I’m always amazed when I travel how it’s possible to pack so much into one day.

Monday morning, as outlined below in some detail, I headed to the airport for the early morning flight to Boston. After the initial folly of the empty airport, the balance of the trip went surprisingly well: our plane landed at about 9:20 a.m. and I was on the highway in my rental car by 9:45 a.m. Total customs interaction: hand customs guy my (US) passport. He scans it in, and says “okay, thanks.” My luggage was waiting for me when I got to the carousel.

A trusty Subaru was waiting for me curbside at the Hertz location, and by 12:30 noon I was in the valet parking line at Mohegan Sun, the large casino in south-eastern Connecticut that is home to the new The Old Farmer’s Almanac General Store. There is no way to properly do justice to Mohegan Sun in words: it was simply larger than life.

By 2:30 p.m. I was back on the road, north on the I-395 toward Worchester, Mass, where I stopped in briefly at a Target store, just to get an update on their Michael Graves-designed line of products.

I ended up getting lost in downtown Boston around supper time: I tried in vain to find the Ted Williams tunnel, and finally gave up and parked the car and phoned brother Johnny, just landed at Logan Airport, and asked him to hoof it to the subway and meet me downtown.

After a brief dinner at Legal Sea Foods we headed north to New Hampshire in the Subaru, spending a frustrating 45 minutes in a mobious loop of intersections in and around Nashua, NH. Finally, about 11:00 p.m. we arrived in Keene, New Hampshire at our hotel and went right to sleep.

Two countries, two provinces, four states, 18 hours. Too much activity for one day.

4:45 a.m. - Previously arranged Coop Taxi arrives at the door. They have never missed an early call. Day starting well.
4:50 a.m. - Remember that it doesn’t take long to get to the Charlottetown Airport. Happy that I have heeded all of the advice from CNN to arrive at airport very early. Expecting huge lines, rigorous bag checks, chaos, etc.
4:51 a.m. - Enter airport. Find I am the only person in the airport. I don’t mean this is some exagerated ironic sense: I was the only one in the airport. No other passengers. No gate agents. No security people. Nobody. Have fears that I have woken up in Quiet Earth-like scenario.
4:53 a.m. - Another passenger arrives. Feel relieved. Then remember that the man in Quiet Earth found two other people left on earth.
4:54 a.m. - Security guy emerges. Says Air Canada people usually “show up around 5”. Another passenger arrives. Things are looking up.
5:03 a.m. - Now 8 people in line. Quiet Earth fears gone. Still no gate agent. Wondering whether CNN has it all wrong. Thinking I could have gotten 30 minutes more sleep.
5:05 a.m. - Guy who removes chocks from under plane wheels and uses glowing baton to guide plane out of parking space arrives.
5:06 a.m. - Luggage handler arrives. He looks like Matt Rainnie. Wonder if CBC pays Matt too little and he must work at airport to afford to feed family.
5:09 a.m. - No gate agent yet.
5:13 a.m. - Offer to check other passengers in myself. No humour in this found by other passengers.
5:14 a.m. - Gate agent arrives. Finally! Checks me in. Oops, boarding pass printer is broken. Brief delay. Move to another terminal. Get boarding pass.
5:15 a.m. - Try to use Aliant’s World Class Business Centre to get on Internet, but room is locked. Reminds me of other dealings with Aliant.
5:18 a.m. - Find Tourism PEI Internet kiosk is operational.
5:27 a.m. - Security call. Must run to plane. Mind still foggy. More later.

Order your Starbucks in advance, over the phone, 3-4 minutes before you arrive.

I make this entry only to demonstrate to the world that it is possible to completely reverse the timing of one’s day: a week ago I worked late one night, and ended up not getting to bed until 4:05 a.m. This morning I awoke at 4:05 a.m., in time to catch the 6:05 a.m. flight to Boston.

So far I have not had a nervous breakdown, but the day is early.

As you can see from the statistics page, Saturday was the busiest day ever for this site, with 1,182 page views. Hello new visitors, whoever you may be. Welcome.

Earlier today our trusty western chargé d’affaires Johnny overwrote a photo on the PEI Visitors Guide while doing some maintenance on the site. We didn’t have another copy of the photo easily available and although we could wait until Monday to grab one from the backup, that would leave a hole in the site.

Enter the The Internet Archive. Pop over the to their website, enter the URL of the missing photo, and blammo, there it is.

Neat.

One of the more interesting projects I’ve been involved with on the web is Island Music Radio. Streaming PEI artists, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.

The song goes:

I had never thought to ask you
How you happened to get such a name,
But along the coast there are places
Where you’ve earned yourself quite a fame.

You talked a line, Johnny,
Nothing was true, Johnny,
You tricked me good, Johnny.
From that first day.
I hate you so, Johnny,
How you stand and grin, Johnny
take that pipe out of your mouth, you dog.

And so, slowly, I learn to embrace the concept of Johnnyness. I’m not there yet, but the road is shortening.

Oh yes, I forgot how I started: Johnny’s website is back in action.

As I derive a substantial part of my income working with magazines and periodicals, I take more than a passing interest in the health of the magazine publishing world.

And so I was saddened to hear of the death of Talk magazine. Although I wasn’t a regular reader, I did enjoy the magazine from afar, especially in its wacky early days when it tried to emulate a European magazine in style and format. Talk will be missed.

As for what happens to good magazines when they die, witness the Saturday Night magazine website today:



Not a pretty site. Although certainly truthful: ceci n’est pas une site web.

It must be hard to be a travel agent these days, what with everyone thinking that you’re irrelevant now that it’s possible to book most everything, anywhere, on the Internet.

And I must admit, for about the last 5 years I’ve not used a travel agent for anything: I’ve probably booked $50,000 worth of air travel for myself and my extended family during this time, using the Air Canada website and Expedia websites to book, and a variety of other sites, like CheapTickets and Travelocity to comparison shop.

And I’ve done pretty well. For short trips — Toronto, Boston, New York — I can’t see any reason to do anything else, especially now that travel agents are starting to charge processing fees as their commissions get cut more and more by the airlines.

But this is not a story about not using a travel agent.

In the middle of February the wee family and I are going off the beaten track for real (at least the beaten track as defined by “usual destinations for parents of 15 month old children”) and heading to Thailand for about three weeks.

When we made the decision to travel, I sent off faxes to three travel agencies here in Charlottetown. The only agent to reply in suitable detail was George Stewart at Admiral. I got an almost instant acknowledgement of my fax by return email, and a choice of three itineraries within 12 hours. Over the next 2 weeks, George fiddled and twiddled with the itineraries in response to our whims, and today we wrote out the Big Cheque (it’s cheap in Thailand, getting there is another thing altogether!).

I found dealing with George a pleasure: he’s entirely email immersed, and responds quickly, usually within an hour or two. He didn’t bat an eye at any request we made of him.

If you go to Expedia and search for the lowest published fare from Halifax to Bangkok, they’ll tell you it’s $1917. Travelocity’s lowest published fare is $1902. Of course those are only published fares, and when you start looking at actual seats available on actual planes, you start getting quoted fares in the $3000 per person range.

George got us tickets on Air Canada and Japan Airlines for $1500 each ($1200 for wee Oliver).

So we dealt with a local business, saved money, and earned some peace of mind from dealing with someone who knows the territory. I’ll probably continue to book my own flights to Boston and Toronto, but for anyone else, George is my man.