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travel

(No) planes, (no) trains, and automobile

Our family (four of us) flew on Alaska Airlines to Colorado for the holidays; we left on the 20th, and were set to come back on the 27th. We watched the news of the mass cancellations on Southwest and others, but as we were set to fly back after the worst of the weather, we thought "everything should be fine."

Oh how wrong we were.

I awoke Tuesday morning to an email from Alaska Airlines, sent late Monday night, telling us that our Tuesday evening flight had been canceled.

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787 takeoffs and landings

This one's only for the aviation geeks, and it goes along with my writeup on the 787. I recorded the takeoffs and landings in both Calgary and London during my 787 trip; if you enjoy such things, here they are (in glorious 4K). Watch for the cameo by the retired Concorde, around the 6:15 mark.

I'm not sure when it will happen, but I'm definitely looking forward to my next flight on a 787!



From the passenger seat: Boeing’s 787 Dreamliner

The Many Tricks company is somewhat unique, as we're a two-person multi-national organization: I'm based in Portland, Oregon, and Peter Maurer, my business partner, lives in Germany. We've met in person a few times—a couple of times at WWDC in San Francisco, and once in Portland (just after we relaunched the company in 2010).

So this time, it was my turn to travel, and in April of 2016, I set out for Germany for a couple weeks. Being something of an aviation freak, though, I couldn't book just any flight to Germany: I wanted to fly on Boeing's newest jet, the 787.

I started with the Airport Spotting site's 787 routes page, which tries to list all 787 flights. I then searched for flights that would get me close to my destination, on my schedule, and meeting my budget.

With those key variables taken into account, and certain flights being sold out, there was literally only one choice that met my needs: An Air Canada flight out of Calgary to London. From there, I'd transfer to another airline for the trip to Basel, Switzerland. (Basel is the closest major airport to Freiburg, Germany, where Peter lives.)

Calgary might appear somewhat out of the way for flying from Portland to London, but it's really not—it's pretty close to being right on the great circle route between the two cities:

And as it's not possible to fly direct from Portland to Europe (at least, not on a 787!), I'd be flying somewhere else first anyway, so why not Calgary?

Things were complicated a bit by the difficulty of getting to Calgary—I had to fly through Seattle first (welcome to the hub-and-spoke system). So my travel day was going to be Portland > Seattle > Calgary > London > Basel > Freiburg. Total travel time from my door to Peter's door would be about 22 hours, which makes for a very long travel day.

On the upside, however, I had this amazing scenery during the flight from Seattle to Calgary…

But this post isn't about the journey—my first with Air Canada, and I have to say I was quite impressed with the service and amenties—it's about the 17 hours (round trip) that I've now spent in the 787…

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The (semi) hidden world of Dulles’ Z gates

I spent the last three-ish weeks on the east coast, visiting family along with various tourist sites. We flew in and out of Dulles International Airport, via a direct flight (oh wow, they still exist!) from/to Portland.

If you've never been through Dulles, it's an interesting airport—though a bit less interesting now than in the past.

In the past, you entered the main terminal, cleared security, and then boarded a bus (a two-headed elevating bus, similar to what's seen in the image at right, often with tails on top to help them be seen from the control tower) to one of the outlying buildings holding the actual gates.

Now most terminals are served by a train system, or via a walkway. But Concourse D is still accessed via the bus, and that's where we were set to fly out. It was just me and my kids for the flight home; my wife had returned a week earlier. We arrived at the main terminal about 90 minutes before departure. After clearing security, we were headed for the bus to Concourse D when I happened to check a departure sign…and discovered that our flight was delayed for 50 minutes. Ugh.

The Concourse D building at Dulles isn't one of the nicest places to wait, especially with kids (it can be noisy and hard to find space to relax). But I didn't really want to head back through security either. Standing there near the entrance to the shuttle busses, I spotted a sign for "Z gates," which I'd never heard of before. So we headed down that way, just to see if we could find somewhere quiet to pass the time before boarding the shuttle bus.

What we found was a wonderful, nearly deserted oasis of peace and quiet right in the heart of Dulles.

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Trip report: Touring the White House

Last winter, our family decided we'd head to Washington, DC for our summer vacation. With our kids being 11 and eight, we figured they'd be old enough to appreciate some of the history and sites in the area. One thing I remembered from my youth was a White House tour, and I thought it'd be fun to take our kids on the same tour.

Needless to say, things have changed quite a bit since I toured many decades ago. I don't recall the setup details from my youth (as my parents handled that), but I assume security was somewhat less stringent.

For those interested in possibly taking a tour themselves, here's how it worked for us…

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Trip report: Destin, Florida

Last week, we took the kids to a family reunion in Destin, Florida. For those who've never been (as I hadn't prior to last week), here are some observations from my experiences.

  • Highway 98, the main arterial road that runs up and down the peninsula, is seemingly always crowded. This is especially true on Saturday and Sunday. We sent some folks on a grocery run to a Sam's Club when we arrived on Saturday. It was 16 miles away, and it took them nearly an hour to get there. The rental office was five miles from the bridge where we crossed to the peninsula, and it took nearly 20 minutes to cover that distance.
  • The sand (at least on Crystal Beach, which is where we stayed) is simply astonishing. Pure white and very soft, with nary a hard shell to poke you in the foot.
  • The water temp near the surface was 80F+, and very pleasant. Waves are generally small, but large enough for the kids to enjoy some boogie boarding. We went scuba diving one day (though Destin isn't the greatest of dive destinations), doing two relatively short dives (as they were somewhat deep). One decent picture at right.
    The water temp was about 73F to 77F at 60 to 85 feet; we wore 3mm wet suits, which kept us warm enough for the two dives.

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