Mokka mit Schlag » Travel

Zipcar and Flexcar have agreed to merge. This is exactly the sort of merger that I think ought to be prohibited by antitrust laws: two competitors doing exactly the same thing, even if they are both still Tiddlywink operations by Fortune 500 standards. I’d much rather see them compete in the marketplace than collude. However there will be at least one immediate benefit for ZipCar customers: more insurance.

Effective immediately, Zipcar is raising their coverage to $300,000 per incident for members 21 and over instead of the state mandated minimum. It will also soon be possible to rent Zipcars in Flexcar’s cities: Philadelphia, Seattle, Portland and Atlanta. Now if they could only find the cars they think they have in Brooklyn, everything would be hunky dory.

Apparently the duty free shops have convinced the TSA (and foreign equivalents) to allow unlimited quantities of liquor, water, and so forth from outside the security checkpoint to be carried onto the planes provided they’re sealed in a special clear plastic baggie at purchase and not removed from the bag before you clear security. I have just one word to say about this incredibly tight security: Tylenol.
(more…)

Remember when you could cut the lines at the airport by using those new-fangled kiosks all the non-techies were afraid of? Then when you could check in at home and print your own boarding pass (and incidentally edit its PDF source code to bypass what little security the ID checks provided)?

I think those days are over. (Except for editing the boarding pass source code. That still works.) This morning at JFK the smart move would have been to wait till you got to the airport to check in. The line for offline checkin was nonexistent. The line for online baggage check was wrapped around three times and growing fast, and this was at 5:15 in the morning. Heck, you probably could have showed up at the airport with no reservation and oversized luggage, bought a one-way ticket using cash, and still gotten through the line faster.

The general public has finally discovered the wonders of online check-in, and in a completely predictable tragedy of the commons, it’s now just as slow as regular check-in used to be, except we’re doing more of the work. It’s like thirty years ago when everyone started using self-serve to save money, and soon self-serve prices had risen to where full-service used to be.

For a while, I’ve thought that Google Maps’ driving directions are inferior to Yahoo’s and MapQuest’s, though Google Maps are superior in other respects. In particular, Google tends to send me on strange, winding paths through local neighborhoods instead of taking slightly longer but more direct routes down major thoroughfares and highways. However recently that changed.
(more…)

I got pulled over for extra screening at JFK this morning. Apparently my lunch set off the alarm bells. I had a ziploc bag containing a smoked turkey leg and some baby carrots. None of the security screeners could guess what the turkey leg was until they opened my bag, but they did let me through with it. I could swear I’ve carried on turkey legs before, but maybe next time I’ll bring sandwiches.

Makes me wonder: what other dangerous foods could you get on board with? Leg of lamb? Hard salami? Does stinky cheese count as a biological weapon? And should I really be uploading this post through the airport wireless network? (Too late to worry about that: the post just autosaved. Thanks WordPress.)

Over the years I have rented from every major U.S. auto rental chain with the exception of Avis. Over that time I have had almost every problem imaginable with almost every one of them: extra fees tacked on at rental time, cars that had mechanical failures, cars missing pieces in the lot, cars that simply were not available despite a confirmed reservation, cars that could not be dropped off where I was supposed to drop them off, rental offices that were closed during their operating hours, insurance that I didn’t need but was required to purchase anyway, “unlimited” mileage that wasn’t, outrageous gas prices, gas I was charged for but didn’t use, frequent flier miles that were promised and not credited, and more. About the only aspect of car rental service I’ve been lucky enough not to experience is what happens when your rental car is in an accident or stolen.

The latest variation was on a trip to California where I planned to spend some time birding on windy mountain roads with very small pull-offs. Consequently I’d reserved a compact car at Dollar. Instead they saddled me with an effective tank, possibly the single longest car or truck I’ve ever driven. Over six days they claimed to be unable to find a compact car to replace it with.

Recently it occurred to me that there is exactly one car rental company I have never had a problem with or a complaint about: Hertz.
(more…)