Cheerful Curmudgeon

President Bush announced a “plan” to get holiday travelers to their destinations closer to on-time this holiday season. CNN.com wrote it up in, Skepticism about holiday air travel ‘express lane’.

Bush announced a series of technical measures Thursday to reduce air traffic congestion and long delays that have left passengers stranded and turned holiday travel into “a season of dread for too many Americans.” Among the most innovative: Opening two lanes of restricted military airspace off the East Coast to commercial airlines from 4 p.m. ET Wednesday through the following Sunday.

I thought it might be interesting to look at a hypothetical flight from New York La Guardia airport to Miami and see how much time would be saved if the plane was routed “direct” through the restricted airspace near La Guardia instead of being required to fly around the restricted airspace.

First, I set up my Voyager flight planner for a jet flight direct from LGA to MIA. Then I manually routed through the pathway in the restricted airspace off the east coast of New York and around the restricted airspace northeast of Miami.

Second, I modified the flight, allowing it to fly directly through the airspace near New York. I do not know exactly where Bush plans to open the “express lanes” but I am giving him the best possible shot here, by assuming that the lanes will be exactly where I need them to save the most time on this flight. Here are the two flights, side by side (click the picture to see it larger):

Time saved: just five minutes. Oh boy.

Worse, his express lane plan ignores the real problems, such as

1. The airports have a fixed number of runways which means they can only handle so many airplanes at a time, and,
2. The airlines schedule way more concurrent departures and arrivals than the airports have runways to handle.

When our jet arrives five minutes earlier at Miami, will there actually be a runway available to land on? Or will it have to wait its turn to land?

Mr. President: Stop deceiving us with “solutions” that don’t actually solve anything. Stop blowing smoke up our asses.

Airlines: It is absurd that more than 24% of the flights in the United States in September 2007 arrived late. That is the worst on-time performance since comparable data began being collected in 1995. Worse, in these Department of Transportation figures, ‘on-time’ means less than 15 minutes late.

That last chapter in our vacation saga is, unsurprisingly, the trip home. I had spent much of this vacation looking for ways to extend it indefinitely and, as had happened during all such prior investigations, I failed to discover the necessary magic incantation. As a brief aside: I am available to be adopted by the right set of parents who are willing to support me in the style to which I want to become accustomed. Read the rest of this entry »

Yellowstone is full of wildlife, blissfully unafraid of human beings and wildly attracted to picnic baskets. The terrible thing, indicative of the most horrible decline of American culture, is that none of the neighbor’s children, ranging from kindergarten through seventh grade, had heard of either Yogi Bear or Jellystone. (Click on the thumbnail images to see larger versions.)
Read the rest of this entry »

Since I am known to be slightly crazed when behind the wheel of a car, it should be no surprise that Candy and I took off to see Grand Teton National Park and ended up driving all the way through it and up into Yellowstone. So much for a short, relaxing afternoon in the Tetons. Along the way, we got a lot of the cool Tetons pictures, which I posted earlier.

Yellowstone is… well… Yellowstone. We saw everything from canyons to waterfalls the geysers to wildlife to valleys. Here are a bunch of photos and I hope you enjoy then just 1% as much as I enjoyed taking them. As always, click on each thumbnail to see a larger version. Read the rest of this entry »

I have actually been to the Rockies on vacation before, twice, with Art, in fact, via land transportation. And it was beautiful both times – Rocky Mountain National Park on the near side (for Missouri) just north of Denver. So the trip to Yellowstone and the Tetons was a first for me. I am also relatively new to small planes. The only times I have ever been in one are with Art as pilot since he started flying again about two years ago.

So let me start by saying I have a fear of heights (meaning cliffs or high bridges or precipitous roads) and I don’t harbor any desire to become a pilot. I am not a hiker and for me wild animals have always been in zoos. This makes my perspective on our vacation a bit different from his, though the bottom line is that I loved it and would go back again. It was breathtakingly beautiful, remarkably empty, and entirely enjoyable – except for that 1.5 hour drive to the closest open medical facility to check out a bad case of food poisoning.

The pictures he has posted are a small fragment of what we gathered. The variety and scale of the natural features was astonishing. And I was thoroughly spooked by bison on the road, unconcerned by traffic, close enough to reach out and touch (though I did not). Elk made a similar crossing during that emergency room trip. It’s not so cool when you can’t stop to watch.

The flights over the mountains were not as intimidating as I’d expected. In fact, they were often exhilarating. And the view was amazingly clear. We only saw bad weather once – a thunderstorm in the mountains as we landed in Lander – but it held off till we got to the restaurant for dinner, just putting on a light show in the crags until bursting upon the town while we watched from inside.

Aside from the beauty and the wildlife and the lakes and the peaks, the clearest impression for me is the emptiness of the land we flew over and the high winds we experienced on every landing in Wyoming. Our GPS had nothing on it at all for great stretches. Empty country is beautiful. And you figure there is probably good reason for so much land to be so empty of towns. I think among the most lasting mental pictures I will carry from the flights are the stretches of Wyoming east of Lander, beautiful in an almost desert-like way.

For me, this trip was a gem to be treasured all the more because it is not one I would have chosen to take. I would have gone to a lake or oceanside. But it was hurricane season, so the mountains seemed a better choice. And Art’s enthusiasm is irresistible. I very rarely regret accompanying him on an adventure. This was no exception. I am grateful to be able to visit places like this. Whenever I do, I wonder what it would be like to live in vacation country. I realized on this trip that I am not cut out for frontier or mountain life. It’s awesomely beautiful. And I’m glad to be home in the suburbs again, despite the swamp-like climate we tolerate here, full of memories, and eager to take on another adventure soon.

I first saw the Tetons when my father took us there for a family vacation in the early 1970s. I immediately fell in love with their grandeur and variety. I returned in 1979 on a camping trip with a college buddy (Ann Arbor to the Grand Canyon to the Tetons to Yellowstone and back, in an un-airconditioned Volkswagen Rabbit in 15 days… ahhhh college memories!). I have wanted to get back there ever since. Read the rest of this entry »

The first chapter of this travelogue takes us from St. Louis, MO to Jackson Hole, WY. Click on through for pictures and narration. Read the rest of this entry »

September has rolled around again which means that it is time for that age-old question: What did you do on your summer vacation? This year, Candy and I took a short “Indian Summer” vacation. We flew out to Jackson Hole, WY and spent a few days noodling around the Grand Teton and Yellowstone national parks.

Togwotee Mountain Lodge was home away from home and we recommend it highly. The food was great. The wine stewardship of Charles and Mike cannot be compared (ask for the Seven Deadly Zins . But most of all, the location had us at at a secluded 8600′ and an hour away from the neon of Jackson, WY.

Flying to and from the Rockies was an adventure in and of itself. We covered Missouri, Nebraska, and Wyoming pretty much from corner to corner. We flew over land from 460′ MSL (mean sea level) to about 9000′ MSL. More impressive, we were within arms reach of mountain peaks thousands of feet above our heads.

Four more posts will follow in the coming days but family duties call at the moment. Here is one small photo from Yellowstone to whet your appetite.

May the road rise to meet you,
May the wind be always at your back.
May the sun shine warm upon your face,
The rains fall soft upon your fields.And until we meet again,
May God hold you in the palm of his hand.
May God be with you and bless you:
May you see your children’s children.May you be poor in misfortune,
Rich in blessings.
May you know nothing but happiness
From this day forward.May the road rise up to meet you
May the wind be always at your back
May the warm rays of sun fall upon your home
And may the hand of a friend always be near.May green be the grass you walk on,
May blue be the skies above you,
May pure be the joys that surround you,
May true be the hearts that love you.

I hope it is not disingenuous to wish ourselves this Irish blessing but I am doing it anyway. We leave in a few minutes for another grand, cross country adventure with our airplane. This time we are headed to the Tetons for some much needed R&R, followed by a couple of days of business in Lost Wages Las Vegas.

Once before, I flew across the Rockie mountains, but that trip hardly counts because I crossed where they are “low.” In 1988, I flew my Piper Archer from Long Beach, CA, to Manchester, NH. I crossed at the south end of the range, between Phoenix and Albuquerque. This time, we are going into the high country and I am looking for gorgeous photos.

As a flatlander, this is an exciting trip. For a change, the road is, literally, rising up to meet us.

Today is the longest day of the trip, seven hours in the air, nine hours total with two fuel/food/rest stops. We will end in Lander, WY, nestled up against this side of the Wind River range of the Rockies.

Tomorrow morning, we should have a beautiful flight up into Jackson Hole with the sun lighting the eastern face of the Tetons.