Friends of Dave #343: travel baggage free
A few thoughts on the current state of travel...
Friends, I don’t know about you, but it feels like I have been traveling like it’s 1999 lately.
Now that COVID is squarely in the rear view mirror, seems like every other able bodied human is flocking back to airports and hitting the road again as well.
Here’s some observations (okay, some good rants too — it’s been a while) from my travels I thought I would share:
If you are beginning to travel again and at this point you DON’T have TSA PreCheck (Global Entry for international travel) or CLEAR, I have one question: have you seen a doctor lately? The experience is like the government invented a time machine and you are going through security in 1999 – belts on, shoes on, electronics and liquids in your bag. They even play music from the Backstreet Boys and Spice Girls to set the mood. If you are lucky you might just see some people brandishing Motorola Razr flip phones and Blackberrys in line. In most airports, going through TSA PreCheck means you are through security before your ride leaves the airport grounds. If you have Global Entry, when you return to the US they now literally just do a quick facial recognition scan and before you can say “Murica,” BOOM they let you back into the country. No questions, no hassles, no dirty looks. Stop reading this and get signed up today.
Now, that said, here’s the downside….Millennials traveling with small children ALSO have discovered TSA PreCheck. And you know what that means? OMG traveling with kids and all their stuff is SO HARD, you guys. How are parents actually supposed to bring a big ass stroller, your kid’s electronics, their play tents AND multiple big oversized roller suitcases that clearly won’t fit in the overhead bin but they should through that tiny little xray scanner? Someone really needs fix this, disrupt the TSA and democratize security. No joke, this week I saw two young, stressed out parents wearing “Yeah I’m Adulting” T-shirts fill up no less than 7 or 8 of those big trays they sometimes make you use to put bags through the scanner. While the Millennial Mom was struggling as she kept ramming her double wide mega stroller that engulfed her 3 month old baby through the narrow metal detector, the Millennial Dad was calling out for a spotter so he could powerlift a duffel bag the size of Rhode Island onto the scanner conveyor belt. When asked what was in the bag, he quickly replied (for real), “Oh, just a Baby Bjorn.” Of course their stuff had to be sent through the scanner multiple times, so the line behind them kept getting longer. But seriously they don’t understand how hard it is for us, you guys…
I’d pay up tomorrow for TSA PreCheck X. No one born after 1980 allowed….alright alright alright…..
You want to experience how modern travel should be? Go to Europe. No paper currency needed – and in many cases, no credit cards. Just a phone (Apple Pay or Google Pay) and a dream. Ride the subway (your phone is your ticket), try local food (now with 15% service fee built into the price, so no questions about tipping), acquire silly hats, magnets and T-shirts at a local outdoor market – all cashless. Scooters and bikes where and when you need them. Wifi on underground transportation. Take high speed rail from major city to major city. I know we sort of have all of this in the US, but it doesn’t feel the same. Much more seamless and integrated across the pond.
You know what I disliked the most about travel to Europe? All of the god damn Americans. I think half of Texas was deep in the heart of Paris (clap clap clap) in mid June. Totally can see why the rest of the world dislikes us. Most visitors from the States come across as rude, entitled (which may actually just be anxiety about being somewhere different in disguise), unwilling to even try to speak the local language or immerse ourselves in local culture. We went on a dinner cruise in Paris and met another American couple while we were waiting to board. My wife, fresh from purchasing some macaroons and a beret after visiting the Eiffel Tower earlier that day, greeted them with an enthusiastic “bon jour” and the husband responded, “Yeah, BON JORE and all that stuff.” I know tourists gonna do touristy things, but come on people. Do better.
Second most disliked thing: the world’s collective obsession with f*cking selfies combined with a growing narcissistic need to view ourselves as the “main character” all of the time. Since the advent of the Instamatic camera, tourists have taken pictures of themselves while visiting famous spots as a way to capture a moment. That is not a new thing. But now, everyone has a professional grade digital camera on them at all times that can broadcast photos and videos to large audiences of people instantly. And that comes with plenty of fake posing, the re-taking of pictures to carefully fit a curated aesthetic or narrative and a complete disregard for other people trying to enjoy the same sight at the same time. People will stand in front of a photo op, take multiple pictures, and then linger in the same spot, reviewing the quality of those pictures on their phones, while completely disregarding all of the other poor schlubs waiting to capture their own memories for their own timelines.
Here’s a tip: take your picture and then just move the f*ck out of the way.
Here’s another tip: stop pursuing the likes. Put the phone/camera away altogether and just take a minute to maybe enjoy what you see. If you go to the Louvre, don’t wait in line so you can take a picture of the Mona Lisa. Wait in line to actually LOOK at the Mona Lisa with your own eyes and allow yourself to absorb the fact that you are looking at perhaps human kind’s most famous work of art IN PERSON. The ROI of social capital is short term. The ROI of experiences is long term.
It’s amazing to think about how the advent of digital camera phones and the internet has impacted travel itself. One moment you can be innocently sitting on a plane, the next, a passenger flips out, it gets recorded, and they become a meme for telling everyone that some motherf*cker on the back of the plane is NOT real. Think about how often this must have happened traveling in years past (you know, back in the days when people didn’t think twice about smoking and drinking on planes) and it never got captured on video.
Think about how the internet on planes has impacted communication. It used to be that you would get on a plane and you would be disconnected with what was happening on the ground for the duration of the flight. Today? I was on a flight this week, wearing noise cancelling headphones while I watched a movie streaming on my laptop, when I received a text from my wife asking if my flight was being diverted. She was tracking the flight to know when to come pick me up at the airport and noticed it was heading to a different destination. I hadn’t heard any announcement on the plane, BECAUSE it was part of the noise I was cancelling on the plane. I was actually alerted about it from someone that was not present with me. No internet — I think I am landing at my final destination.
Impact from climate change that isn’t talked about much: the exposed fragility of the global travel infrastructure. Wildfire smoke, record heat and intense summer storms, perhaps more so than winter snowfall, are creating flight delays and cancellations that can randomly strand thousands of travelers across the globe on a more regular basis. Combine this with airline staff reductions and cost cutting post COVID, and a continued increase in travel is a recipe for disaster. Getting from one destination to another on time and expected isn’t as automatic as it once seemed — you almost now have to plan for delays or, worse yet, to have a contingency plan in place WHEN (not if) one of your flights get canceled. Otherwise, you may not be able to get a seat on another flight for days.
Ever wonder why a flight gets canceled after a long delay, even though the weather seems fine in both the originating city and the destination? It’s probably because of union regulations for flight attendants or pilots. There are strict rules for how long crews can work in a 24 hour period. So delays, for any reason on any flight throughout a given day, could potentially impact your ability to get to where you want to go. While the airlines and their employees may feel justified to fight about what is “fair,” the customer that pays the bills suffers.
Show me a person who reclines their seat on a less than 4 hour flight and I will show you someone who is an absolute pox on all of humanity.
As you can imagine I have so many more…to be shared at a later date….
XOXO
Dave
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