Airlines - Reconfirm your flights and tickets

  (photo by Armando Lobos)

Over two years ago I wrote a post recommending that passengers reconfirm airline reservations.

Two things occurred recently that signaled me that it was time to write a follow-up.

First, a client of mine went through a tortuous process of making reservations to Europe on United, which involved United and its code-share partner, and soon to be (maybe) happily-ever-after-merger-partner, Continental.

Second, another travel agent blogger whom I follow, Janice Hough, wrote a post about complications that ensued for one of her clients on a round-trip ticket that involved two carriers.

I just reread my original post from December ’08 and I like it.  I don’t think I need to cover the same turf in detail though I recommend you read it if you haven't already.  The next two paragraphs summarize its main point.

Airline flight schedules can and do change after you’ve bought tickets.  Even though the airline or the travel agency (on-line or bricks-and-mortar) that you booked through is supposed to notify you of schedule changes, the system doesn’t function perfectly.  You may never get calls or emails about schedule changes, or you may accidentally ignore them.

Call the airline – each airline if your trip involves multiple carriers – anywhere from a few days to a week or two prior to departure to make sure the schedule you have is correct.  If something has changed and it’s a problem, it’s much easier to straighten out over the phone ahead of time than at the airport on the day of departure.

But the business of code-shares and two airlines on a ticket bring up another element to reconfirm in addition to the flights themselves: your electronic ticket.

In nearly all cases now you no longer have a paper ticket but rather an electronic ticket stored in the reservation.  For the most part, electronic ticketing is convenient for both passengers and the airlines, because it has eliminated the need to put physical tickets in the hands of passengers prior to travel.

However the system is not foolproof, and in the same way that schedule change notifications are not foolproof.  There are multiple systems that an electronic ticket must navigate, and when more than one airline computer system is involved there is greater potential for a problem.

Here’s why.

Just because airline A codeshares with airline B it doesn’t mean that the airlines use the same computer system.

For example, if you booked a trip on United from San Francisco to Munich using United flight 1577 to Newark and United flight 9254 to Munich in fact you’d be on a Continental flight to Newark and a Lufthansa flight to Munich.  Neither Continental nor Lufthansa use the Apollo system that United does.  And if you booked the trip through the online travel agency Travelocity, the Sabre system would have been the one used by Travelocity to create the reservation and issue the tickets.  That’s three different pairs of electronic hands stirring the pot.

Now just because there are many systems through which the electronic ticket has to jump, it doesn’t mean things won’t work out fine, but it does the mean the potential for a problem increases. 

When you have an itinerary that consists of code-share flights you need to call each airline to reconfirm the schedule, and also to confirm that the electronic ticket is safe and sound in the reservation.  If there is a problem with the schedule or the ticket, contact the airline or travel agency  through which you purchased the ticket originally in order to get it resolved.

Code-share flights and ticketing are a kind of derivative of the interline ticketing system that has existed probably as long as commercial aviation.  I suspect interline ticketing was simply copied from the railroads, which ruled the transportation roost when airlines began operating in the 1930s.

In brief, it simply means that in an itinerary consisting of different airlines, one carrier collects the money and issues the tickets, eventually paying the other carriers through a clearing house.  Usually the carrier issuing the tickets is the first airline in the itinerary, but in the case of international travel it normally would be the first “over the water” carrier.  (If a travel agent issues the tickets it is no different; the agent is an intermediary, but the money still is collected by the first airline in the itinerary.)  Many of the newer, so-called “low cost carriers” either have no interline ticketing agreements (Allegiant) or very few (JetBlue).  Southwest currently has none, but did have one with the now defunct ATA and may in due time have one with Volaris, a low-cost Mexican carrier with which it now collaborates to transport passengers between the U.S. and Mexico.

In practice, airlines now and in the past would try to keep the passenger flying entirely on its own route system but that’s not always possible, especially for international travel, so multi-airline itineraries are the solution.  However the problem that inspired Janice Hough to write her post involved a simple domestic round-trip from Seattle to Washington, D.C., where the outbound (and ticketing carrier) was Alaska Airlines, but the return was on United, and the electronic ticket issued through Alaska for travel on United was not linked correctly to the United flight reservation.

Frankly, this system was simpler and more reliable in the age of paper tickets, but that age is not coming back.  Until (and if) electronic ticketing of code-share and multi-airline itineraries becomes foolproof, your best protection is to reconfirm all of the flights (and tickets) by phone with each carrier well before you begin your trip, and then again while en route.

An ounce of prevention…

Car rental - Near the airport can beat at the airport

What is the price of convenience?

For many travelers it is priceless; they’ll pick the swiftest and least complicated way regardless of cost to get from point A to B.  Or more to the point of this post, from their arrival airport to their car rental.

For others it may depend on how great the price difference is, before they will consider picking up a car rental from an off-airport location that requires more effort to reach.

Lately I’ve been checking both airport and near-airport locations, either when a client asks me to or when I think it may produce significant savings with minimal disruption.

The price difference can range from nothing at all (or even more expensive from a non-airport location) to a modest difference to a huge difference.

Before giving some examples I’ll explain why the cost differences exist.

The reason is simple: it costs more for the car rental companies to do business at the airport because airports often impose taxes, user fees, or concession fees that the rental companies have to pass on to customers.

For many travelers – especially business travelers – the price difference is not enough to deter them from renting at the airport.  For business travelers time really is money, and the money that might be saved by renting off-airport isn’t worth it if it reduces the amount of work time available.

Leisure travelers have different agendas, and if time isn’t particularly precious then it may be worthwhile to compare the cost.  There is the potential to save money, which you could  better apply to the trip’s lodging and meals.

Here are examples, some of which are derived from my clients’ experiences.  Because I overwhelmingly book Hertz, I am using only Hertz examples but you will likely encounter similarities with other rental companies.  Off-airport locations cannot offer shuttle service to and from the airport, so customers must allow for the additional cost of a taxi.

San Francisco, compact car, 22-29 July, AAA discount:
Airport - $587.67
South San Francisco (about 3 miles from airport) - $212.30

Eugene, Ore., full size car, 10-17 August, AAA discount:
Airport - $336.69
Downtown Eugene (about 9 miles from airport) - $229.70 (see note below)

San Francisco, economy car, 12-13 July, AAA discount, one-way rental to Chico:
Airport - $183.05
South San Francisco (about 3 miles from airport) - $91.12

Chicago O’Hare, intermediate car, 3-10 August, AAA discount
Airport - $425.20
Des Plaines (about 3 miles from airport) - $251.04 (see note below)

Even though you pick up a car at an off-airport location, you may be able to return it to the airport at little or no additional cost.  In the Eugene example,  the price would be the same if booked with a return to the airport.  In the Chicago O’Hare example the price would only increase ten bucks to $261.12, almost certainly less than the cost of a taxi from Des Plaines to O’Hare.  The only way to know this is to try pricing it with the different options.  Obviously if you can get back to the airport using the rental car, it will save money (no need for a taxi ride back to the airport) and increase convenience.

Renting from an off-airport location will not always result in savings or in savings enough to justify some additional trouble and transportation cost to pick up the car.  I tested other cities and found no savings or actually higher prices for off-airport rentals.  Surprisingly in Las Vegas, a city where historically the price for an off-airport rental has been less expensive than an airport rental, I found the opposite to be true.  But nothing is constant in the travel industry which means that you need to do the research if you want to know for certain.  Because something is a particular way today means nothing tomorrow, a month from now, or a year from now.

In general I think you’ll find that when there is a savings it will more likely be for a rental of greater length – a week or longer.  Weekend rentals from airports can often be remarkably low even with the mandatory fees included.  Furthermore, if you’re traveling over a weekend, even a long weekend, you may not be interested in the extra time necessary to pick up and drop off a car at a remote location.

Interestingly, when researching rates a few months ago for a client booking a car in France I came across a similar situation but one that involved train stations.  I found a substantial savings was achieved for picking up a car from the Hertz location in downtown Aix-en-Provence compared with picking the car up at the Hertz facility at the TGV station a little outside of town.

As with airports in the U.S., the French railroad system imposes additional fees for doing business at the train station.  And as in the example for Eugene, Ore., the car picked up in the center of Aix-en-Provence could be returned to the TGV station for the same price.

To sum up: if you are surprised in a bad way by the cost of an airport car rental, consider investigating what the cost would be for renting from a nearby location.  You might be surprised, but in a good way.

Running - Reno-Tahoe Odyssey 2011

RTO '11 wristband (photo by and of Ramon Ferguson)

For anyone who has done what I call a Big Relay, a 12-person, 36-leg, run day-and-night until you finish kind of thing modeled on Hood to Coast in Oregon, then you know it’s not normal to have things go smoothly leading up to the event.

It reminds me of a scene early in one of my favorite movies, “The Big Chill”, where three guys are looking around up in a dark attic, and one jokingly says, “It’s quiet – too quiet” and then all of a sudden bats fly out of nowhere to scare the daylights out of them.

I felt like things were “too quiet” leading up to my team’s running the seventh annual Reno-Tahoe Odyssey (RTO) on Friday-Saturday, 3-4 June.  None of my 11 teammates had laid the groundwork for dropping out by complaining for months of nagging injuries.  I didn’t hear anything about a last minute scheduling conflict.  No family emergencies occurred at the eleventh hour.

Yes, it was too quiet.  You see, I’ve done enough of these relays now to expect a last minute crisis, that forces me and my co-captain to have to find a replacement runner.  Not this year.

And the smooth lead-up to the relay on the part of my team, called “DNR”, was exactly how the relay itself unfolded.

Sweet.

The first teams begin at 7 a.m.

In Big Relays, 12 people are split into two groups of 6, each of whom occupies a van or large SUV.  The first van runs six legs, hands off to the next van which runs its 6 legs while the first van rests, and then the second van hands the baton (in this relay a yellow wristband) back to the first van, until after three cycles like this (a total of 36 legs of different distances and challenge) the team complete the relay.

Here's a link to the 178-mile course overview that includes links to maps of the individual legs.

DNR for the second year was a mixed (i.e. coed) team, which means that at least 6 of the runners must be women.  Van 1 consisted of Paul, Jessica, Tiffany, Ramon, Sonya, and April.  Van 1 included Lisa, Chris, Jody, Roseann, John, and me.

Our finish time was 23 hours, 12 minutes, 13 seconds, good for a fifth place finish in our mixed division (90 teams), and sixteenth among all teams (204 teams finished).

Paul Smith, one of Chico’s very best runners and my co-captain gets a good share of the credit for our performance.  He was our runner in Leg 4, considered the toughest of all of the 36 legs for both its distance and elevation changes.  Leg 4 is the only leg that is individually timed, and Paul finished Leg 4 fourth overall, only 9 seconds behind the two guys that tied for second and third, and was the first “flatlander”.  (This event is run from between 5,000 to 7500 feet, which can leave those who live at or close to sea level gasping for breath.)  Paul also ran a fourth leg when one of his van-mates suffered a bout of stomach distress prior to running her third leg.

Van 1 before its 2 p.m. start:

April, Paul, Jessica, Ramon, Tiffany, Sonya

(photo by Lisa Duke)

The number of registered teams was the highest in the RTO’s history: 209.  (Last year 155 took part.)  But in spite of the one-third increase in teams, the relay was not in the least bit negatively impacted.

If anything, in the first half of the relay the perspective of those of us in Van 2 was actually of seeing fewer teams than in previous years.  It was around the midway point that Van 1 mostly, but Van 2 also, began passing large numbers of slower teams.

How the handicapping works.

Van 2 in Virginia City after our showers and

before our last set of legs.  Clockwise from

bottom, 1960s album cover style: Roseann,

John, Chris, Jody, Greg, Lisa

(photo by Roseann Keegan)

Teams are handicapped based on predicted finish times with slower teams starting early – as early as 7 a.m. – and faster teams starting as late as 4 p.m.  DNR began at 2 p.m.  As the relay progresses the faster teams overtake and pass the slower ones.

The finish times themselves are not handicapped; they are measured in real time but team starting times are staggered, in order to ensure that all teams finish in a window of approximately 4 hours.  The race director can and does halt teams midway, stop the clock for them, and then restart them, if they are running significantly faster than they predicted.  This is unavoidable, because if they arrive too early at leg-to-leg hand-off locations or at the finish line they will find them not yet staffed by volunteers.

Up until the relay started, the weather was certainly in question.  Northern California and the Sierras  have experienced a prolonged wet and cool spring with snow falling in the mountains up until a day before the race.  On the drive to Reno the day before, I saw lots of snow.  And when van 2 drove west from Reno toward Truckee to meet Van 1 for the first hand-off, the surrounding mountains were clearly getting some form of precipitation.  But good fortune prevailed, and except for a good deal of wind on Friday, and a few brief sprinkles or very light rain during van 2’s first set of legs, the good conditions held.

DNR at the finish:
left to right: Sonya, Jessica, Roseann, Jody, April, Greg, Tiffany, Lisa, Paul, John, Chris, Ramon

(photograph by April Hennessy's camera)

Race director Eric Lerude, his assistant Shelly Demaray, wife Stephanie, cousin Rick, and army of volunteers have created an event that Reno can be proud of.  Lots of local teams and plenty of visitors now have a grand tradition of running the RTO.  Eric had planned to cap the event at 200 teams, but now may have to reconsider the cap, or participants will need to be sure to register early in order to assure a place.  A happy dilemma for Eric, to be sure.  (The first running of the RTO in ’05 attracted 36 teams.)

Night scene - one of Van 1's hand-offs along Hwy. 89 on Tahoe's west shore

(photo by April Hennessy)

For the first time ever, Eric and Stephanie actually drove the course during the relay to see events on the ground.  In previous years, they moved from the start of the race at Reno’s Wingfield Park to their home (aka the RTO command post) and then moved again to Idylwild Park for the finish.

Paul hands off to Ramon, Leg 28 to 29

(photo by April Hennessy)

This time, Shelly went to the command post, while Eric and Stephanie drove the course to see what Eric’s creation really looked like.  I’ll bet it looked nice to see more than 200 teams out there!

My own experience of the relay was that I ran legs 8, 19, and 35.  Leg 8 I have run in each and every RTO.  I was a little faster this year than last, and passed one runner and saw no others.

Leg 19 was a first for me.  It’s one of the tougher in the race, starting in California close to the casinos in Stateline, heading back into Nevada, and then making an abrupt right turn after a mile to ascend the steep Kingsbury Grade – about a 1000’ elevation gain in 3 miles.  Let’s just say I was glad to see the hand-off point, but it went well enough and I passed 6 runners.

Sat., 4 June - about 5 a.m. Jack's Valley Volunteer Fire Station,
hand-off from Leg 23 to 24, between Genoa and Carson City.

I've run Leg 35 for the past two years, and ran it again this year.  It was one of a number of legs that underwent major course changes this year, becoming shorter (6.2 miles instead of 7.5) and somewhat more scenic in its second half.  I passed about ten runners, but it was still a challenge, and I would like to do better the next time.  I think I need to work on the pre-fueling more thoughtfully for Leg 35 next year.

Fueling after the relay was no challenge at all.  Those from DNR who stayed over in Reno went out on Saturday night to Silver Peak Brewing in downtown Reno and had a great time.  I enjoyed one of the best stouts I have had anywhere, anytime.

Time to wrap up this post.  Thanks to my team for doing such a good job and being so easy to organize.  Shall we make it a date again in 2012?

Here are a few more pictures of the event.

Paul hands off to Ramon, Leg 4 to 5

(photo by April Hennessy)

Ramon hands off to Jessica, Leg 5 to 6

(photo by Tiffany McBroom)

Jessica hands off to Lisa, Leg 6 to 7

John on the downhill half of Leg 32 comng

down Geiger Grade (photo by Lisa Duke)

Jody waiting to get tagged by Jessica in Virginia City,

Leg 30 to 31 (photo by Lisa Duke)

Van 1 is done, time to celebrate at the Bucket of Blood Saloon

in Virginia City! (photo by Tiffany McBroom's camera)

Van 1 - Tiffany, Jessica, and Ramon lounging

(photo by April Hennessy)

Van 2 - John, Chris, Lisa and Jody engage in important

deliberations (photo by Roseann Keegan)

At the top of Geiger Grade in the middle of Leg 32

(photo by Lisa Duke)

The open road early in the relay

(photo by April Hennessy)

Destinations - Bakersfield holiday at the Padre Hotel

You're thinking that this is going to a mean-spirited jab at a city that in the words of Rodney Dangerfield, "don't get no respect", but you would be wrong.

A couple of months ago one of my clients asked me to book him a night at the the Padre Hotel in Bakersfield.  Since I'd never heard of the Padre Hotel, I asked him for details.  My clients can be a great source of information about hotels I might never hear of or get to see.  He told me that it was an old hotel, totally renovated, with a modern vibe and a fine selection of ways to eat and drink.  Intrigued, I did further research on the hotel's website and decided I wanted to see for myself.

A long-planned early May trip to Fresno to visit friends lent itself well for an extension, so it was, "Bakersfield, here we come!".

First the nickel history of the hotel.

Opened in 1928 as the grand hotel and tallest building in downtown Bakersfield, the Padre changed hands in 1954 and was acquired by Milton "Spartacus" Miller.  Quite the colorful character, Miller became embroiled in a fight with the city over fire safety, and placed a phony missle on the hotel's roof allegedly aimed at city hall.  After 1966, the city mandated that rooms from the third floor and above could not be sold to guests though the bar remained open.  From reading snippets of history to write this post, the Padre Hotel bar was the center of alt-Bakersfield.

Miller died in 1999, but not before a deathbed marriage that led to the hotel's ownership being tied up in litigation until 2001.  A failed attempt to condo-ize the Padre led to its being acquired in 2008 by Eat.Drink.Sleep of San Diego.  Eat.Drink.Sleep poured money and effort into reviving the Padre to what it is now.

The hotel plays on - but does not mock -Bakersfield's reputation and reality of being kind of a Texas oilfield and cotton town dropped into California.  Room types range from the 40 Winks basic room, to the Maverick, all the way up to the Oil Baron Suite.  We were fortunate to get a Corner Pocket room on the top floor.  These are large rooms at the corners, with double windows that let in lots of light.  The bathroom was huge, and well-appointed with a rainwater shower and nice fixtures.

In addition to the rooms themselves, the hotel has five different ways you can leave money behind

Belvedere is the tony dinner restaurant.

Farmacy is a simple restaurant with made-to-order breakfasts and premade sandwiches.

Brimstone is a big ground floor bar + restaurant

Prospect is a swanky nightclub with drinks and appetizers

Prairie Fire is a second floor, rooftop bar that serves food from the same menu as Brimstone.

On Sunday evening we took advantage of a beautiful evening to enjoy a terrific blues/R&B band at Prairie Fire.  With a fine burger and a couple of Newcastles to wash it down, there was nothing not to enjoy.  And every table was taken when we left.  How many were locals and how many were hotel guests we didn't know, but it was a popular place.

The following morning we took our breakfast at Farmacy.  I think the Farmacy name is a pun on B'field's ag side, but they do push pain-killers in the form of spiked coffee so maybe that's it.  Whatever the point of the name, my breakfast was outstanding and the staff was really personable.  It's the simple format of order at the counter and your meals comes to you.

One thing was clear.  Farmacy is aimed not just at hotel guests but also locals who work in downtown because the prices were regular prices, not hotel prices.  And for a darn good meal.

This is a fine hotel that compares favorably with the Citizen Hotel in Sacramento, though in a city where you wouldn't expect to find it.

Am I suggesting that you make a special trip to Bakersfield to experience it?  Not really, unless you live in close proximity such as Fresno.  (If you travel on business to Bakersfield you definitely need to skip your loyalty program chain and experience the Padre.)

What I am suggesting however is making it a stopover on the way to or from somewhere else.

Many people make long drives between areas or cities such as the Bay Area, Sacramento, and elsewhere in northern California to southern California, Las Vegas, Arizona, and so on.  Bakersfield is a good place to break a long trip.  Even if you're taking I-5, it's only a short detour east from I-5 to Bakersfield.  And if you're on 99 the Padre Hotel is less than 2 miles from the freeway.

Oh, sure, you could stay at a forgettable chain hotel but you'd really be missing out on a chance to stay at a historic hotel restored to its former glory but with a modern pulse.  And then you'd be able to surprise your friends with the story of your own Bakersfield holiday.

Downtown Bakersfield

I can't fib and tell you that downtown Bakersfield is a dynamic hub.  Like so many American cities, it has a hollowed-out downtown from where most commerce fled long ago to the suburbs of Anywhere USA.

But it's not awful, and it didn't appear dangerous.  And where else could you find a former Woolworth's that retained the lunch counter as a restaurant while the rest of it - the basement, too - is an antique store.  (At first we thought we'd discovered the last operating Woolworth's, since from the outside it looks like nothing had changed.)

Keith with the luncheonette behind

Is it 2011 or 1961?

Westchester - neighborhood beautiful

More surprising than the former Woolworth's is a lovely neighborhood known as Westchester only a few short blocks west of the downtown.  When I write "lovely" I don't mean it in a condescending way as in "lovely for Bakersfield", but rather in the same way I would consider well-to-do cities such as Atherton, Piedmont, or the "Fabulous Forties" area of Sacramento.

Yes, it's surprising that it is in Bakersfield, but it would be surprising to find in any American city of this size a pretty area like Westchester so close to a less-than-vibrant downtown.  In most other cities, a neighborhood like this would long ago have been blighted.

Density by design

I love multi-unit structures of the first half of the twentieth century where it seemed as much effort went into designing buildings occupied by ordinary people as into those of the wealthy.

In the couple of blocks between downtown Bakersfield and the Westchester neighborhood are two outstanding and meticulously maintained examples.

One is a take on the New England cottage style and the other on Santa Barbara mission style.  Both are designed around a central courtyard feature.

Goodbye to my old friend Catdog

Anyone who knows me at all knows about Catdog, my beloved cat.  You pretty much couldn't escape hearing about him at some point.  The really privileged have received mail from me with a Catdog photostamp.

Even my blog featured him once in a starring role in one of my "Airline Fare School" series posts, in which he perfectly illustrated the fare concept of the open-jaw.

At 6:30 this morning Catdog was alive and well but soon to die an ugly death, killed by two dogs roaming our neighborhood.  Not the way he would have chosen to leave this world, I'm sure, and definitely not the way I wanted.

Catdog entered our lives toward the end of 1999.  As these things so often go with cats, he adopted us.  Guess he thought that my partner Keith and I needed a cat in our lives, and of course he was right.

That's how he got his name. Instead of slowly sizing me up, and then trepidatiously allowing limited contact at first, he bounded up to me on the back patio while I was reading, as if to say, "Go ahead and pet me.  I want you to". More dog-like than cat-like.

Added to his sometimes dog-like behavior, was the historic fact that my father in silly moments would sometimes refer to cats as catdogs, and there you have his name: Catdog. (We didn't hear about the half-cat, half-dog cartoon character named Catdog until years later.)

He moved from being surreptitously fed (by me), to being openly fed (by both of us), to living in the Catdog Condo (a cardboard box with a blanket on it on the backdoor step), to full-fledged citizenship with in and out house-privileges which he liberally exercised.

Since Catdog came to us as an adult cat, we don't really know how old he was but upon his first visit to a vet he was judged to be between 3 and 5.  We're pretty sure he was closer to the "3" end of the scale, so he was likely around 16 when he died.

Though never much of a hunter, Catdog was quite the fighter fearlessly taking on other cats who invaded his turf.  From long ago he had a slightly shredded left ear, the result of a battle where he came out the loser.  I have no idea of the number of times that we had to run outside to intervene because we heard the sound of an impending or ongoing cat fight.  Surprisingly, Catdog was already a neutered male by the time he arrived on our shores, yet he acted as if he still had "them". Time and older age did seem to have mellowed him over the past two years, because the catfight became a rare event.

Catdog was a fighter in another way.  Like a number of cats, he carried the FIV virus which is similar in cats to the way that HIV/AIDS works in humans.  As with HIV, the virus itself never goes away entirely but some cats, just like some humans, manage to live with it yet not be troubled by it.  Early in our life with Catdog, Dr. Elizabeth Colleran at Chico Hospital for Cats gave us a very simple regimen for his care (anti-oxidant, salmon oil, interferon) that sure seemed to work.

Except for two very bad bouts of ilness long ago (2001 and 2003) that had neurological symptoms, Catdog never again showed signs of FIV.  Other than the low days now and then that any mammal can have, it was pretty clear that Catdog had boxed the virus into a corner.

Just the way that people get on with each other, pets and humans who live together acquire rhythms of expected behavior.  It was no different with us.  Between us and Catdog, it was mostly about food.

Catdog could just as easily been named Catgoat because he was always badgering us for food.   About five years ago Catdog had reached 18 pounds, and his vet strongly recommended a diet.  We knew it was in his best interest and we also knew it would be difficult.

You have no idea.

But a year and half later with diet cat food and much impassioned meowing under the bridge, a new trim Catdog emerged at 13 pounds.  He kept the weight off, got to leave the weight-loss kibbels behind, even seemed slightly less food-obsessed as he got older.  He actually learned that you can leave kibbels in the bowl, and they'll still be there waiting for you when you want more.

Still the rituals of feeding him four times per day (one larger serving first thing in the morning and then around dinner time, plus small servings at mid-day and beddy-bye), and his morning milk after we got back from a run were the points on our shared Keith-Greg-Catdog clock that if not as punctual as a Swiss train were certainly followed in a precise order that both he and we were well accustomed to.

One of my favorite memories of Catdog took place maybe 6 years ago.  It was a warm summer day, and I was putting some clothes up on the backyard clothes line.  I always liked to tease Catdog and I had been doing something - probably touching his belly which he didn't much like - while I was simultaneously dealing with the clothes.  He grew tired of my being obnoxious and left the immediate area.  But no more than a minute or two later he zoomed in, gave my calf a friendly little chomp and ran off again.  Nice work, Catdog.  I deserved it.

Because this spring has been so cool and wet, the clothes line hasn't gone up yet but I reckon it will in the next few weeks.  When it does I'll probably be overcome with memories of my old friend.

You were a great cat, my best feline friend ever, and I'm going to miss you very much.

Rail - Positioning moves in space and time

In the cruise industry the term "positioning move" is used for sailings that relocate a ship to a seasonally more desirable region.

Here on the Pacific coast late spring brings ships moving northbound from California to the Pacific Northwest and Vancouver, BC, to work the popular summer Alaska cruise season.  The reverse occurs in late summer as the Alaska cruise season winds down.  You can usually get real bargains on these uncrowded sailings.

Well, it just came to my attention that a similar thing occurs in the private railcar tour market, and this positioning move occurs both in the realm of space and time.  Let me explain.

My last blog post was my ruminations about Amtrak's 40th anniversary less than a week ago.  For better or for worse, 1 May 1971 meant the end of what most railfans consider the golden age of rail passenger service: the postwar years when the railroads operated gleaming streamliner trains with top-shelf service.

While many of the passenger cars from this era were long ago scrapped, some survived and passed into the loving and well-heeled hands of private individuals who lavished attention and money to restore them to their original beauty.

Besides being used for the special excursion trains to which I've alerted readers before, Amtrak allows these cars to be coupled to the end of their regularly scheduled passenger trains.  Trains & Travel International, a tour operator that exclusively deals in rail travel, then sells space on them.  (Amtrak has nothing to do with these movements other than hauling the cars.  They do not sell space on the private cars, and furthermore regular Amtrak passengers do not have access to the private cars.)

Here's where this is a positioning move not only in space but in time.  You will occupy an accommodation (roomette, bedroom, drawing room) from the Golden Age, but you will also enjoy service that draws its inspiration from that era, too.  Ticket prices include both lavish meals and  a complimentary open bar.

The prices are not that different for summer travel from what you would pay on Amtrak for a sleeping accommodation but with all due respect to Amtrak, the service will be far superior.

Yes, it will be a trip from one place to another, but more than that it will be a trip back in time.  Adding to the treat, is that several of these cars are ex-Western Pacific California Zephyr dome cars.

For information about dates and prices see Trains & Travel International's website page for "Private Rail Car Positioning Moves for 2011".

Rail - Amtrak turns 40 on May 1st - 1971-2011

Opening day - first timetable, 1 May 1971

I was 15 and a freshman in high school when Amtrak was created.

I'm 55 now.

Most people my age or older know that Amtrak was created by the federal government to salvage some of the remaining passenger trains that had been operated by private railroad companies since the beginning of railroads in the 19th century.

By the 1960s, many intercity trains had already been discontinued, and those that remained were largely operated by railroads indifferent to the quality of service because they were generally money losers.  (For more about the lead-up to Amtrak including suggested reading see a recent blog post of mine about Amtrak's history, part of an on-going series.)

The solution that was reached was to create the quasi-government entity called the National Railroad Passenger Corporation (NRPC), which would relieve the railroads of the financial obligation of operating passenger trains.  (The NRPC is Amtrak's formal name, but it has always done business under Amtrak.)

Other than many famous and not so famous trains making their last runs on 30 April 1971, the 1 May 1971 launch of Amtrak brought little visible change right away.  Railroad employees continued to operate the trains, provide the service on board, and sell the tickets.  Over time that would change as ultimately all of the train & engine crews (the engineers and conductors), on-board service crews, and station and reservations personnel would become Amtrak employees.

11 June 1972

Perhaps most obvious all, the trains themselves looked no different because the passenger equipment acquired from the railroads (part of the price of joining Amtrak) wore the same company livery, and the locomotives were railroad-owned.

This, too, would change over the next few years.  Amtrak gradually had the cars repainted with its color scheme, but for a while the train consists were quite colorful (known as Amtrak's "rainbow era") as the equipment of different railroads was thrown together and operated nationwide.  Amtrak also would eventually order its own locomotives to replace those owned by the railroads.  You will still occasionally see a freight locomotive pulling a passenger train in the event of a shortage of available Amtrak locomotives.

Anyone who likes trains - and plenty who don't - have opinions about Amtrak's now 40 years in charge of running American passenger trains.  You'll have no trouble finding them online by googling "Amtrak 40 years".  (Here's a good account of Amtrak's origins and progress from Travel Weekly, one of the travel trade publications I follow.)

To say the last 40 years have been challenging for Amtrak, would be to do an injustice to the word "challenging".  Created with little thought to its long-term funding and survival, Amtrak has been through so many threats to its existence that if it were a cat it would have used up its nine lives decades ago.  But it has survived, sometimes in spite of its foes, and sometimes in spite of itself.


28 October 1973

Rather than go through a laundry list of what Amtrak has been successful and failed at, I'm going to concentrate on what I think its biggest accomplishment has been, and what I think its biggest failure has been.

My bona fides - besides loving passenger trains - is that I worked for Amtrak briefly as a union employee in Seattle in 1987, then spent 5 1/2 years (1990-1995) in sales and marketing training, and once more as a consultant in a large project (1998-2000).

In my opinion Amtrak has been at its most effective by creating a sales distribution system that never existed before, and relentlessly expanding its reach as culture, technology, and its limited resources have allowed.

Very early in its life Amtrak did something none of the original railroads had done: it put together a comprehensive national system for reserving and ticketing rail travel.  A single toll-free number (800 872-7245 - USA-RAIL) was established with regional reservations offices taking the calls.  (There are now two large reservations call centers: one near Philadelphia and the other near Riverside, Calif.)

Rear of 16 Jan 1972 timetable touting acceptance of credit cards

It wasn't that you couldn't book multiple railroads for a trip in the pre-Amtrak era; it was just difficult and time-consuming.  Once Amtrak became the sole operator of intercity passenger rail, it made the process much easier.

I don't know when it was, but Amtrak introduced ARTS, the first version of a computerized reservation system for reserving and ticketing rail travel.  (If any current or former Amtrak employees who worked with ARTS read this post, please comment back with the date.)

Replacing ARTS was ARROW (probably in the early 80s), which remains the system that Amtrak uses now, though with GUIs (graphical user interfaces) specific to the station and reservation environments developed in the late 90s to relieve employees from memorizing cryptic commands.

As part of its mission to increase sales by travel agents, Amtrak was the first railroad to join ARC (Airlines Reporting Corporation), the airline ticket clearinghouse used by airlines and travel agents, and to make it possible for travel agents to use their airline computerized reservations systems (CRS) to book and ticket Amtrak.  Early in its existence, Amtrak established a 10% travel agency commission on all ticket sales.

This has since been modified to 8% for long-distance trains only, which are used nearly exclusively by leisure travelers.  Short-haul corridors nationwide are now largely sold through Amtrak's website, and the fast high-frequency service in the Northeast heavily used by business travelers is mostly booked by large transaction-fee-based corporate travel agencies.

25 April 1982

I was working for a large travel agency in Los Angeles in 1983 when the first airline CRS was brought online for reserving and ticketing Amtrak.  That system was TWA's PARS system.  Soon after that the other three systems - Sabre, Apollo, and System One - joined the party.

With the advent of the world wide web, Amtrak launched an online presence that is now the source of over 50% of its bookings.  Amtrak.com is an attractive, easy to use portal in which to seek information, and to reserve space and pay for tickets.

To Amtrak's credit, unlike nearly all airlines except Southwest, it has not yet chosen to penalize customers who prefer to book over the phone or go to a ticket office by slapping a fee for transactions made with a live human.  For some years however, they have tried their best to steer callers to "Julie", an automated voice-response robot who can perform many routine transactions.  (Julie's OK in certain instances, but to my taste she takes far too long trying to determine what it is I want to do.  A halfway competent live reservations agent can usually perform the same task in a fraction of the time.)

23 February 1980

The last piece of the puzzle that Amtrak is engaged in now is the project to bring  electronic ticketing ("e-ticketing") to the system.  Amtrak hopes to test a system later this year and then roll it out systemwide over an 18 month period.  I hope they make their target, but this is a huge project and far more complex than it was for the airlines.  Unlike with airports where there is a single control point for boarding, trains are open to board through numerous open doors, so ticket validation will usually have to take place on the train by a conductor using a hand-held device.

In the meantime Amtrak has had for a number of years a system that functions similarly to e-ticketing for many journeys, which it calls "advance payment".  For passengers beginning their trip at a staffed station, tickets do not need to be issued in advance, and can be printed on the day of departure at the ticket counter or an automated Quik-Trak kiosk in many stations.  True e-ticketing will be a blessing when it arrives: it will save Amtrak the cost of processing paper tickets and be a real passenger convenience.

I've spent a lot of time describing how Amtrak over the past forty years has made remarkable strides in improving how passenger rail transportation is sold in this country.

Now here's the challenge that has eluded a solution for the past 40 years.

Simply put, Amtrak has never been able to deliver a nationwide product that is reliably first-rate.

24 April 1983

In this case I'm not writing about the speed of the trains or their on-time performance, over both of which Amtrak is not entirely its own master.  Most of its trains still operate over and are dispatched by freight railroads, and Amtrak's funding for investments has always been subject to the annual vagaries of the federal budget and the periodic mostly Republican anti-Amtrak hissy fits.  (If Reagan and Bush, Jr. couldn't kill Amtrak, then the current variant won't succeed either.)

No, this is the experience on the train itself, regardless of how fast it's going and whether it reaches its destination on time.

I rode trains before Amtrak, and have ridden many more since Amtrak's inception to the present day.  I've traveled in coach, in sleeping accommodations, and in premium daytime services including Acela Express.

I don't like writing this, but in 2011 no more than in 1971, there is simply no reasonable assurance that the service one can expect on an American passenger train (or at the station) will be something sure to bring you back for more.

1 August 1973

In part, this is probably due to the fact that Amtrak employees are often working in a sub-standard physical plant either on the train or in the station, which understandably makes doing one's job difficult.  But it's more than that.

Even when the environment is adequate, one too often can encounter employees that are indifferent, rude, or downright hostile.

My own, purely subjective seat of the pants guess is that about 20% of Amtrak's public-facing employees are exceptional.  Any company would be lucky to have such people persevering under often difficult conditions to make the on-board or station-level experience as good as it possibly can be for customers.  You'll find them on the trains, at the stations, and working behind the scenes.  Were it not for employees like this, Amtrak would never have survived.

Another 50% are pretty good.  You might not find them at the Ritz-Carlton but they deliver reasonable service on a day-to-day basis.

26 October 1986

But another 20% are fair to poor.  On a good day they might deliver the minimum you would expect - but no more than that, and not with a smile.  And finally another 10% should be shown the door immediately, before they lead any more passengers to vow "I'll never take Amtrak again".

When I was doing consulting work for Amtrak between 1998 and 2000 there was an ongoing program being rolled out called "Service Standards".  At the conclusion, Amtrak produced an advertising campaign with the slogan that went something like this: "10,000 employees went to school and 10,000 concierges graduated".  They backed this up with what they called a "Service Guarantee" in the event a passenger's experience was not commensurate with what was promised.

Southern Pacific, 2 Aug 1970

I and the Amtrak employees I worked with chuckled about the ad campaign, because we were skeptical (for good reason) that anything would change.  It didn't, and the Service Guarantee was quietly dropped.

Can I pinpoint a reason for this lack of consistency?  No.  Those who would point to unions (Amtrak is unionized except for management) should keep in mind that Southwest is thoroughly unionized and delivers a consistently top-notch product in the domestic skies.

Santa Fe, 14 Jan 1962

Amtrak's labor relations are not particularly good so that certainly is part of the problem.  Perhaps a little of the legacy of the awful service that some of the railroads gave in the late pre-Amtrak period has persisted.  But some railroads, the Santa Fe being the best example, continued to pull out all of the stops on service right up until the very end of the railroad era of passenger trains on 30 April 1971.

The only solution I could see for this (at least for the on-board experience) would be for Amtrak to subcontract the service to another company, probably a large hotel chain such as Hilton or Marriott.  This is not an original idea on my part, and in a very real sense would be a "back to the future" approach, since this is almost exactly what the Pullman Company did until the mid-1960s.  (Most railroad sleeping car service was actually operated by the Pullman Company, essentially a first-class hotel on wheels.)


Southern Pacific, 20 Feb 1949

The politics of such a change are daunting and I don't see it happening.  But even as Amtrak is enjoying the highest ridership in its history it still cannot reliably provide passengers with the kind of experience they should be able to expect.  I wish that were different, and I sure hope it changes, yet it's hard to imagine considering the history and the current structure.

So 40 years have passed since Amtrak's start on 1 May 1971.  Whatever anyone can say, it certainly has not been a dull ride, and I dare say it never will be.

Here's to Amtrak and all of the good employees that have done their best over 40 years to preserve, improve and expand passenger railroading.  Let's hope that in another 40 years - preferably far sooner - the United States has a passenger railroad that is faster, more extensive, and delivers an experience that leaves all riders wishing they never had to get off the train.


Related links
"Kids Ride Free" promotion to celebrate Amtrak's anniversary (1 May-9 June)
Official Amtrak 40th anniversary website
National Association of Railroad Passengers
National Train Day (7 May 2011)
Amtrak Service and Fares a current blog series of mine