Sunday...Phoenix-Bound

So this little venture to the Valley of the Sun had a mis-fire yesterday when the flight out of MLI never took off. Even before it was officially cancelled, I had re-booked myself for this Sunday departure. Once the delay yesterday reached two hours, there was no way I would make my Chicago connection, and I didn't want to get to Phoenix in the middle of the night. So I just called the UAL customer service line, finally got connected...probably 15 minutes on hold...and got an agent to book flights for Sunday.

This experience is exactly why 2 and I elected to drive to O'Hare for the BarBor2015 trip. And why we have elected to have our pal Roy fire up the King Air to get us to O'Hare for the January boys golf trip.

(Actually, my travel for much of the last couple of years has not been all that bad. I did get laid-over in Dallas in February by that ice storm, and 2 and I got stuck in Dallas because of storms after the Sonoma trip a couple years back. So maybe the 75-80% rule applies. If you've had four or five outings go without incident, you're pushing your luck on that next trip.)

I've made a command-decision to take a hack saw to the little blade on the waiter's key that we got at Eric's wine shop in Bordeaux to make it my travel-opener going forward. Since we got back from Europe, I have looked several places for an opener without a blade and failed to find anything. It would make sense to use the Eric key for my "go bag" given its acquisition history.

Rick Petino, basketball coach at Louisville, has been in the news over the last couple of weeks with the story about one of his assistant coaches over-seeing a girls-for-the-recruits operation. I'm pretty sure that this stuff has gone on at every big-time (and every wanna-be big-time) school since recruiting became part of the equation. The difference now of course is the Internet, iPhones and the willingness of the various participants to shop the details to TMZ, Deadspin, or other purveyors of the underside of pop culture.

It is interesting that a head coach in these situations is perfectly comfortable with the "my head is in the sand" defense. And his AD provides the echo defense of his "highly-principled"...and successful...face of the program. And they get away with it. How can Roy Williams purport to not know what goes on in the classroom at Carolina with his players? And the players and their families? This is just part of the process?

Of course, with the amount of denial, convenient mis-remembering, and obfuscation that goes on with the politicians...of all parties...why would there be a higher standard for the citizens? Can you say, Lamar?

NOW MONDAY AM.....

So I didn't get this posted last night. Really an odd day for me.

Alamo did the right thing and accepted my original reservation pricing for my rental. That was certainly the right thing to do. When I had tried to adjust my rental on-line Saturday evening after my flight was cancelled, the system took my daily rate from $25 to $75 per day. Hello!! And the phone system wouldn't go to a customer service rep.

If I had the flexibility, I would stay another day to make the trip feel like I was doing something besides going through airports. Unfortunately, my schedule for the rest of the week makes that choice a no-go deal.

Hope it is a good week for all of my many readers!

BCOT









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