When I rented a car at the Tulsa airport, I knew I was dealing with an officious company when I told the clerk my phone number and said she needed two. “I only use a mobile phone,” I lied. “We need two. It’s policy. In case you don’t return the car.” (“I could just give… Read more »
I traveled to rural Tennessee to cover a uniquely American shopping experience: a yard sale, annually held over the first weekend in early August, that spans some 675 miles of one highway. It’s called, not undeservedly, the World’s Longest Yard Sale.
We can feel comfortable that the Chinese are unlikely to covet this world record and swipe it from us, partly because they made most of the junk for sale at this one.
Last week, I caught Delta trying to charge me more for a flight found when I was signed into its system. The same flight was $79 cheaper when I wasn’t signed into its system. In its response to me, Delta doesn’t deny that it delivered two conflicting prices to me. But Delta claims that the difference… Read more »
Take a look at the screen grab below. To the left is an air ticket priced by a passenger who is signed in as a Delta Air Lines frequent flier. To the right is the same itinerary, except this one is quoted on a separate Web browser, without signing in. They were priced at the… Read more »
I think Thomas Jefferson’s gravestone is weird. First of all, the well-wishers throw a lot of pennies on it. You’d think more people would toss nickels on Thomas Jefferson’s grave. After all, Thomas’s head, which is on the face of the nickel, lies just feet below the stone, and the image of his slavemanse Monticello,… Read more »
Today I visited Rosewood, Florida, a town with a past so tangled that its historical marker requires two sides to tell it. That sign is pretty much all there is to tell the story. That’s because Rosewood was erased. It was torched by racists in 1923. The tale is as convoluted as it is painful,… Read more »
I interviewed Anthony Bourdain for *********. He was driving his car somewhere, so he put on his car speaker and I chatted with him as he owned the highway, like William Daniels and the Hoff, if the Hoff was a genius writer and not a clown. His response to my last question was so good, but… Read more »
Before I was a travel writer, I was a full-time traveler. I spent nearly two years out on the road, backpacking around the world. And for many months of that journey, I conducted with an unusual experiment. Every day at 3 o’clock on the dot, no matter where I was or what I was doing,… Read more »
The government doesn’t pay much attention to making sure we can get where we need to go. Subway lines are falling apart, buses infrequent, train systems decimated, and high-speed rail has been politicized into a fantasy. The ways in which we suffer extend far beyond mere inconvenience. In America, getting there is not considered a… Read more »
I have just received my response from the “Customer Relations” representative at Virgin Atlantic, who, like the “Social Relations” rep, continues to blame the irresponsible decisions that stranded 250 of us at JFK International Airport for 32 hours on the weather. Never mind that the core of my issues were why we were forced to… Read more »