California High Speed Rail

I've seen a lot of articles about high speed rail in California, and how the expected cost has exploded. Conservatives can't grasp why anyone would assume this could get any passengers.  It's slower than air travel (LA to SF), and will cost more.  Why would anyone go by rail?

Let's explore...

Q: Does Congress have power to regulate interstate commerce?
A: Well, yeah, that is in the Consitution, but...

Q: Okay, so then who has power to regulate intrastate commerce?
A: The states!  That's well established in the 10'th amendment.

Q: And do the states have the power to regulate commerce in the name of environmental protection?
A: I didn't think so, but California seems to have gotten away with that.

Q: And is air travel from Los Angeles to San Francisco intrastate commerce?
A: I don't think I like where this is going, but yes.

Q: So, you concede that the states could limit or ban such commerce in the public interest?
A: WTF!  You have got to be kidding me!

The Price of Airfare

I was theorizing about what it would cost to visit England to see my daughter after she moves there this fall. Not wanting to skew the results with the cost around holidays, I picked a date in mid-September as a comparison point.

Hey! That seems very affordable. $750 is doable. In fact, given that an eight hour flight in coach would nearly kill me, I wonder what first class costs.

A factor of 10 to 20 higher? Ummm, maybe not.

Vacation - Addendum

For any of my relatives that may ever consider visiting - do not be alarmed when you arrive at the security checkpoints in Dulles International. The swarm of Middle-Eastern and African people milling about the checkpoints, speaking in strange tongues and accents are actually TSA employees. They are there to protect you from bad people.

Uh-huh.

Vacation, Part 6 - Home Again

Friday morning we thought it might be prudent to check flight status, given the snow, before going out to DIA. All showed normal.

Sucker! We got to check-in 2 1/2 hours before flight time, and the flight was showing delayed an hour and a half. (Eventually they told us the captain, coming in from San Francisco for this Denver-DC-Munich flight, had called in sick.) So we got a chance for a leisurely breakfast, and chance to wander the shops, and to deal with security without time pressure.

The flight was good though. A Boeing 777, nine seats across, 9 channels of video at each seat, etc. We got in at a quarter after five, and were in our car with bags by about 6:30. Fought the traffic for 90 minutes, and had dinner in Fredericksburg. From there it's 105 miles home. Too bad it rained the whole way, as that slowed us down a bit.

We got home just before 11, schlepped all of the bags inside, brought in a huge pile from the mailbox, and went to bed. I was asleep in about two minutes.

This morning we reclaimed the dog children from the kennel (oh, were they happy to see us!), got settled in, and opened presents. Ah, it's good to be home!

The final funny bit we discovered just as we got home. In our haste to get moving a week before, apparently the door to the house never got locked. Neither did the back door. Not that where we live is small town or anything...

Vacation, Part 5 - Denver

The morning of the 26th we were off to Denver. This trip was uneventful, after an easy drive back to LAX. Except, if DIA is supposed to be such a wonderful airport, why did it take 45 minutes before any of the baggage arrived at the claim area? We visited with my parents in the afternoon, and had dinner with them. All seemed peaceful.

In the night the snow started to fall. By breakfast time it was getting ugly, and I'm out of practice driving in this. We spent the morning on a couple of short stops. Winnie had found a job to apply for just a day before we left home, and had spent spare moments filling out the application. The last step was to stop at Kinkos and mail in her transcripts.

The second stop was at Sheplers. I had been looking at Stetsons for years. Traditionally, Colorado School of Mines students got one when they got to be seniors. The tradition had kind of died out in the 70's, which I attribute in part to one weird student that no one wanted to be "like". None the less I kept looking at them, especially now that I'm so bald and in constant need of using a hat.

So, I got a salesperson's attention and asked if they had the Open Road hat I wanted. No, it's a very popular model, but they didn't carry them in the store. Just as a matter of interest, how much would it be if special ordered? $164. So, I'm hedging when Winnie says

Shut up and order the damn hat. You've been whining about this for 25 years, and I'm tired of hearing about it.

So, under orders, I did. It should arrive in a couple of weeks.

We spent the rest of the afternoon at my parents, with my sister's kids, and new great-niece. Isn't she cute?

Later, all of the family in town, 14 in all, went out to dinner, and had a great time. I went over to my sister's house, after dinner, and visited for a couple more hours. Then, a perilous trip back to the hotel in the snow, and get ready to travel.

Vacation, Part 4 - Christmas Day

Christmas Day we went over to Mark and Erin's again, had breakfast, and opened our respective gifts. Then we all jumped in Mark's car, and he took us out to Malibu. We got a chance to see crazy CA drivers. There was a wreck on the Santa Monica Freeway, and cars were moving a right angles to the lane markings to get over onto the parallel collector road. Yikes!

We had coffee and snacks (since almost nothing else was open), and walked on the beach for a bit. It was pretty nice, but very windy. Good thing there were no fires that day! Beautiful setting for houses, but it looked very perilous.

Back we went to their place, where a trans-Atlantic call to Mark's family was used so each side could open their presents together. Later Erin made us another yummy dinner, we drank a lot of wine, and eventually said goodnight and goodbye to them. (Yes, we ate a lot in Pasadena.)

Vacation, Part 3 - Christmas Eve

This is what comes of being married to someone who was first a geologist. Our entertainment for Christmas Eve was to visit the La Brea Tar Pits. This is Pit 91, from which they have removed over 250,000 fossils. The most common large fossil recovered has been dire wolves.

In the evening, we went over to Mark and Erin's and had a yummy duck dinner, but tried to get out at a reasonable hour, so they could get a little sleep.

Vacation, Part 2 - Pasadena

On Sunday we got to see a little of the town. We met Erin and Mark over at the Paseo, and did a little shopping. Erin and Winnie looked for clothes, and I found a bookstore to amuse myself. When we finished there we walked the few blocks down to old town Pasadena, and had lunch.

After lunch, we went back to their apartment for a while, and met Buster. He is a rowdy little dog, but not the hell hound Erin sometimes makes him out to be.

Later on we to the Huntington Botanic Gardens. We stayed there wandering the grounds until the guards chased us out near sunset.

Later we had dinner at Porto Alegre, which is a Brazilian steakhouse place. This meant "meat on a sword" as Erin stated it. It also meant eating until I nearly popped. The deal is they come to your table with whatever is just off the grill, slice you off pieces, and go on. That along with the huge salad/sides bar constitutes more dinner than bears thinking about. I should have taken a second statin before bed.

Vacation, Part 1 - Arriving in Pasadena

A week ago tonight we left on vacation. Our first stop was to Pasadena to see Erin and Mark.

In order to keep to non-stop flights, we left via Dulles in DC, which meant a 175 mile drive after dropping the dogs off at the kennel. We got there in plenty of time, and the flight went off without a hitch. Well, except the usual part about being squashed in coach.

What I don't understand came at the other end. We get to Hertz at about 8 pm, 3 days before Christmas, and there are four agents on duty at LAX. It took an hour to get a car and get our of there.

The drive up to Pasadena was surprisingly easy, and we got in touch with Erin right away, informing her that daddy was hungry. They met us at our hotel, and we walked over to the Paseo Colorado for dinner, which is only a block away from the Sheraton.

They started out trying to take us to the Yard House, which we rejected when they told us it had a 45 minute wait (around 10 pm). That was fine with me. It was a screamingly loud club, which isn't what I really wanted then. Actually, it's not what I ever want.

Instead, we wound up at Islands, which was good, and what I needed at that time of night. Pork tacos, and a shared Kona Pie.

MYOB

There is a private group out of Colorado that is working with Amtrak to revive luxury rail service. Travel now and get a bonus.

Amtrak is trying to gin up new business by offering $100 in free alcohol to customers on some overnight trains.

The national passenger rail company is making the unusual offer to promote a new high-end service being offered on a trial basis for certain sleeper car trips.

Members of Amtrak's guest rewards program—the railroad equivalent of frequent fliers—can get a $100 per person credit for alcohol between November and January.

But someone has to be a spoilsport.

Mothers Against Drunk Driving questioned whether $100 in free alcohol was too much.

"This sounds like a lot of credit toward possible overindulging," said MADD spokeswoman Misty Moyse.

Uh, I thought the point was, they aren't driving. In fact some of these trips take three days. That's still several drinks per day though. The only response I can think to make to that is - mind your own business B-.

American Vacations - 3

Another thing about American vacations - a lot of them are spent visiting family.

When I take vacation days and visit my parents, I'm traveling 1550 miles as the crow flies. (Try using this handy dandy distance calculator.) This is the same distance as from London to Istanbul. I'm betting most Europeans can drop in on their parents a little more conveniently than that.

Visiting my daughter in Minneapolis would be a little better (1039 miles, about the same as London - Riga, Latvia), but it will be much worse when she moves back to L.A. (2342 miles, about the same as London to Timbuktu, Mali).

So don't bother comparing American travel to a London to Paris jaunt (213 miles). I driven that far to go shopping.

American Vacations - 2

I wrote some time ago about how Americans aren't guaranteed a vacation. Who knew I was in the vanguard when it comes to simply not taking them?

Many Americans seem to eschew traditional vacations — a trend that has some experts worried that workers are not getting away from their jobs to relax and recharge, both physically and mentally.

The reasons vary, from having too few vacation days available to lacking money for travel. But in some cases, it seems, many people just aren't getting into the habit of getting away.

A recent study by Orbitz, the online travel company, found a drop in the number of people taking three-week or two-week vacations and an increase in those taking a week or less. One-third of respondents said they took five or fewer days of vacation in the past year.

Well, I do take all of my days, but usually this means a big block at Christmas, spent at home.

...it can be difficult for working couples to coordinate time off, and that some people worry that they'll fall hopelessly behind at work if they take even a few days off. There's also technology that can keep some people connected to their jobs 24 hours a day, 365 days a year — creating the sense they can never get away.

The first is true. The last is not. I often wonder if they'd even notice if I left for a month. Maybe they'd prefer it that way.

That's Got to Smart

Look at the picture. Click on the picture to see the larger version. Note where the end of the bull's left horn is at. Can you say "ouch?"

Darwin is apparently still on vacation.

American Vacations

One of the things that Euro-peons are always whining at Americans about is that we don't travel overseas. Goodness, most of you colonists, don't even have a passport.

Well, up until this year we didn't need one if we were staying inside the U.S., Canada, Mexico, and most of the Caribbean. This amounts to almost a fifth of the land area of the planet, ignoring Antarctica (for which I doubt you need a passport for anyway, since it's supposed to be "neutral" ground).

The other factor, as I see it, is that while foreigners get a lot of vacation, American bosses don't have to give you squat.

Workers in Finland had one of the best annual leave packages among developed countries, a study by the center found. Finnish workers received 30 days of paid vacation plus another nine paid holidays.

French workers were guaranteed 30 days of paid annual leave, but only one paid holiday. Most European workers were guaranteed at least 20 days of vacation, and some also received as many as 13 paid holidays.

Canadian workers were guaranteed 10 days of vacation plus another eight paid holidays, while Japanese laborers only were guaranteed 10 days of annual leave, the study found.

U.S. workers were guaranteed neither paid vacations nor paid holidays.

Despite the lack of government guarantees, 90 percent of U.S. employers offered vacation, the study found. Workers received an average of nine days of paid vacation and six paid holidays, a total of 15 days off per year.

Now, remember, in these foreign countries this is the minimum vacation they can give a new, first-time employee. It negotiates upwards from there.