1) wifi should be free in all airports. Juneau finally added it. Anchorage provides it. Albuquerque has it. Seattle seems to still want to force folks to pay up. More and more airports are doing it right though. And hotels! I’m shocked when hotels want to charge for networking, and totally floored when they don’t even have it as an option–I’m so used to them having it, that I don’t think to ask anymore–and about once a year I got surprised.
2) I think the airlines/rental car/frequent flier plans are getting more stingy. Not so much in the rewards (which is true), but they seem to “forget”/”lose”/”delete” the number from their records. I find this when flying airline partners, rental car companies, etc. The number goes in when I make the reservation, it isn’t there when I get the rental/boarding pass, I have them add it back, the miles never show up, I fax in receipts, boarding passes, and blood samples (as required to get the mile credit), then never hear anything… If it wasn’t in an attempt to get Carrie & Torsten along on trips, I would give up on keeping up with it. (I suppose that is the hope, eh? airlines?)
3) I noticed–and I want more impressions of this: European airport bookstores have great science (like Einstein, Darwin, etc). US airports generally don’t have a science section. If they do it is “The Physics of Reality TV shows” (I’m not kidding–I really saw this one in SEATAC today!). I hear recently that the Anchorage airport bookstore does have a science section (but I looked for it when I was there two weeks ago! I was distracted by hangin’ w/ Torsten, so I’ll stand by my premise/observation/anecdote). US airport bookstores have no reasonable science book section for the importance of science and technology to our lives. (heck–the fact that we are getting on airplanes should emphasize this!!) And my impression is that European airport bookstores (given, my main impression is from Amsterdam–a nice big airport. But Oslo as well!). I’ve recently done my survey in DFW, Seatac, ABQ, JNU (ha!). I’m gathering anecdotes and impressions–let me know what you think!
And what else do you notice about travel?
O boy! So, if I remember correctly, an O’Hare bookstand (could have been Minneapolis, or more implausibly Salt Lake, because I was through these in the same general time frame as well) actually caught my eye through the window because it had Jennifer Oulette’s Black Bodies and Quantum Cats, which I had just read and which has an eye-catching cover, and as I slowed down to rubberneck I was favorably impressed by the surrounding section. However, that stands out because as far as Stateside selection goes I definitely agree with you. AAAAAND since I was actually keeping an eye out this time, I checked the bookstore in Houston’s George Bush Intercontinental this time…let’s see, Fiction, Travel, Ethnic, Spanish, Sci-Fi, Non-Fiction….no Science section at all! I glanced over the Non-Fiction and found almost nothing that I would have regrouped to Science had such a section existed, but in fact it does not as far as Houston is concerned. 🙁
Houston Intercontinental (Bush) international terminal (E, I think) had a science section. This was half (top half, at least) of a column of books. The other half was nature/pets (mostly books like “How fifi saved my life” and “Why my cat knows what I’m going to do”). Better than no science. But there was a whole column of books dedicated to sudoku. Now, I like sudoku, and carry a book of ’em with me on travel. But c’mon us! Science! Technology! You are going to get on an airplane and fly around the world!!! I can see why the inspiration and religious section is so big, especially if we aren’t going to do our science reading. But we are bumming me out!
The investigation continues: Today we find ourselves in the new terminal (2 days old) at Raleigh, NC. We are in the research triangle. The new Borders in the terminal has a science section (again, a single split column with the pets “How my gerbil turned around my life”, and again, a full column for sudoku). But! They had two copies of Penrose’s “The Road to Reality”–paperback. I bought one to support the cause! They had an Einstein biography. They had a book by Frank Wilczek.. woohoo! Interestingly, they also had a “second hand” book store just down the terminal. Cool idea, first I’ve seen that in the airport. It reminded me of the book swaps in the Alaska Marine Highway (ferry) terminals. Couldn’t we do a newspaper/book swap in airports? Dunno if we could operate it off of donations, maybe some rich philanthropist who wants to make America smarter and a bit happier would be into setting up a “trust fund/endowment” to operate such an airport concession.
In the Boston airport (ug.. stuck here, on the way home to Alaska from North Carolina! Make any sense? American “pushed back” for an on time departure from Raleigh and then made us sit on the tarmac for 1.5 hours because of winds in Boston.. Damn! I could have been browsing the second hand book store!!). I didn’t get to track down a bookstore to check–it was way–tooo–early-o’clock AK time. But there was a “free magazine rack” with about a dozen different magazines free for the taking. There were some vaguely interesting ones–like “PC laptops.” But here’s another opportunity for science literacy. How about putting Scientific American for free in the airports? Discovery. National Geographic! People would take ’em, read ’em…
OH, and time to rant again about wifi. Nice new terminal a Raleigh–cool “seat quads” with two power ports and two USB 5V ports. Even a push to reset the fuse right there (I had to reset the fuse on the one I sat down at). Fantastic. But pay-for-wifi. NOOOO! And of course, it is tmobile.. not boingo.. or att (both of which I’ve purchase monthly and daily subscriptions to recently).
And then the Boston Airport Hilton hotel had wifi everywhere (one step better than the Seattle Airport Doubletree). But it was not free! Luckily, I brought my router, so I could share my wifi connection and Nick didn’t have to pay up. And because I mis-typed my room, and the “pick how long you want to use the network” reset on the page-reload to 30 minutes, I got only 30 minutes of paid service. Luckily, after 30 minutes the connection kept working! And it still worked in the morning. (I was going to purchase a 24 hour pass and then “duke it out” with the front desk to get them to remove the 30 minute charge).
Man, the Boston to Seattle flight is too long. I get to do lots of typing…