LS: To Recap

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Five days, six events, six planes, home.

Perfect weather, almost perfect travel, with a slight glitch today, but it all worked out.

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15 thoughts on “LS: To Recap”

  1. To me, six planes in five days sounds daunting. I love rolling down the highway – and making stops on a whim…and although I’ve only ever flown maybe a dozen times or so, the shine very quickly came off that.

    It might be my imagination, but air travel seems to really, truly wear me out; just bone-deep tiresome. Maybe the stale cabin air? Or the mixture of much bored waiting, punctuated by moments of restrained terror*? Or the soul-exhausting cattle-herding aspect of the experience: going down this chute and that jetway and this concourse and that gate….and nevermind the weather delays and ground-holds and sudden gate-changes, and scurrying to get to the new place where you are supposed to be, only to once again begin the bored waiting.

    Honestly – six planes in five days makes me truly believe that you are underpaid, even if genuinely and admirably committed to supporting and promoting the (wonderful!) book.

    *To me, the only really scarey part of a plane ride is the take-off roll. A few seconds after they throw the coal to the engines, and the plane begins rattling and thumping down the runway, there comes that point where you sense that the plane is now going crazy-fast….and if anything should go wrong, it’s still heavily laden with jet fuel, and it will be a bad day all around.

    Other people have told me that the landing sequence is the scariest part to them – but I figure I have at least a dice-roll of a chance if there’s a “series of unfortunate events” on landing.

    Still – in my (limited) experience, the whole plane seems to fall into a somewhat tense silence as the takeoff unfolds, and then breathes a collective sigh of relief as the ground drops away and the plane settles into a calm white noise.

    Anyway – I salute you; being an author may be better than digging ditches (as you often say) – but that air travel sounds absolutely oppressive, to me!

  3. I think that if you travel enough, you can find disenchanted employees at just about every level, and likely have poor experiences on every carrier. I used to travel at least half of the year for work, and, while it was mostly international and not domestic travel, which is slightly different than a lot of short hops around the US, is still not nearly as romantic as folks who do not travel often for work think that it is. I had a lot of repeat destinations, though, so at least I was able to have some degree of familiarity and build some pseudo-relationships w/various folks in shops and so on, but home never looked quite as good as it did when returning from a trip.

    //karen

  4. I think Ms Lippman’s and Karen’s remarks highlight that air-travellers with EXPERIENCE will navigate the obstacle courses better than a doe-eyed rookie (like me) ever will. One thing that struck my wife and I when we travelled to Houston (via Charlotte) a couple years ago was the truth of LL’s axiom that direct flights are always better than connecting flights. For us, the music stopped in Charlotte, and we were stuck. The powerlessness induced by placing your schedule’s fate into an airline’s hands, and then finding yourself stuck overnight in a city that isn’t IN your plans, is absolute.

    And to add insult to injury, we could see other affected passengers being treated very differently by the airline than we were. On reflection, we could understand that a flier who utilizes the same airline again and again (and is therefore in their computers) WILL be treated better (free room and/or supper, etc) than a couple of ‘one-off’s – but that didn’t make it any more palatable.

    Aside from all that, happy holiday weekend, y’all!

  5. Laura, what is the dirt on the SS library appearance? I looked on the LL website and didn’t see it; tour info doesn’t go out that far.

    Seeing you would certainly leaven the day that the taxman cometh…

    //kjl

  6. Trust me, Brian, even holders of [insert Bushism] multi-brasilian-mile FF cards can get hosed up, miss a connection, lose a bag, have someone’s smuggled red wine ooze all over their packed wedding clothes, and get tetchy stewards even in business class and above. It happens. Soylent Green is people.

    //kjl

  8. Since I never know where to write comments on Laura’s books, I’ll do it here.

    Am on page 210 of “Life Sentences,” and enjoying it; the writing is superb. Am fascinated by the chapters about Tisha, Donna and Fatima, including the one about “Song of the South,” and all of the nuances about that.

    Will keep reading this weekend. Am thinking of several directions this plot can go and can’t wait to see its unfolding, although I fear it will be very sad.

    Wish we had a place to comment on the books, but until then, will write on the blog at the most recent posting, unless there is another suggestion. It would be fun to have really discuss the books in depth although we do not want to be spoilers.

    Kathy D.

  10. People really can get used to anything. I fly a lot and generally have good luck. But I do have to keep learning the same lessons over and over:

    1) Review itineraries carefully. Corporate travel agents are good, but they’re not omniscient. In El Paso, my airport pick-up was scheduled for 2.5 hours before departure — and my hotel was five minutes from the airport. Luckily, I could resked that. I also was able to re-route myself from Boston to Hartford, when a friend told me Hartford was much closer to South Hadley, Mass., than Boston. But if I had reviewed my Charleston-Baltimore flights earlier, I would have lobbied to find a different plan.

    2) Always opt to fly direct when possible, no matter the savings with a multiple-leg ticket. Each leg is an opportunity for something to go wrong.

    3) Fly Southwest. I hate to sound like an ad, but Southwest, in my experience, is really motivated to get people where they’re going, on time. My household has had bad experiences with Continental, Delta, United and Northwest — flights canceled for no reason, indifference to missed connections. True, you’ll never get upgraded to first class, but you might get Business Select for an extra $15, as I did once. That included early boarding, a free drink and the “fast lane” at security.

    4) Travel with snacks, preferably healthy ones. A healthy breakfast is hard to find in an airport.

    5) Be nice to people. It’s very disarming.

    6) Laptop out, shoes off, liquids in regulation-size baggie, PLEASE. It’s really not that hard. Put your ID away, hold onto your boarding pass.

    7) Tip according to what I call the “rule of latte.” If you can afford to buy yourself a coffee drink on a daily basis, you can afford to sweeten every tip. Tip hotel maids EVERY DAY (that’s courtesy my friend Elaine Viets, who went undercover for her Dead-End Jobs series). And although a tip is usually built into the price of a hired car, I tip the drivers, too. I tip more when they don’t force me to talk to them. (Sometimes I like to talk. Sometimes I don’t. And I have found there are men who consider this intolerable, who will not only insist on talking, but insist that I participate, pausing to demand response from time to time. “What do you think of that? Huh? What do you think of that? Isn’t that something?”) Anticipate tips, have plenty of ones and fives ready, make change at the hotel front desk as needed.

    8) If you’re a gym rat, Google your hotels and check out what they offer in the on-site gym.

    9) Two-hour layover in Nashville? Pedicure! (This also works in several other airports.)

    10) Vino Volo should be in every airport in the world. (It’s a very nice wine bar and has exceptional bottles of wine for purchase, which is nice if you’re going to stay with someone.)

    11) Check the dates on magazines carefully. Sometimes, airport newsstands are selling extremely old magazines. I saw an Entertainment Weekly that was so beyond its sell-date that I had already purchased and read an edition that had readers’ letters about the cover.

    12) Don’t count on charging anything at an airport. Some Southwest boarding areas have these great laptop workstations, but unless you know for a fact that electrical outlets are plentiful, arrive with all essential items charged.

  11. Thanks for the traveling tips Laura, and glad you are home safely. I missed all your Baltimore signings due to scheduling conflicts. Are you planning on adding any more?

    Also have a question on hotel tipping. I’ve always left the hotel tip at the end of the stay, but it sure does make more sense to leave it while you’re still enjoying the benefits of the maids’ efforts. When we travel as a family we have “stuff” everywhere in the room, and on the counters. Any suggestion on where to leave a daily tip so its obvious it’s for the maid? Use the hotel envelopes and mark it for her?

    Do I see a travel guide in your future?

  12. Leave it next to the phone, with a note that says “Thank you!”

    It’s good to tip daily because you might not have the same maid every day.

    Meanwhile, I’m in Silver Spring, at a library, on April 15 and at an Annapolis event April 18, but that’s it.

  14. I’ve been known to leave the tip on the pillow with a Thank You note. But I think anywhere obvious is good.

    I’ve never flown Southwest, but I will advocate for Frontier Airlines, based in Denver. I’ve never had a bad experience with them. I totally agree with Laura that most of the major airlines are terrible. My last experience with United the flight atttendants were downright surly. Be nice to me, I’m paying your salary!

  15. Okay, finished “Life Sentences.” A good read; there went my Saturday, but gladly. Enjoyed the backstories of the women and the resolution wasn’t as sad as I feared.

    Cannot wait for the next standalone, though I have a few to catch up on as well as some books about Tess M.

    Kathy D.

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