip, I flew United from Portland to Boston (through San Francisco) and Alaska (direct) on the way home. They are radically different. United is a huge airline flying all over the world, but the number of centimeters between the leading edge of your seat and the rear of the one in front of you is staggeringly small. Alaska, on the other hand, is a smaller carrier who is just really getting started in international flights. The space between the seats, however, is actually quite comfortable as compared to United. Since I wasn't traveling to fix anyone's car, I didn't have even a tape measure with me, so I can't provide hard numbers. I just have simple anecdotal evidence.

Broken Plane. What a Pain.

airplane igniter

Adding insult to injury, my connecting United flight from SFO to Boston was stymied by a broken plane. The symptoms were not terribly unusual: all the lights and cabin air jets suddenly stopped operating while we were at the gate. I've seen that happen often on working planes, but this time it happened a lot. The pilot said something about the "igniter" after we had pulled away from the gate, taxied partway down the tarmac, and started turning around. Turning around is never a good sign. We returned to the gate, and a mechanic got on. After a while we were told that we'd be on our way in 15 minutes. Then we were told the plane was broken and we needed a new one, so everyone had to get off. I bee-lined for the c-store and bought a beer.

The Airport Bar

small portions & large prices

I drank a Stella, wandering around the terminal cul-de-sac and found another gate advertising a flight to Boston. "Sweet!" I thought and got into the queue at the desk. Minutes later, I was 5th in the stand-by list. Unfortunately, United had overbooked all of their flights to Boston that day (and probably other destinations and dates too), so they were asking ticketed passengers on that flight to accept $1200 in travel vouchers to fly the next day. They made no such offer to the folks on my flight. Instead, I headed towards an airport bar & grill and found my brother heading the other way. He was getting on the $1200 voucher flight. We grabbed a bite and a beer at the Lark Creek Grill and then I watched him board.

The Wait

SFO gate

By now, my flight was over 3 hours late for departure. We had been informed that they were hoping for a new plane by 4. 4 became 5 which then became 6:30. After nearly 6 hours of lolling around the San Francisco airport, we were ready to board. Had I left the airport and hopped a BART train, I could have spent the afternoon in downtown SF, but United hadn't been transparent about how long the wait would be. I suspect they knew all along, but chose to string us along instead. The flight itself was tight-packed, but we arrived just after 3:AM, Boston time. I read a bunch of my book, and napped as best I could in a seat that couldn't recline.

Paul's Revere Cab Ride
Since the flight arrived so late, the free shuttle from the hotel was not running, so I grabbed a cab from the taxi-stand. The cabbie was a local from Revere, and we talked up a storm the whole way. He knew where he was going, didn't bounce me all over the place and was genuine. Frankly, that cab ride was the best part of the trip since getting dropped at the Portland airport by T in the A4 at 8:00 the prior morning. $30 later, I was collecting my room key. I keyed into my room just after 4:AM.

Why United Sucks
There are lots of reasons why United sucks, but the airline flight attendants are not among them. United had the same crew who was supposed to run the original flight (12:30 planned departure) work the actual flight (6:30 actual departure). The attendants are only paid for time in the air, so while they also had to wait around, they probably lost out on some income on a connecting flight out of Boston too. United sucks because they overbook their flights. United sucks because they cram in at least one if not multiple extra rows into their planes, making the trip even more unpleasant. United sucks because they offer hollow apologies to the inconvenienced: go to this obscure web site that you better write down as we say it because you'll never be able to navigate there on your own (go here) and we'll offer you $100 of flight vouchers so you can have another god-awful experience. United, you suck. I spent more than that on the airport food and the taxi. $100 of flight voucher is not an apology; it is a middle finger. Fine. Here's two right back at ya.

That's it for today. I'll follow up with some actual family reunion stuff. Honestly, the trip was great after the United nonsense was over.