Temporary Blog Name Change: Residing at Albany Airport

As I write this blog post, I sit dumbfounded at Albany Airport. Thank goodness they have free WiFi. My day began as a normal day. I had all my bags packed the night before, and I was ready to roll out to the airport. On the way though, events took a turn. We were merging onto MD-100 at MD-10. A stellar Maryland driver merged and cut another driver off. The driver that got cut off, swerved and veered off the road -- subsequently rolling their car twice and landing on the passenger side of the vehicle.

I was the first person the scene, and had Christina call 9-1-1 while I attended to the passengers of the vehicle. Before I could even get to the car, a little boy about 9 or 10 years old came stumbling out of what was the back window. He was screaming and obviously freaked out. I helped him to safety with Christina. I then checked in the back seat, and found a 4 year old little girl crying. I pulled her out and handed her off to Christina. While she was directing the dispatcher to our location, I crawled on top of the vehicle and pried the drivers side door open. I think it was a moment of super-human strength because the door was badly mangled, but I got it open and started talking to the occupants of the vehicle. There was a man sitting in the drivers seat hanging by his seatbelt. There was also a woman down below who had a bible in her hand, complaining that she wanted to get out. No blood, no bones (the airbags didn't even deploy). The gentleman was able to get out, so another responder and I helped him climb out of the car. I asked the woman if she had hit her head in the accident, she said, "yes" on the roof. I told her to look at me, so I could see if she her pupils were dilated (indicator of whether she was in shock). She seemed to be fine. I asked her if she could feel her toes. I had her squeeze my hand and she still had a firm grip. We contemplated rolling the car over, but decided against it in case she had any neck injuries.

Then the police and fire arrived. It actually took them a while to get there (or last it seemed like it). Then we went through all the usual questions. After we gave them our information, we wrapped it up and headed off to the airport. Luckily, I had left with plenty of time, but now I was still crunched for time due to the accident.

I got to the airport, waited in a long line with only three agents checking people in, and got my boarding pass. I made my way over to security. After getting in line, alarms started to sound, and everyone just stood there looking at each other. I gave up, and ran down to the other security screening checkpoint. Now I was only 30 minutes from departure. I sat down in a squishy chair and checked my email real quick. After that I got up to get in line to board.

If the security checkpoint had been the least of my problems, that would have been fine. After taking the short flight up to Albany on Southwest Airlines, we landed and I turned my phone back on. There was a voicemail message from a number I didn't recognize.

"Hello Mr. Bauer, this is Sandy at Baltimore. You left your wallet in the gate area at A11. Please call XXX-XXX-XXXX to let us know what you'd like us to do with it."

That's got to be wrong my wallet was right in my back pocke---- OH #*$&$!

I figured it wouldn't be a big deal. Just have them send it on the next flight, right?

WRONG!

After going down to the ticket counter in Albany, I was greeted by the less than friendly supervisor, Mei. She was quite grumpy and did not want to really assist in any way. I asked her to please check with Baltimore to see if they could send it on the next flight. "Sir, our policy is not to send unchecked baggage on flights without a passenger" was her response. Um, ok. This isn't baggage. It's a wallet. She called Baltimore, and came back out and said to me, "I'm only going to say this one more time. I'm not putting that baggage on a flight up here." So the next option would be FedEx. Right? WRONG! FedEx wouldn't be able to deliver it until 10:30 am on Tuesday. A day AFTER when I'm supposed to board a train with my boys to go to Boston.

I explained my plight, and how I wouldn't be able to board the train, rent the car I had reserved, nor check into the hotel I had reserved without my wallet. Yes, I was a doofus for forgetting my wallet in a chair at BWI. But this was even more idiotic for not putting it on the next flight.

Frustrated, and wracking my brain as to how to solve this dillema, I walked over to United Airlines and asked them if they had any flights, since I have a ton of miles on United. They said that they would just put the wallet in a box and send it if it were them. Preaching to the choir fellas. Preaching to the choir.

Finally I asked the lovely Mei, if I had time to fly back to BWI and get my wallet and fly back. "Sure," she says. The ticket will be $631.40 round trip. Ugh. That's a bit out of my Staff Sergeant budget. My Southwest Rapid Rewards account is at 15.5 credits toward the 16 needed for a free flight. Can we just bump it up since I have a flight booked and ready to earn me the need .5 credit? Nope. Roadblock #3,455 for the day.

Wait! My Aunt and Uncle who travel Southwest always have reward certificates. I called them. I was in luck. So I did a conference call on my cell phone and booked a ticket. They told me I could pay the 9-11 security fee at the airport. I told them, I had cash in my pocket, and that wouldn't be a problem. So I went up to the ticket counter. "Sorry, we need a credit card, can't take cash for this, the computer won't let us," was the response. Roadblock #3,456 for the day.

So I called back to Southwest and attempted to pay for the $5.00 fee over the phone with my mom's credit card. The lady tells me, "Sorry you don't have enough credits to cover this flight." Huh? I'm not trying to use mine, I'm trying to use my Aunt's. After that whole debacle, we got it paid for, and I went over to the kiosk to print out the new boarding passes (for my flight down to BWI and my flight back to ALB). I asked the supervisor Mei if I needed any special documentation since I didn't have my ID on my person. "Nope, they'll know what to do at security."

So, I get to security, and explain the whole situation. For the 11th time today, they ask me, "Why don't they just put your wallet on the next flight?" Preaching to the choir ma'am. Preaching to the choir. She informs me, "I'm going to have to ask my supervisor about this. Do you have anything with your name on it?" I rummaged through my backpack only to find my Maryland hunting license. That's all I've got. A stinking hunting license. Woopdy-Doo! That isn't going to cut I guess. So they sit me down in the corner for some apperant violation of Code Chartreuse, and they proceed to call headquarters TSA in Washington DC. Some arbitrary questions were asked, such as:
- What month were you born?
- What kind of car is registered in your name?
- Where do you live?
- What's your name?
- Does anyone else live in the same household as you?

Apperantly I had given enough correct answers to prevent the dreaded snap of a rubber glove and the statement of "Bend over and spread your cheeks" to be issued. I was cleared to go.

Now, there was an earlier flight to get me down to BWI sooner which departed about an hour ago at 5:20 pm. I asked the gate agent if I could go standby. "Nope, out of the question. You're on a Rapid Rewards Ticket. It's our policy not to let passengers go standby on those" was her response. What a surprise. On any other day, rules would have been interpreted, and applied to the situation, with an ounce of common sense. I guess February 15th is "National Blindly Follow the Policies Day".

So here I sit with my laptop plugged in waiitng for my flight to depart in an hour or so. Upon arrival at BWI I will hopefully have someone waiting with my wallet in hand, where I will do the "Truffle Shuffle" to my departing gate (I have a 10 minute turnaround at BWI). Then I'm back on a flight to Albany.

Luckily, my mother has a friend who lives 10 minutes from Albany Airport. She is spending some time visiting while I get a tour of multiple Southwest aircraft.

Hopefully I won't have any delays. Otherwise, I'm screwed. What fun.

So on this note, I just want to give a heartfelt blogger "THANK YOU" to Southwest for this lovely day of travels.

THANK YOU!!!

For some reason, I have to say, the Southwest slogan "Luv is in the air" does not apply to my experience today. A pissed off passenger is in the air though.

Moral of the story: No good deed goes unpunished.
2nd Moral of the story: Don't let your wallet fall out of your pocket - jackass!

2008 Travels

It's been quite a year (for more reasons than one). I have gotten a lot of traveling done -- for work and pleasure. I was reviewing my travels and came up with some estimates of what I have "accomplished" in all this.

Using the Great Circle Mapper (another one of my favorite tools), I got a ballpark estimate on how many miles I traveled this year. This is for travel only, not commuting or anything else. To see the basis for my calculations, use this link.

Here's a map of my estimations:



Honestly, I didn't go to too many different places, it was just the same places multiple times. Sometimes I cannot believe how I meet people who have never been out of the state they live in! How does that happen in the 21st Century.

Some other things to put the travel in perspective:
- Total Travel was ~36,404 miles! As Borat would say: "Wowee Wow!"
- Hilton HHonors Points ~ 47,635 points. 34 Nights in a Hilton Hotel spread over 14 separate stays.
- Southwest Airlines Credits ~ 16 credits (enough for a free flight). Oddly enough, I only boarded 7 flights on Southwest this year, and two flights were a reward flight.
- United Airlines Miles ~36,611 Miles and 27 segments. Bear in mind that there's bonus miles in that figure, so I flew a little less -- although it comes close to the total miles flown and driven.
- 9 states were visited as destinations, but I traveled through 18 states in total.
- Geocaches were found in 8 states with a total of 94 geocaches found (as of 12/12/08)

All in all, quite a busy year, and there were huge gaps throughout the year where I didn't travel at all. This is kind of a neat way to recollect the previous year.

"Area - 52"

Right after Thanksgiving I headed out on a trip to Nevada for work. Unbeknown to me, I was headed out to what is informally known as Area-52. As we all know from urban lore, Area-51 is the place where "God knows what" goes on there. If you're wondering what really goes on there (no, we don't store alien spacecraft there), check out this site. It actually has some interesting facts on Area-51.

Now, officially, I can neither confirm nor deny any information that you read. Take it for what you think it's worth and draw your own conclusions. I actually signed some non-disclosure agreements before I was even allowed to go out there, so I must state this up front. I AM NOT CONFIRMING, or DENYING ANY INFORMATION YOU MAY READ. I post this only as information.

My trip started out heading out to Las Vegas where I stayed the night, before driving up to the area where I stayed. What did I do in Vegas while waiting to depart the next morning? The natural thing of course. Nope! No gambling. Nope! No happy ending massage. Nope! No buffets at one of the hotels. I went geocaching. I ended up finding about six of them. In geocaching there is a type of cache called a webcam cache. This is where you position yourself to be seen by a webcam, and have a friend on a computer save the picture as proof you were there. Here is a picture of me at my first webcam cache at the 4 corners of MGM Grand, Excalibur, New York New York, and some other casino. All in all that night I walked about 9 miles from my hotel to the various points and back. Good exercise!


The next morning it was off to Nellis AFB where we all met up, and the caravan headed up to the range. We stayed at what is called the Tonopah Test Range (TTR) near a rundown mining town called Tonopah (this is a link found when you Google TTR. By no means am I confirming or denying the information on this page. Some assessments may be correct/incorrect, but I am not going to verify it. Don't ask, I won't tell -- jail is not cool). Tonopah is about 25 miles from the range, and to give you an idea of the remoteness of this area of Nevada, the nearest Wal-Mart was 150 miles in every direction. No cell phone service, no internet, nothing for about 9 days.

The days up there were quite fun I have to say. Military stuff went on, and we played out in the desert with our 4X4 vehicles. I even got to drive a Humvee one of the days. That was something I have always wanted to do. On another day, I got buzzed by an F-16 at 200 feet while relieving myself in the middle of the desert. The pilot turned his aircraft so he could look down. Since one hand was busy holding the "aim" steady, I used the other hand to wave at him/her -- I hope it was NOT a her. It was very cold that day, and that would just be plain embarrassing.

Obviously, I can't go into great detail about the rest of the trip, but I have to say, it was the most remote location I have ever been to. There were no trees for miles, and the only thing that broke up the horizon were just the few scattered mountains. You could literally see for miles and miles in every direction. Bleek, barren, stark would all be good ways of describing the landscape, but it was still quite beautiful out there.



I left again, and headed down to Vegas. On the way down, I stopped at the merge of Hwy 375 - the Extraterrestrial Highway and Hwy 93. Yes, they actually named it the Extraterrestrial Highway. The entrance to Groom Lake (Area-51) and TTR are located on Hwy 375. So, I guess that is why the conspiracy theorists prevail in naming the highway that. Of course, I took my picture by the sign.

I saw the mountains stuck in the clouds on the drive back and thought it made for a cool picture. I'm really bummed that I didn't have my good camera with me. I felt naked without it. I had to settle for the iPhone's camera. Still decent quality, but just doesn't do some things justice.



When I got back to Vegas, I checked into the Las Vegas Hilton. Very nice rooms I have to say. Of course now I went to gamble, right? Nope. Back to geocaching. It's the best FREE way to see a city, place, landscape. So I wiled the hours away go for a walk/driving from cache to cache. Below is a picture of a cache that I found that night. Believe it or not, these things are all around you, and you probably don't even notice them.


The next morning it was up, bright an early for the flight home. I have to say, Vegas is not one of my most favorite places to go. There's just something about it that gives me the creeps. I tolerate it, but don't go out of my way to go there. I'm sure other people like it more, but that's a whole other topic.


No more travels this year (except Christmas in New York), so pretty soon I will sum up all my travels this year in another blog post. Look for them soon. Happy Holidays to all.

dave.

Handy Travel Websites...

So here I am today, browsing around the ol' interweb and I'm reading one of the handy info sites on flying. FlyerTalk.com. This site has a lot of insider information about flying, and tips to make it more enjoyable - and lucrative. I've been a member over there for several years now, and find it useful most of the time. Beware though, there are a lot of pesky grumps that are snobs when it comes to their levels of knowledge on that website. Before you post, research to see if your questions has been answered already - otherwise, prepare for an onslaught of people telling you to research better and find the needle in the haystack BEFORE you post. It's a pet peeve, but worth the information I guess.

Anyway, I read about a user that used a site called Kayak.com. While writing this post, I realized that I have heard of this site before, but never used it. I checked it out today, and WOW, what a useful tool.

On Kayak, you can plug in your trip origination, and destination, and poof, you're presented with 1,000's of options for flight travel. There are also options to check for Hotels, Vacations, Cruises and other deals. It's a smorgasbord of travel information, and the best part? You can filter out what you want and don't want.

For example, I'm a Premier member on United. I only want to fly United because, why earn miles on another airline when it doesn't benefit me? You can filter on an airline. It will show you the cheapest fares out there for any trip you can think of.

So "How is this better than any other travel site?" you ask. Simple. Kayak is culling all the data it finds from over 140 sites that offer fares for airline travel. I don't know about you, but I don't have the time, nor the desire to search 140+ websites for the best prices or that golden nugget of a deal that occasionally pops up.

So the next time you're looking for the cheapest fare, check out Kayak and see what it has to offer. And if you're looking for a mileage run (more about that topic in the future) you may just find something that will fit your budget. I have added links to the right hand side of this page for easy access to both FlyerTalk and Kayak. Have fun and happy travels.

dave.

Fall in New England...

This past weekend was quite a trip. One of the more memorable in a while. The pictures that I got out of it, were absolutely amazing (if I don't say so myself). We left from Maryland on Friday afternoon and headed up to Connecticut. After driving through NYC at night, we got into Shelton, CT. In the morning we headed up to New Britain. Matthew was practicing with the symphony in preparation for his solo the next day so we headed off towards New Hartford, CT. New Hartford, NY as it turns out was settled by the same people who settled New Hartford, CT. Below is a view of Main Street in New Hartford, CT. The history of New Hartford, CT can be found here. New Hartford, CT was formed along with seven other townships from settlers from Hartford, CT. One of the seven townships formed was Kellogsville, who are related to the Kellog's who settled in New Hartford, NY and Kellog Road is named after (unconfirmed).

Once again, geocaching played a role in this trip. I had been watching a cache called "100 Steps" for some time due to the panoramic views of Connecticut from the cache location. We drove up a long winding road in the People's State Forest to the parking location and hiked the rest of the way to the cache. The name "100 Steps" comes from the natural or man made (you can't really tell) stone steps leading up the hill to the panoramic views of the valley. Once we got to the top, we realized that the hike was well worth it.

We had packed a lunch and had plans to make a day of it, so we went and found the cache which was nestled under a rock outcropping about a hundred yards away. We pulled out our lunch that we picked up at Trader Joe's (it tasted kind of gross - I don't know how people eat organic all the time), and sat at the lookout taking in all the changing leaves, and the untouched horizon in front of us. We even saw a bald eagle fly through the valley below us.

After we had lunch and snapped A LOT of photos, we ran into a few other hikers. Surprisingly the people from this area were really outgoing and friendly. We met a couple of guys who mentioned that there was another outlook about half a mile up the trail. Later on another couple came up the mountain and we chatted with them for a while. We decided to head over to the other lookout which gave a more Northerly view towards the Massachusetts border. Below are a few pictures from that lookout.

After taking in the views at the second lookout, we headed back to the car. The walk through the woods was great. The leaves in the area were just starting to peak, but we got a couple trees that were showing their colors. The one below had some really bright red leaves carpeting the ground, so we stopped for a photo opportunity (yes, we were like Japanese tourists on this hike, getting plenty of use out of the camera).

That about wrapped up the walk through woods, and we realized we had spent almost five hours on top this mountain. We drove back down the mountain, and realized there was a cache at the park across the street which is also part of the People's State Forest. There was an amazing grove of trees with a quasi road cut through it, which made for an excellent photo. I turned one into a black and white photo. The ground was completely covered in an orange carpet of pine needles. In the black and white version it almost looks like snow covering the ground.

We finally headed back after finding the cache to have dinner with my Mom, Bro, Aunt Amy and Uncle Dave. We went to a really jazzy place called Trumbull Kitchen - or TK for short. Rather on the expensive side, but they had a tasty menu. The Opa Opa beer that I tried was really good, and I finished dinner off with a Dalwhinnie single malt Scotch.

We all headed back to our respective hotels. The Hilton Hartford was a deceiving yet trendy hotel that must have been newly remodeled. The outside looked slightly run down, but the inside was anything but. A good place to stay right in downtown Hartford.

The next day my brother Matthew soloed with the New Britain Symphony Orchestra with Jesse Levine as the conductor. The show that day was called "3 at 3pm". There were three soloists, one of them my brother. He played a piece called "Konzertstück for Snare Drum and Orchestra" by Askell Masson. This video on YouTube gives you a flavor of the very different taste of music this piece was. It was a great concert, and it was also Matthew's debut as a professional musician. Way to go Bone!

After the concert everyone went their seperate ways for the start of the new week. Overall the trip was great, the music, the fall season, the family, and time spent with each other. Don't forget to check out all the pictures that we took at my Picasa Web Albums.

Back from Tucson...

Last week I went out to Tucson, Arizona. This was my second time there - if you actually count driving through there. Quite a nice area if you ask me. The weather is awesome, and the scenery is some of the best I have seen. As far as activities, well, if you don't like the great outdoors, there isn't much. But there was a lot of geocaching. Since this is my first post, I should mention what geocaching is. Actually, why reinvent the wheel...check this out.

The picture of me on the side of the mountain is of me finding a cache at about 9,000+ feet.

This trip out to AZ was for work. The conference itself was an absolute bore, but it provided plenty of opportunity to get outdoors and do some caching. BTW, the best sunset I have ever seen was here in Tucson.

There is another picture below of me standing on top of a Titan Missile Silo that has been sealed over with concrete. After the Cold War, the SALT treaty called for the 18 Titan missiles around Tucson to be decommissioned. There are several of these silos in the middle of the desert in Tucson. You can read more about the Titan Missile program at this site. After the silos were destroyed and filled with concrete, they put these big metal domes over them to seal them up, so they could be verified by Russians and their satellites.

If you want to see more of the pictures I took, and some AWESOME sunset pictures while on the trip, visit my Picasa web albums here ---> Tucson Photos.

Thanks for reading....and stay tuned, I will be traveling to Hartford, CT this weekend so there's sure to be plenty of leaf peeping pictures.

dave.