east village idiot

I’m on a boat plane!

Delta’s in-flight wi-fi is only $5.95 for a flight, and more reliable than my own wireless connection at home. I approve.

Gatlinburg, Tennessee is like Aspen, Colorado if it was run by rednecks.

So, Joe Biden is the Democrats’ nominee for Vice President. Somehow, he manages to take Amtrak to and from work in the Senate every day - a 2-hour trip from Wilmington, Delaware to Washington, DC. While I am a huge supporter of mass transit and our train system, I don’t know why he would subject himself to such a horribly mismanaged system.

It’s Friday morning and I want to take a train to Providence today. I have to be in Providence before 5pm for a family event. This seems like it shouldn’t be that hard, right? I mean, Amtrak runs between New York and Boston something like 10 times a day.

Except it is hard these days. Since nobody wants to drive or fly anywhere anymore, Amtrak has become extremely popular. Despite this increase in popularity, the government - and Amtrak itself, if it has any say in it - have not bothered to add any service on their only profitable route. As a result, nearly every train is sold out. The only train that’s not sold out this afternoon is this one:

$209 to take a train to Providence, Rhode Island! That’s highway robbery. To give you an idea of how outrageous it is to charge $209 for ground transportation to Providence, here’s a look at air transportation:

For $219 (plus taxes and fees), I can fly direct to Providence from JFK this afternoon. A last-minute flight for $20 more than a last-minute train. And it’s a 1 hour and 19 minute flight. Admittedly, I still have to get to JFK, which could take some time, but even with 40 minutes to get there and 45 minutes waiting for the plane, and factoring in that the airport in Providence is about 20 minutes closer to my parents’ house than the train station, I’m saving myself 35 minutes over the train. Is my time worth that much money? No, but I’m just trying to make a point.

Now, there were other, cheaper trains that weren’t sold out on Amtrak that left later in the day. Among them is one that leaves Penn Station at 2:30pm.

For $130, they want to put you in a “business class seat” (read: amenities far less than you’d even get in coach on a major airline) to Providence. This train will take you from New York-Penn Station to Providence Station in 3 hours and 53 minutes.

That’s funny, doesn’t it take less than 4 hours to get to Boston on the Chinatown bus? And isn’t Boston further from New York than Providence?

Yes and yes. Here… let’s let Google Maps tell the story.

So, even in traffic, driving would cost you 7 minutes over taking Amtrak. Except it isn’t fair to compare a train ride to a car ride with traffic BECAUSE THERE ISN’T ANY TRAFFIC ON TRAIN TRACKS! Well, there might be, but given that an Amtrak timetable wouldn’t take this into account - and the fact that Amtrak is notoriously late to begin with - certainly doesn’t help their case in this comparison.

I know this may shock you, but I think I have finally found another government agency that’s more horribly mismanaged than the MTA.

Q: A bus departs a street corner that is approximately six blocks from the entrance to the Lincoln Tunnel at 3:00pm on a Friday. At what time will the bus enter the Lincoln Tunnel? 

A: Roughly the time your bus was scheduled to arrive in Washington, DC.

Crankypants is back from his vacation to Colorado, where it was 95 degrees all weekend, but it was a “dry heat,” meaning that I just baked in the heat, rather than being steamed.

Actually, I was amused by how Coloradoans FREAKED OUT over the heat. Everyone called 95 “sweltering” or “oppressive” on the news, but when there’s 0% humidity, it feels like a warmish spring day in New York. Their heat’s got nothing on ours.

Anyway, I have so much to rant and rave about, and all of it is related to the two days I spent travelling back and forth. Travelling by plane is a frustrating experience for even the most laid-back people, so you can only imagine the rage that builds inside me while I stew in slow-moving line of incompetant TSA agents who do absolutely nothing to make flying safer, but rather just make you feel safer.

I could go on, but here’s my biggest pet peeve of flying that I can explain in the shortest amount of time: I hate it when an airline lies to me.

We’re not idiots, okay? Don’t take us to be idiots.

Last night, my flight was scheduled to leave at 5:50pm. I checked online a couple hours before the flight, and the departure time had been updated to 5:56pm. Of course, none of the information displayed in the airport reflected this change. It was still “on time,” according to them. But according to me, a plane is not on time if it’s late. Ever. They were lying to me.

At 5:20pm, after a beer in the airport bar, I headed over to my gate, assuming that my flight would be boarding in any minute. On my way, I checked the departures screen, and my flight was still listed as “on time.” At the gate, the screen behind the counter also listed the flight as “on time.”

Except for one problem. My flight was scheduled to leave in half an hour, and the plane wasn’t there. The arriving flight hadn’t even landed yet. But nobody - not the web site, not the airline employees at the gate, not the flight crew who was standing there waiting for the plane - bothered to tell the passengers that the plane was going to be late. Since the apron was hidden from view from most of the crowd, they couldn’t tell that they were lining up around the gate area to board a plane that was still in the air. Somehow, this plane was still shown as “on time.” They were lying to me again.

At 5:40pm, the gate agents made an announcement that the “updated departure time” was 6:15pm. The screens reflected this change soon after. Of course, the plane still wasn’t there yet, and if you travel by air regularly, you know that there’s not a chance in hell that a 737 on a major airline can be turned around in half an hour. It’s impossible to get everyone off, clean the plane, and get everyone on that quickly. So, by promising the flight would leave at a time that the airline could not possibly deliver, they were lying to me again.

At about 5:50pm - our originally scheduled departure time - the plane finally pulled into the gate. It unloaded, and we waited. And waited. And waited. No apologies were made, no updated announcements were given. And finally, at 6:10pm - five minutes before our updated departure time - they finally started to board the plane. When I boarded the plane at 6:17pm, the screen at the gate still said it was leaving at 6:15pm. Apparently, the airlines take us all for idiots. Unless stepping down the jetway magically sends us back in time, our plane wasn’t leaving at 6:15pm. And in reality, it didn’t actually back away from the gate until 6:30pm, we weren’t airbourne until about 6:50pm, and our plane arrived in Newark 56 minutes late.

Bottom line: I don’t like being lied to. Airlines are the root of all evil. These are not lessons, just conclusions, as this has already been proven as fact.

Seen at a bar on College Street in Burlington, Vermont

That Giants game reminded me of the Canadian Dollar: strong and good for four quarters.

A Canadian is walking down the street with a case of beer under his arm. His friend Doug stops him and asks, “Hey Bob! Whacha get the case of beer for?”
“I got it for ten dollars, eh.” answers Bob.
“Oh!” exclaims Doug, “Good trade.”

Roy Halladay, the ace for the Blue Jays, has 10 wins, but that’s only 10 wins in Canadian.

“Why won’t you take this Canadian quarter,” the customer at the bodega asks.
The cashier replies, “well, you’re making me take this all the way to the bank to cash it in for the same value!”

In Canada, we have two seasons: vacationing in Florida thanks to the favorable exchange rate, and July.

Canada: America’s Diamond-Studded Top Hat

I’m going to Canada tomorrow for the first time in three years, back when I could get $1.25 in Canadian currency for a buck. It just won’t be the same. Nor will these jokes.

I went to a Kansas City Royals game a couple weeks ago, and I had the pleasure of sitting directly behind their new All-You-Can-Eat Seats. For a few extra dollars tacked onto the price of your ticket, you get a wristband that entitles you to free hot dogs, nachos, popcorn, peanuts, and soda for the entire game.

Not surprisingly, you can probably guess what type of person patronizes the All-You-Can-Eat Seats.

Dear American Airlines,

I’m done with you. Absolutely done.

Despite my friends constantly badgering, you have been my airline of choice for a good part of the last decade. I defended you when people said they had bad experiences. When friends said that you were “old-fashioned” and “bloated,” I would say, “yes, but they still work. And they’ve gone out of their way to fix any bump in the road I’ve ever had.” 

I had every reason to defend you: it’s easy to get to JFK, your prices have been relatively reasonable, you haven’t screwed me over, and when I faced the prospect of getting stuck in O’Hare for a whole day, you gladly changed my reservation - on an award ticket!

But today, we are through. I will never fly your airline again after the announcement you made today.

YOU ARE CHARGING $15 TO CHECK A BAG. A BAG. ONE BAG.

Screw you. If other airlines jump on board this obscene policy, you are to blame. The government has made it illegal for me to carry liquids through security. The only way to get past this is to check a bag.

Do I want to bring a bottle of wine for being a houseguest? $15.

Am I having a bout of extremely dry skin and need to carry a bottle of lotion? $15.

Is my tube of toothpaste 1 ounce too large to get through security? $15.

You say that this will help you cover fuel costs. Heavy planes cost more to operate. In the end, it’s just a big fuck you to your passengers.

If I check a 20-pound bag of luggage and weigh 180 pounds, I pay $15. Yet the 300-pound fat guy wedging me into my seat took a massive backpack, so he pays nothing. He also spent five minutes trying to jam it into the overhead bin, holding up the entire plane by slowing down the boarding process. Oh, and before he got there, it took him ten minutes to shove his backpack through the x-ray machine at security, slowing up the entire airport.

And you want to charge me $15. Each way, by the way. Fuck you. We’re through.

Your Formerly Loyal Customer,
Chris

I’ve heard plenty of horror stories about riding the Chinatown buses. From smelly toilets to breakdowns to firey bus crashes to general unreliability, I was extremely skeptical and cautious in taking my very first trip this year.

The trip up to Boston on Saturday morning was a joy. I had an entire row of seats to myself. There were only 15 other people on the entire bus. I slept most of the way, and instead of a stop for smelly Chinese food (another turn-off for many of my friends who had ridden before), we stopped for smelly fast food at a Burger King in Connecticut. The trip to Boston took almost exactly four hours, including the 15-minute rest stop. That’s almost as fast as Amtrak’s Acela Express (3 hours, 40 minutes) for about a tenth of the cost. Sure, there’s always the risk of spontaneous combustion, but you pay for what you get.

On the way back, I realized that I had booked my return trip online at a time far later than I really wanted to leave Boston (goal: spend as little time in Boston as possible, recover from my buddy’s bachelor party on bus ride back). I thought about trying to change my ticket ahead of time, but there was no means of doing that, as far as I could tell. I decided I’d head to South Station, take a gamble at the ticket counter, and hope for the best.

The fine print on the ticket and the web site made me think that my efforts would be fruitless. The rules were pretty clear:

I walk up to the ticket counter, expecting to shovel out another $15 to get out of Boston when I wanted to.

“Hi,” I say, smiling. “I have a ticket for the 4pm bus, but I was wondering if I could use it on the 2pm.” I hand the boarding pass to the woman at the ticket counter, panicked. It’s 1:55. I think I’m really pushing my luck at this point.

The woman examines the sheet of paper for about two seconds. “Yes, yes,” she says. She takes a pen, crosses out the 4pm departure time on the pass, and scribbles “2 PM” on the sheet. She hands it back to me and points me to the gate, where I just make it onto the bus.

They may be fluent in Chinese at the Chinatown bus counter, but I guess their grasp of Legalese is a bit looser.