I’d heard of TripIt from people at work, but hadn’t used it. We’re going to AZ for Spring Training, and i needed to be able to print out all the itineraries and confirmation numbers and all that, but can’t from work because gmail is blocked. So i was going to just forward all the emails to work, but instead decided to forward them to plans@TripIt.com instead and see how well it worked.

They link everything together, parse it all and put it into a slick itinerary combined with weather, maps, directions and other cool stuff. Its a lot cooler than i expected it to be.

And by looking at it all in one place, i realized that i had booked the rental car for the wrong days! (We land at almost midnight, i accidentally put in 11:30pm for the next day!). Seeing it in the wrong place on the list made it trivial to find and correct. I’d had the emails and printouts from the rental car place on my desk for a week and never noticed i had the wrong days! Fixing this kind of thing at the airport at midnight would have been a GIANT nightmare!

Update 3/25/08: TripIt saved us twice this trip, actually. The itinerary printout also had directions from PHX to the Hotel. Our GPS tried to take us to a completely different place (you know something is wrong when it takes 30 seconds to plan a route and it tries to go around 800 miles instead of 31) and then died altogether. It got into this mode where it had a buggy route stored in memory somewhere, then crashed hard. when it restarted we had to go through the full setup again, but it remembered where we wanted to go, so it tried to recalculate the route and crashed again. If we popped out the map card, it went to a full reset, but after putting the map card back in, it would still randomly crash when we used it. I think we need a new map memory card?

TripIt saved my butt! was originally posted at John's Random Review.

So earlier i stated that the goal for this trip was to get back to WA with one win in the two games we went to this weekend in ‘sconsin. Well, we went 2 for 2 on that goal! The brewer game (aside from the frigging parking fiasco) was awesome too. We got to see (future NL MVP!) Prince Fielder hit home run #48 on the year (he hit #49 and #50 tonight!), we got to see (future NL Rookie of the year!) Ryan Braun hit a home run, got to see lots of run production, lots of offense, some great defense, and a sausage race! We also saw some of the funniest signs i’ve seen at a sporting event, with the clear winner being a couple rows behind us, with the “I (HEART) E-5″ ryan braun sign! It was very handy when he had an error later, and a home run to avenge himself after that..

Best off all, the cubs lost today, and the brewers won again, so its down to 2 games back with 5 to go! how close can you idiots make this!

Updated:Here’s the flickr photo set for the brewer game!

Two for two! was originally posted at John's Random Review.

As soon as we’re all out, they come back on: “Sorry everyone, we have a new departure time, so we need to reboard right now. Nobody will miss their connections, everyone back on!”… so we all reboard. And we push back from the gate, taxi to the runway, then move off to the side. I turn to laura and say “Uh oh, this isn’t good”, as i see other planes passing us and taking off. The captain comes back on “Well, looks like we’ve got a new delay, we’re gonna be here until 4:15.”. We were supposed to leave at 3:21, it was about 10 to 4 at this point already. At 4:15 he told us it would be another 15 minutes, and it was. We made up some time in the air, but still ended up landing about an hour late.

Our flight to Appleton started ominously, with the pilot telling us the seatbelt sign would be on for the whole (40 minute) flight, as it was probably going to be pretty bumpy. I love when they say that, as in most of my experience, that means its going to be smooooooth sailing! And it was. The plane was really quiet (i think it was a canadair rj?), and the ride was nice and smooth. It took us longer to actually get our luggage (all of it, whew!) at ATW than the flight took! The reason? There’s only one guy! Appleton is a small airport, and when you land at 11:30 pm, that guy does all the work. he guides the plane in with the little flashlights, he drives the jetway, he unloads the luggage. and this trip he got a surprise! When he emerged from the back room with the first piece of luggage, the whole area had a collective giggle. He was carrying well wrapped, and well traveled, huge antlers! “Did anyone have some antlers?”, and of course, the one guy wearing camouflage came forward to claim them. Ah, traveling to the midwest never gets old!

Fun at the airport… was originally posted at John's Random Review.

For our “paper” anniversary this year, the wife and i bought each other tickets to sporting events. We had to be in WI this weekend for a wedding in Green Bay, so i bought the Packer tickets for today, Laura bought Brewer tickets for tomorrow. I told people at work that I’d be happy getting one win over the weekend. Well, check that off the list! It was a beautiful day in green bay, 80+ and sunny at noon for the game. Sunny all game, so I got a little sunburned on my arms and my neck. Was an awesome game, back and forth with a great finish. Nick Barnett FTW! Favre got career TDs 418, 419, and 420, tying Marino’s all time record. After Barnett returned the INT to inside the 1 and the win seemed imminent, half of the crowd was chanting “Pass! Pass!” so favre could get #421. The Lambeau crowd can have a short memory, apparently, as no more than 5 minutes earlier the packers were right there trailing by 4 points on 4th and goal at the 1 and and incomplete pass ended a promising drive with 0 points.

Updated: Here’s the flickr photo set for the Packer game!

Got a sunburn at Lambeau! was originally posted at John's Random Review.

Back from our trip to Waikiki, so i have a few pics up on flickr. More to come. All of the Hawaii pics are geotagged too, so you can see almost exactly where we took them.

The pic here is of Makapu’u lighthouse, on the east coast of Oahu.

Hawaii Vacation! was originally posted at John's Random Review.

1. Never travel multiple airlines in a single trip (at least in the continental US where you can avoid it)
2. keep everything they give you. boarding passes, luggage info, etc. even if someone tells you that you don’t need it anymore.
3. If someone from one Airline X tells you to “take this to a Airline Y counter”, don’t go anywhere. That person can call the other airline’s counter/desk directly and do it over the phone.
4. The airline that caused you to be late / miss a flight is responsible for helping you. If your Airline X flight was late, causing you to miss a Airline Y flight, Airline Y can’t do anything for you, they didn’t do anything wrong (yet!).
5. Travel protection insurance during the winter for midwest travel is probably worth the $100 extra (or whatever it costs for your trip)

For more details about our xmas travel fiasco, follow the jump. Its a looooooong story.

Our trip started more complicated than it needed to be. We waited pretty long to buy tickets, because the ticket prices usually come back down just around thanksgiving, but this year they didn’t. So we took a longer route to bring the price back to normal (450 each vs. 1000+ each). Our original itinerary had us going SEA to Vegas, Vegas to O’hare, and O’hare to Appleton. It also meant that the first flight was via America West, and the subsequent flights were on United.

When we checked in, the woman at the counter said our bags were checked all the way to appleton, but we’d have to pick up boarding passes from united when we landed in Vegas, as she couldn’t print them. We figured that was odd, but no big deal. Until we got to Vegas. McCarren airport in Vegas is divided into 2 sections. One side has the A & B gates, the other has the C & D gates. America West is on one side, United operates out of the other side. So once we got to vegas, we had to go out of security. And since we had no boarding passes, we couldn’t get back into security, so we had to go back to ticketing and wait in line again. Then we got to go back through the security line again. That process took over an hour total, so it was a good thing we had a 4 hour layover.

We could be home in time for the packer game? Awesome.

So that was a cakewalk compared to the trip home. First flight out of appleton at 8:20am, back to seattle by 4:15, should be home in time for the Packer game at 5:15 PST. Aweseome. Our going home itinerary was similar to the way out, except phoenix instead of vegas, and only our first flight, Appleton to O’hare, was via united. We arrived in plenty of time to have a leisurely stroll through checkin (where united couldn’t print our America West boarding passes) and security. I’ve been in O’hare a ton, so i wasn’t worried about going back out through security, since you can get to all the gates without going back out through security. The plane was even boarded and the door closed and ready to go early. Then you get that phrase you never want to hear on an airplane: “This is your captain speaking. It looks like we’re going to be here another 45 minutes before we can take off.” — fine, we have an hour and ten minute layover, we could squeak into our gate. An hour later, the captain comes back on: “We still haven’t gotten an update, we’re expecting to hear from the tower about 9:30″. Yeah, we were supposed to land in chicago at 9:18. That’s not good at all. Well, hopefully since our flight was delayed, hopefully our phoenix flight was too.

Where do we go now??

When we landed, we had 2 problems. One, we were already late. We landed at 10:28, our next flight is supposed to be wheels up at 10:30. Our second problem: O’hare is like 90% united gates. Do you know where to find America West? You can’t just look at a flight board when you land, because those are only showing United flights. so we had to find a map, and figure out where America West (part of us airways) hangs out. So we find a US Airways gate. He tells us that America West is part of the E concourse, so we go there, and at 10:40, stumble upon the gate where our flight had just left.

The gate agent tells us that all of the remaining flights to Phoenix are oversold, the best she can get us is a 2:30 (delayed to 4pm) standby flight to Vegas. Fine, if we have to be trapped somewhere on new year’s eve, Vegas is the place to do it. She asks us why we were late for our flight, and we explained that our United flight left almost 90 minutes late. She explained that since we hadn’t flown America West yet, they hadn’t done anything wrong, so they weren’t really obligated to help us (yet). But since United blew it, they are responsible for fixing it, so we should go to their customer service desk and see if they can help us. Fine, we have around 6 hours to kill before we’ll even know if we’ll even get out of Chicago.

Can I take my break now?

The United customer service desk is at the end of the F and G concourses, right at that corner where McDonalds is. And the line for customer service snaked through the area, and out into the hallway. 3 women were manning the desk. Slowly. Oh god so slowly. The line moved about one person every 10 minutes. Before we even got into the actual snake part of the line, one of the women went on break. Down to 2 people working slowly. We watched the woman on break stand in line at McDonalds and get her food and walk away. We still haven’t moved. Another woman comes to man the desk. Back to 3. Another goes on break. Back to 2. We’ve finally gotten into the real line, no longer standing in the concourse. And we’ve now been standing in line for more than an hour. A guy comes to work at the desk. He’s being friendly, helpful, and damn if he wasn’t efficient. Every person who gets to him is happily gone in 5 minutes or less. He is not only helping his people, but both women at the desk are asking him questions, so he’s answering them, and continuing to help people in line. On woman has been trying to help a guy get to munich for at least a half hour. He’s getting more and more frustrated. As we move through line, we pray that we get that guy, not anyone else. Thankfully, we do. If I remember right, his name was Tony. Tony is upbeat, and tries to be helpful. He can’t get us to Seattle, everything is full. He asks cheerfully, “Where else would you like to go?”. We tell him that if he can get us to portland (oregon, not maine!), we could drive home. Laura had already looked at the boards, she knew there were 3 flights to portland, and 2 more flights to seattle yet that day. He booked us onto a 5:15 flight to portland. He handed us our standby tickets to vegas, and 2 tickets to portland and told us, “you need to take this to an america west gate and have them exchange these vegas tickets for these portland tickets and you’re all set”.

So we walk back to the gate where our phoenix flight left. Nobody there. We walk the entire E concourse. Nobody at ANY america west gates. One has a note on the board that says the flight here is now leaving from F10, so we walk all the way to the end of the F concourse, and find an unoccupied gate agent at F8 from america west. We give him all of our stuff, and explain the situation. “I’m sorry, i can’t do that”

Uh, what!?

He explains that he can’t exchange them, that if he does that, united will charge us for the flight, yadda yadda. I was shocked enough that frankly, i don’t remember everything he told us. He tells us that since united made us late, they should help us, we should go back to united. We tell him that we just stood in line for 2+ hours, we’re not going back to that line. He tells us not to wait in line, go to the person who gave us the tickets and they should finish their job, he can’t do anything for us. Fine. Disgusted, we walk back to United customer service. The line is just as long, and of course, Tony is no longer at the desk. great. we’re going to have to explain this again. to one of the slow ladies. We give up and stand at mcdonalds trying to figure out what to have for lunch. While in line, we see tony, and hear him tell the people near the end of the line that there are 3 people working at gate F12, to go there instead of waiting in line. So we get out of the McD’s line and book it back down to the end of the F concourse, where we had just been. At F12, the united guy explains to us that he can’t do anything. we already have tickets for our portland flight, that all Americ West has to do is “release control” of the tickets so that United can give us seats on the flight. We ask him, “what exactly do we say, word for word to the America West gate agent at F8″, “Tell him that you already have tickets, and that America West needs to release control of the tickets so we can give you seats”. We tell him that we’ll be back, and walk back to F8.

At F8, they now have 2 “position closed” tags up where the 2 America West people are working at the desk. We walk up anyway. We tell him exactly what F12 told us to say. “Ohhh, you just need me to release control? That’s a totally different thing than ‘exchanging’ tickets”… like we care. He types for a couple minutes, then tells us he’s done, that he’s given up control of those tickets to United. So we go back to F12, but our guy is busy. So we get a different women. We explain to her. She’s confused. She types, and tells us “it doesn’t look like America West gave up control of these tickets”. We tell her that we were just at F8, and he did that. We tell her that we were just talking to the other guy at F12, so she goes over by him. When he’s done helping the person he’s helping, she explains it to him. He types for a while, and she walks away. After a few “hmm” and “huh”s from him, he asks us “is an exit row okay?”, we say of course it is. He hands us 2 tickets for our 5:15 flight to portland. Leaving from Gate C26 at 5:15. It is now after 1pm. Its taken us almost 3 hours, just to get a compromise flight to Portland. We’ve given up any hope of anyone getting us to seattle, we’ll just bite it and rent a car.

Oh, you wanted your bags too?…

Our 5:15 flight doesn’t leave until around 5:45, but we make up most of the time in the air. We land almost on time, about 7:40. When we land, we stop at the agent at that gate and ask about our luggage. She tells us they appear to still be in chicago, but the baggage service people know more about that system then she does. So we go to the united luggage service to see what ever happened to our bags. She tells us the same, and we have to go through the hoop of describing all of our bags. Our address, phone #’s, types of bags: Green 22, Grey 22, Black smaller 22 with rainbow electrical tape on the handles. She gives us a copy of the form, and keeps the original luggage info. We go to hertz, pick up a car. We hit the road.

We arrive at our friend Mark’s house (just a few miles from our house) for a new years party at 11:45, just in time for the west coast repeat of the ball dropping. Only about 7 hours later than we expected to be home.

Happy New Year!

About 9 am Jan 1st, we get a call about our luggage. they have 2 bags, we should expect them between noon and 6 pm.
At around 5:15pm, i check the united baggage claim website and realize that they have our address partly wrong, SW instead of SE. Nice. So i call the 1800 number. Its one of those stupid “why don’t you just tell me what you want” computer systems. god i hate those things. I go through all of the prompts, and it takes 10 minutes just for the robot on the other end to find my info, then tell me “I’m sorry, I can’t help you with that. I’ll have to transfer you to a customer service representative”, then a couple touch tones, then he comes back on, “All of our customer service representatives are busy. Please call back later.”, then a dial tone. Fan-fcking-tastic! We’re even getting screwed by robots now. I try for another 5 minutes by just pressing 0 until i get on hold. I wait on hold. I sit on hold for 15 minutes of hold music, punctuated every 90 seconds or so by a voice telling me some random information. Every time the voice comes on, i think someone has picked up, but no. I like the systems that play music and talk once, then tell you something to the effect of “this will be the last voice message before your call is answered”, so you know next time you hear someone it is a real person. Anyway, a nice lady with an Indian acccent answers, and apologizes just about every 10 seconds. I explain about the address, she says she updated it, and she’s trying to get ahold of the driver with our bags. So i go back on hold for about 5 minutes. She comes back on and apologizes that she can’t get ahold of them, but left them a message with the correct address and our cell numbers.

6pm comes and goes. No calls. We give up on our bags for the day.

Happy New Year+1day?

At 10am Jan 2nd, I check the website, and it says that our bags are still due between noon and 6 on Jan 1st, and our address is STILL wrong. Nice. So i try the automated robot phone guy again. Instead of the voice prompted system, i simply get the “All of our customer service representatives are busy. Please call back later.” hangup message. About noon i get email from Laura that United called her and that 2 of our bags are in seattle and they are arranging for delivery. Still no trace of “small black 22″ yet. They give her an approximate time of between 6 and 7 pm.

7pm comes and goes. No calls. We give up on our bags for the day. They arrive at 10:30pm. Its a good thing i was up and writing this post. They still haven’t found our 3rd bag.

Update: Small Black 22

Sometime in the afternoon Jan 3rd, United called Laura and told her they’d found our third bag, and it was on our way. It was left at our front door (by our request) this afternoon.

Now that the saga is “over”, I’m in the process of finding exactly who at United Airlines to forward this to in writing as an official complaint. Another friend who also had a horrible time with United over the holidays this year (related to the snow situation in Denver) sent me this information:

See http://library.corporate-ir.net/library/83/836/83680/items/224251/2006InvestorDayPresentation.pdf

I particularly like the quote on page 5: “We will be recognized as the world’s leading airline for customers, employees, and investors”. As soon as all the other airlines go away.

When i find the info i use to mail this out, i’ll be sure to let him know too!

X-mas travel PAIN. was originally posted at John's Random Review.

It started out so well. A beautiful sunset on the ship canal bridge coming into Seattle. We were on our way to the Monday Night Football game between the Green Bay Packers and the Seattle Seahawks. Oh how decieving a pretty sunset can be! The game was awesome (even as a Packer fan!), but the ride home was….not so good. We were at the game for 4 hours, 5:30-9:30 pm. We were in the car for 3 hours and 36 minutes to get home. And its only 23 miles… For more pics and more story, follow the jump!

You’d think this was Lambeau! Look at this snow! On the way to the game while listening to the radio, Warren Moon (now a Seahawks radio announcer) said: “The Green Bay Packers travel well as a team; they even bring their own snow!”

This is just before the half, just before Hasselbeck was sacked and fumbled and the pack recovered for a touchdown.

The poor band! Marching in the snow! They stood out on the field for almost 10 minutes just waiting to perform. That had to be pretty cold just standing there…

We could almost see the TV halftime show. The setup there was annoying, they had to cover everything from the snow. It only blocked our view during plays that went into the endzone.

Ah, the poor cheerleaders. I’m surpised they were out at all, but they did change outfits at the half. they were wearing a lot less clothing during the first half

This was the view we had most of the game. The Tatupu fan guy was tall, and yet for some reason he felt the need to stand the entire time. Even the Hawk fans near us were calling the guy names. Eventually, they got an usher to tell he guy to sit down.

The traditional “take a picture of ourselves” picture. We do this all the time. The funniest thing about these pictures is that after people see us do it, they ask if they can take a picture for us. And ineveitably, they have never seen a camera in their entire life. “what button do i push?” uh, the button on every camera that takes the picture. And the picture they take of us is always worse than the one we took of ourselves.

A great view of downtown seattle from inside Qwest field. The stadium district has some great views from the stadiums.

During the 4th quarter, we had to get hot chocolate, as they stopped selling beer. Laura finished hers while waiting in line for a pretzel. The ‘hot’ chocolate wasn’t really hot. it was barely warm….

Ah, Brett Favre in the snow. Sadly, this was right near the end, where he was just throwing up anything, hoping for a gain. The first half was awesome, the 3rd quarter not too bad, that 4th quarter was just… well, classic Favre!

So the game was awesome. Even with a GB loss, it was a great game. Lots of action, a great Driver touchdown right in front of us, a good comeback, some BFavre drama, a 40 carry, 201 yard day for Alexander, and one of our teams wins! What more can you ask for? The game was over right around 9, so we figured we’d be home in time to watch the news and see the highlights on TV. Yeah, it had snowed, but it hadn’t snowed that much. We got back to the car right about 9:30, and were ready to go. We listened to traffic and heard some reports, but all of the big problems they were talking about were either going south on I5, or were going north on 405… We really should have realized that when they were saying that northbound 405 was closed near our house, that maybe the night would be long.

We ended up getting onto the express lanes, which were wide open from downtown going north. We got almost to northgate when we started hearing about horrible traffic at northgate, with some kind of accident or stalled cars or something. We saw one of those over the highway signs showing “Accident at Northgate” “2 left lanes blocked” “expect long delays”, but that sign was over the normal lanes, and the express lanes were still moving great. for about 1 more mile. As soon as we got close to Northgate, our 3 mile an hour trek began. All 5 lanes of traffic were stop (and wait, and wait) and go for 2 actual hours. We only went a few miles in that time. I5 was a skating rink. a horribly maintained skating rink at that. For a while, we were behind a sanding truck. But it didn’t do any good, because he wasn’t moving at all, so he couldn’t do anything either. At 11:30, laura had had enough driving, so we switched spots. At 11:45, we called a friend who lived nearby to see if we could stay the night at his house, because people calling in to the radio station were making it sound like traffic was going to be this way for hours, but we got no answer. We kept going north, slowly but surely. Between 145th and 175th, Laura counted 50 abandoned cars. And we’re not just talking “in the ditch” or “on the shoulder”. People were abandoning cars in the fast lane, in the slow lane, on exits, wherever they apparently felt like leaving them. Morons.

If you want to see how bad it was, here are some youtube clips (not by us) of people stuck in traffic:

We called AAA to find out where some hotels were nearby, but the number we had got some AAA office that was closed. Right around 175th, some people had called into KOMO to say that after 175th, it opened up and the roads were wet and slushy, not ice, so things would be a lot better. We really hoped so! Eventually we did reach that area, and it was just wet and slushy, and got up to about 20miles an hour on the highway. It took us about another hour to get to our exit. From 164th to Bothell Everett Highway, the roads were icy and snowy again, and most of that is downhill with stoplights. Every time a light ahead of us turned red i slowed down as best i could, but there was no way we’d be able to stop if we had to. Thankfully, all of the lights turned green again as we got there, so we just got to roll through them. Bothell Everett highway was worse than 164th. As we stopped for our left turn onto 180th, we slid on ice, but we stopped in time for the light. We were now on the final homestretch! 180th was packed snow and ice, with powder on top of that. Only one big hill to go down, and one big hill to go up, then it should be easy. the last mile was the worst! I was so nervous that after 3 and a half hours of driving i was going to ditch the car 1/4 mile from home! We got home fine though, we even got up the driveway and into the garage!

All in all, it took us 3 hours, 36 minutes to travel 23.6 miles. Nice.

Monday Night Football! (or Seattle+Snow+Traffic=NIGHTMARE) was originally posted at John's Random Review.

Mt. St. Helens! was originally posted at John's Random Review.