Monday

Let's make this a Travel day.

Some of my pet peeves with regard to land, air and sea transportation.

At the top of my list currently is the driver approaching a stop sign with the intention of turning right, and not making any significant effort to actually stop. I know that some town recently added a smaller rectangular sign beneath the stop sign that said something like, "Yes, this means that you are supposed to stop." I'm very conscious of this problem when running along Devils Glen with all the side streets that enter on to that arterial road. Cars will ultimately honor your right-of-way as the pedestrian, but I don't trust them until I see them stop.

There are two other specific intersections in town where that right-turning car is a problem: Jersey Ridge headed North at Kimberly, and Elmore headed South at Kimberly. In both cases, the right-turning driver is looking only at the traffic flow coming from his/her left, which is natural. But both intersections have other traffic to be wary of; the u-turning car at the Jersey Ridge intersection, and the left-turning car from across the intersection at Elmore. People in a rush, or on the phone, are too distracted to look for that other traffic.

On the train from the 'burbs down to The Loop last Thursday night, I had the delight of sitting next to a gal who should have been under house confinement for a cold/flu condition. In my current let's-not-shake-hands mentality, the germs in commuter trains make me cringe.

Torpedo shaped commuter airplanes were designed by engineers who never grew beyond 5'8". On my trip to Phoenix last month, the planes to and from Denver were both the "one seat on one side and two seats on the other side" of the aisle. I got the "one" seat both times, but I felt like I was holding my knees all the way.

Pricing of airline tickets, car rentals, and hotel rentals are always a treat. I think that we have all become conditioned to the vagaries of airline pricing. We have low expectations on the consistency of fares, and we assume that a "good" fare will only be there briefly, so we had better act rather than wait. Is there another industry where people just expect to be manipulated as a matter of course?

An interesting phenomena of the financing of any local hospitality industry is the variety of "charges" that get added to tickets and rental agreements. In many cases, municipalities see this as an opportunity to tax non-locals to help pay for infrastructure that will ultimately help the home community. Paying for streets, sewers, and utilities in a new commercial area costs millions of dollars. If the buildings placed on the property are hotels, casinos, and outlet malls, it's easier to sell the development to the local residents if the concept is financed by the transient population.

In theory, once the development is up and running, the local community can collect real estate taxes for their return on their efforts to bring the development to being. It doesn't always work out that way. And sometimes the communities grant tax concessions to the developers which further delays local receipt of direct monetary benefits. That's when the mayors and councilpersons start blustering about the ancillary benefits of more commercial activity being generally good for everyone. Particularly the developers. Who almost always live out of town.

I don't have too many peeves about water transportation. I like Uncle Phil's (Aunt Jan's?) boat at Tahoe. And the Log Ride at Adventureland is a great memory. Does anyone remember, "It's A Small World", at Disney World?

Finally, my trip to SB's this AM was marred by a full dumping of my Americano as I reached for another section of the paper. Aaauuuuurrrggghhh! I hate it when I do those things! What a klutz. It was not a good start for a Monday.

So I'm off to do my run. 10 days to the TT.

BCOT