Category Archives: TRANSPORTATION

February 8, 2013 · 11:27 pm

Why is it so expensive to rent a car at the Phoenix airport? And is Fox rental ok?

Little did I know when I booked cheap plane tickets to fly to Phoenix (rather than to Tucson, our ultimate destination) that we’d have to spend an arm and a leg on a car rental but it’s starting to look that way. In Nashville, we rented a car for $22 a day – our bill for three days came to just under $70. In Phoenix, the mainstay companies like Thrifty were charging $290 for a week (we need the car for only 5 days) which wasn’t great but that turned out to be the “base rate” – with various fees the total comes to a whooping $430. (Which we didn’t find out until we actually reserved the car.)  So we are looking at smaller rental companies like Fox, Payless and Sixt. I reserved a car from Fox and was assured that the final rate is $262. Of course I’m a little suspicious – since I’ve never heard of this company. I’ve looked them up on various travel websites and they get mixed reviews but generally okay ones in Phoenix. The other issue is our flight gets in very late – close to midnight so some companies aren’t open at that hour (sadly that includes Enterprise, which gave us the good deal in Nashville.) We also get in too late (11:51 p.m.) to probably make the last shuttle van to Tucson at 12:15 a.m. NEWS FLASH: just heard from my dad and his wife – they’ve decided to pick us up at the airport, which is very kind, especially given the late hour. So no car rental!

All this reminds me of a trip many years ago – 25 or so – when we rented a car from “Sisters Rental Car” in Morocco. It turned out okay although we were a bit nervous, especially driving the car – which was a flimsy number that looked like an over-sized sardine can with a wire coat hanger in the dashboard, that served as the gear shift – way up into the Atlas Mountains south of Fez.


Toubkal Mountain in Toubkal National Park in the High Atlas

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January 26, 2013 · 6:34 pm

Sen. Grassley tweets about Delta Sky Magazine’s Iowa package.

Finally – the big time! Iowa’s famous tweeting senator,  Chuck Grassley, tweeted about a story I wrote – or a package in Delta Sky magazine that includes a story I wrote. Too Funny. My 21-year-old son, an avid Grassley follower on Twitter, spotted it and passed it along! It’s a keeper….

ChuckGrassley (@ChuckGrassley)
1/26/13 7:58 AM
Iowans don’t brag(our sin)So we lucky DeltaAir does. Read Delta”Sky”:”The Iowa Advantage” Find out how great Iowa is. Pass it on BRAG/PROUD

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December 24, 2012 · 8:19 pm

Politically incorrect tank/good stops for dogs in Kansas

Found a good place to walk Ernie near paxico Kansas on interstate 70 west of Topeka in the flint hills (supposedly…doesn’t look much like the flint hills here. It’s a rest area with a strange concrete bunker -like structure built into a hill. There is a nice hilly stretch of land for a dog to do its business. None back on the road. We were not sure how Ernie would do hanging out in the car by herself so we ate in shifts at the chipotle in Topeka. If the weather was warmer we might have been able to sit with ernie on the outdoor patio. Are there any chain restaurants that permit dogs? I know this is Kansas not France but maybe there are.

And for those few of you driving further west, there is a dandy little rural park off highway 156/96 just before Great Bend, kansas where we had the good sense to stop and let Ernie out to stretch and, as fate would have it, throw up. One more hour in the car and then we are in…Wright, Kansas. our destination.

Hours later and we just had to stop with Ernie at one of highway 50’s highlights in the small town of Offerle…the tank in the local park, a memorial to Vietnam vets. With Santa aboard. And a politically incorrect name painted on the barrel. We are not in Iowa any more.

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October 14, 2012 · 5:11 pm

cc’s community coffee, central grocery, couchon, Tulane! Hotel provincial

We moved to better digs (and no surprise, more expensive digs) at the hotel provincial on Chartes Street. But even here, we were awakened at 2’am or so by a drunken cackle. Seems unavoidable in the french quarter. Room 515 was in an old building that used to be a warehouse. It reminded us  of a room we stayed at in Florence – high ceiling, huge, old world furnishings, elegant and a little odd. We liked it. our friends ended up in even stranger digs. they had their own two story condo that is normally someone’s home. again, odd.
We had coffee at CC’s Community coffee on Royal then popped into the central grocery but skipped getting the mufaletta because it wasn’t lunch time. We visited a very good new contemporary art gallery called M Gallery not far from our  hotel, then took the st. Charles streetcar (which was a bus ride initially) to Tulane to see our nephew, a happy sophomore there. Ate at cafe ferete. Cute place, so so food. After a swim in the refreshingly cool water of the charming courtyard pool at our hotel, we ate at trendy couchon restaurant – oysters, porkcheek, short ribs,pulled pork with crackling and turnips and pickled peaches. Definitely different. Now taking our chances with frontier airlines. We appear to be leaving. So maybe this flight won’t be cancelled.

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October 6, 2012 · 1:08 am

Easiest way to buy a plane tix in Peru – IN Peru

Visa Inc. logo.svgMy son quickly solved our flight dilemma – where we could not buy a ticket online with a credit card for a Star Peru flight from Lima to Cusco – by going to the Star Peru office in Lima and buying the ticket with his debit card. Of course this option isn’t available to those of us who aren’t in Lima but it was nice to know that he could actually get the dang thing. Meanwhile we’re contemplating getting a Visa card since we’re hearing that Visa is more widely used in Peru than Master Card. I don’t know why. For example, I cannot use my Master Card to buy tickets online to Machu Picchu. After finally figuring out how to use the government website I discovered during the third or fourth click that they only take Visa.

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September 25, 2012 · 2:06 am

Taking the bus to Laguardia – and nabbing an earlier flight home in Minneapolis

I paid $2.25 (the price of a bus ride) to get to Laguardia airport this afternoon which is much better than a $40 cab ride – not as fast of course, but not as long as I feared. It took me an hour – from the time I picked up the M60 bus at 106th and Broadway to my arrival at Laguardia’s Terminal C – and frankly seemed faster than the express bus I rode into the city (for $12.50).

I had a three hour layover in Minneapolis so of course my arrival and departing gates were minutes away from each other (as opposed to my outbound flight when I had 37 minutes to get from one end of the airport to the other.) Noticing that there was an earlier flight to Des Moines (at 7:15 vs. 9:30 p.m.) I went to the gate for the earlier flight to see if I could get on. There was room but Delta wanted to charge me $50 (which United wasn’t going to do when I tried to do the same thing a week ago in Boston). So I said no thanks but then the Delta person saw that my 9:30 flight was overbooked so she waived the $50 fee. So here I am home – although my bag won’t arrive until 11 p.m. So I guess it pays to ask and stand your ground….at least sometimes!

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August 2, 2012 · 7:48 pm

Megabus accident – on chicago to st. louis to Kansas City route.

UPDATE ON THE UPDATE: There’s now some question about whether there was a fatality in the Megabus crash, according to the most recent reports.  The bus was apparently headed to St. Louis and then Kansas City. Stay tuned.
UPDATE: Sad and disturbing news that at least one person has been killed and many injured in a Megabus crash today on I-55 in Illinois. I held my breathe as the radio announcer reported the destination city of the bus that left Chicago: Kansas City. (Not Des Moines, where I live.)

AS I WROTE earlier today: (which now seems a trivial matter indeed…)

My son took the Megabus last Friday afternoon from Washington D.C. to NYC and all went well EXCEPT that the ride took longer than expected (over 5 hours) due to traffic AND he’d forgotten to bring any food along, which was a problem because the bus didn’t make a stop for passengers to catch a quick bite. (This stop happens sometimes but not always on the Megabus route between Des Moines and Chicago, which I’ve ridden many times.) Fortunately he did bring water – but when the bus finally arrived in Manhattan at 11 p.m., my son was really hungry.

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March 24, 2012 · 3:40 pm

A Costa Rica transportation tax for a Des Moines to Newark flight – HUH?

I swear, this do-it-yourself online plane-ticket reservations stuff is so confusing. Yesterday, I finally settled on taking a Des Moines to Newark flight on United in April after weighing various other options to get to NYC. (LaGuardia was more expensive; the flight to Newark is direct! etc.)  The ticket was $359 when I first spotted it. (Not cheap, I know.) An hour or so later it was suddenly $396. I wondered why. So I looked at the fine print and saw that the ticket price was still the same ($338) but the additional taxes/fees had increased from $21.60 by $37. So I looked at the breakdown of the taxes/fees and saw that it included a $15.75 “Costa Rica transportation tax.” Say what?

Then all of a sudden the original $359 fare popped up onto my screen so I just grabbed it – no questions asked. Grrrr

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January 20, 2012 · 10:44 pm

southwest airlines comes to Des Moines!!

We interrupt this blog for an exciting long-awaited announcement: Southwest Airlines is coming to Des Moines. So reports Iowa Public Radio. Not many details yet – but Southwest recently purchased Air Tran, which flies from Des Moines to a few places. Now the trick will be getting Southwest to fly here, there and everywhere from Des Moines! And to fly relatively cheaply – in recent years we’ve found that it’s no longer the cheapest option when we’ve tried to fly Southwest from places like Chicago, Kansas City or Omaha.

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November 29, 2011 · 3:15 am

Bad luck with Delta Airlines but good corned beef with dad in Detroit

arrgh…On both my departing and return flights between Des Moines and NYC, there were mechanical problems that caused delays and/or heart palpitations. En route, during the Detroit to LaGuardia leg, as we were trying to land in a cloudy rainy New York City, the pilot suddenly reversed course and went back up into the clouds. “You may have noticed we tried to land,” he explained over the intercom. “But we decided not to as a result of an anomaly in the braking system.”

WHAT???

He then told us he’d be trying to land again in 10 minutes and there shouldn’t be any further problems.

GULP.

After what seemed like a very long 20 minutes, he did successfully land the plane on what appeared to be an exceedingly long runway. (good idea) and as the wheels touched down and the pilot pumped the brakes, we passengers clapped. And eagerly deplaned.

Then today, we get in the plane at LaGuardia on a beautiful sunny day, taxi out to the runway for an ON TIME departure, only to return to the gate because some water is leaking in the bathroom. An hour and a half later, we are airborne and our chances of making our connecting flights (having lost our original one-hour layover) are slim. I did call from the stalled plane and was told my daughter – who was going onto Cedar Rapids – wouldn’t be able to go on the 4 p.m. flight to CR if she missed the 12:20 one – but there was one seat left on the 7:51 p.m. flight. Feeling like a contestant on Lets Make a Deal, I had to choose between door #1 or #2. And decided to book the 7:51 and try to go standby on the 12:20 should we arrive in time. So we arrive in Detroit at 12 and of course the connecting flight is miles away in another concourse but I run and run and get to the gate just as the door is closing and I BEG the already harried-looking desk person to let Lily get on standby. She balks at first but I look pathetic enough that she gives me the ONE SEAT left on the whole damn plane. And away Lily goes. And of course I’ve now missed my 12:24 p.m. flight to Des Moines (in yet another concourse) and the 4:35 p.m.  is unavailable but, earlier, when the plane was stalled at LaGuardia, I grabbed a seat on  the 7:30 p.m. flight.

Best of all, I call my dad in suburban Detroit and he picks me up and we have a very nice unexpected afternoon together starting with a delicious corned beef sandwich at a little deli on Woodward Avenue (Deli Unique in the Ramada hotel of all places.) So all ends well….and I’m finally home in Des Moines.

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