2010 › May

10 annoying things you might not realize you’re doing on the airplane

by Annie Scott on

There is a pleasant contingent of people out there who honestly try to be nice as well as cordial to strangers. If that sounds like you, have a look through this list. You may be offending when you fly and not even realize it. If, on the other hand, you read this list and are totally faux-pas free, you’re probably doing all right. Let us know how you fare below — and if you do really poorly, why not take a look back at The 10 Commandments of Airplane Etiquette? It’s a good place to start.

10 annoying things you might not realize you’re doing on the airplane

1. Reclining your seat during a meal.

You are moving someone’s food. While they are trying to eat it. That’s mean.

2. Leaving your window shade open.
If you’re like me, and out like a light (fast asleep) as soon as the aircraft leaves the gate, be sure that if you’re in the window seat, you’ve pulled down your shade. People need that added darkness to see their screens and/or to sleep. If you’re out cold when the movie starts, and your window is still open and letting the daylight blaze in, you have failed in your window seat duties.3. Eating messily, especially if it’s your own food.

I know it’s not grade school, and you can bring your own snacks even if you didn’t bring enough to share, but you may be making a terrible faux pas anyway. If you’re not eating during the meal service, it’s very likely that you forgot napkins, and are making a mess either of your row or on your tray table. As anyone who’s ever flown in economy knows, those tray tables don’t always get cleaned (well) between every flight. The stickiness stays. Seriously, choose your airplane snacks wisely, and bring wet wipes for you and the tray table.

4. Putting trash in the seat pouch.
That little magazine pouch in front of you is not for trash. Even if your mother told you it was, it’s not. Hold your trash calmly or leave it on your table until a flight attendant comes by for garbage. When you use the pouch for garbage, it is the equivalent of making a mess and hiding it.

5. Attempting major grooming in the restroom.

Not only does it take a good long time to shave, pluck your eyebrows, brush your teeth or whatever you’re doing, but it inevitably makes a mess. That’s not your fault — the plane is moving — but making the decision to do it while nice people wait in line IS. Then, they get into the restroom, which you may or may not have made an effort to clean up after your activities. Please try to remember that though it’s true, someone else will eventually clean it, it’s not like a hotel room. People you don’t know have to use that same space.

6. Bare feet.
Come on, really? Nobody wants to see your nersty toes.

7. Standing in the aisle to rummage through luggage in the overhead during boarding.
I know it “only takes a couple seconds,” and you “just have to get your phone” or whatever, but it’s not okay. Everyone needs to get onto the plane. If you have to rummage through something, pull it into your row and do it out of the way.

8. Talking too much.
You’ve just got to assume that nobody cares. If that seems cold to you, you’re looking for warmth in the wrong place. Keep in mind that your seat mate is a captive audience, and forcing them to listen to you may be borderline criminal, depending on their disposition.

9. Audio imposing.
Do you ever wonder if everyone around you can hear your iPod via your earbuds? Then ask a friend, because you don’t want to be “that person.” Additionally, turn the sound off on whatever games, computers and other devices you’re using.

10. Wearing a scent.
Even if you think you smell awesome, the person next to you is not likely to appreciate your bubblegum-scented body lotion, sexy cologne or even Chanel No. 5. Take a good shower and leave it at that. If you don’t have time to shower, and you happen to be a stinky person, everyone will smell it regardless of any additional scents. Don’t use them.

Just Febreeze yourself. (kidding)

Walkie talkies work everywhere – Road trip tip

by Gadling Staff on

Walkie talkies use radio waves to communicate directly with each other, unlike cell phones, which rely on a cell phone tower as a go-between.

People on road trips often end up in rural areas where cell phones are useless. A couple of inexpensive walkie talkies can help your group stay in touch, as well as keep the kids entertained.

Bonus tip: Walkie talkies also work on cruise ships!

Five free and cheap alternatives to expensive hotel Wi-Fi

by Scott Carmichael on

Paid hotel Wi-Fi is one of my biggest pet peeves when I travel. I fully understood asking people to pay for Internet back in 1999, but in 2010, Internet is no longer considered an amenity – it is up there with a toilet and a television.

Unfortunately, plenty of hotels still find it perfectly acceptable to charge upwards of $10 for a day of access.

Short of finding somewhere better to stay, there isn’t all that much you can do – unless of course you read Gadling and follow our five tips.Borrow Wi-Fi from someone else

When you turn your laptop on, you’ll usually see the hotel Wi-Fi network, along with a bunch of other network names. These other networks are what you are after. There won’t be much chance of finding other networks if you are in a brandless motel in the middle of nowhere, but in most major cities, you are bound to find loads of them.

Increase your odds by staying on a high floor, and investing in a Wi-Fi boosting antenna like the Wi-Fire (reviewed here last year). Simply move the adapter to a window, and point outside.

One word of warning – never transmit personal data over a random connection you happened to pick up – install software that encrypts your traffic, or you may run the risk of others snooping on you.

Share one paid connection

Staying at a hotel with a bunch of colleagues or friends? How about purchasing one connection and sharing it with others? There is some technical trickery involved in this, but the basic procedure involves a special wireless router that can pick up one signal, and broadcast it to others.

Downsides involve getting caught, and having to share the speed of one connection with others – if one of you starts downloading a movie, everyone will suffer.

Tether your phone

Got a phone with an active data plan? Many of them can be “tethered”, which allows you to take your data connection, and share it with a laptop computer. In some cases, the process involves a one-time investment in tethering software (like PDANet), and on other phones you may need to do some hacking (like jailbreaking your iPhone).

Best place to start? Google “tether my phone”. One word of warning though – don’t overdo it! Operators don’t like tethering (unless you pay extra for it), and any massive data transfers may get some unwanted attention. Limit your surfing to we and email, and don’t do silly things like movie downloads.

Invest in a mobile broadband adapter

On the road a lot? If you regularly spend $20 on Internet access, you may want to invest in a mobile broadband adapter. These (usually) USB adapters plug into your laptop and offer access to a 3G or 4G network. These adapters often offer speeds on par with what the hotel can offer – but have the added advantage of working anywhere within the coverage area.

Be sure to pick a provider with good speeds/coverage, and remember that there may be places without coverage, or with so many people using the service that speeds grind to a halt. Expect to pay upwards of $40/month for the service.

Only need access one or two times a month? Consider a prepaid service like Verizon mobile broadband or Cricket (which can be turned on or off on a monthly basis).

Use a third party Wireless provider

Instead of paying for daily access to Wi-Fi, consider signing up for a third party Wi-Fi service like Boingo.

With Boingo, you pay a monthly fee ($9.95) for unlimited access to thousands of hotspots.

Take for example the Swissotel in Chicago – this property charges $10/day for Internet access, but Boingo subscribers can access it as much as they want, using their account – for under $10/month.

Best of all, Boingo works at airports, restaurants, cafes and thousands of other locations. When just one day of access can pay for the monthly subscription, you’ll understand why I consider this a great bargain.

Boingo subscriptions are available for unlimited use in the United States or as a global subscription for Wi-Fi locations worldwide. The Boingo service even makes the process of makes connecting easier thanks to a handy software client, available for Windows, Mac and several mobile devices.

An open letter to a traveler living a hundred years from now

by Aaron Hotfelder on

Dear traveler,

You may not realize it, but a lot has changed in the travel world since my fellow Gadling bloggers and I were roaming the globe back in 2010. If you’ll indulge me for just a moment, my dear traveler from the future, I’d like to share with you a look at how things used to be…

First of all, it won’t surprise you that air travel was much different way back in 2010. The airlines were starting to charge us extra for all sorts of things that used to be free – headphones, meals, checked luggage, carry-on luggage, using the bathroom – which inspired many an indignant blog post. (In the previous sentence, you’ll notice I referred to them as airlines, plural. This was before the Great Airline Merger of 2043 in which every single airline merged into UniAir.)

As for the planes themselves, they were not terribly comfortable – the seating was cramped and the air stale – but they were staffed by people called flight attendants who were usually a pretty helpful and polite bunch. (Okay, some of ’em were a bit surly, but they’re a lot better than the robot maids you have now! No personality!) Back in 2010, we sure complained a lot about air travel, but I think most of us, when we stopped and thought about it, were pretty amazed at the technology that allowed us to travel across the world in less than twelve hours. (Hey, don’t laugh! That was fast for us!)

Some of us preferred hitting the open road to flying the friendly skies. A hundred years ago, we drove cars that ran on gasoline, a liquid refined from oil (a substance you’ve only read about – sorry we didn’t leave you any!). Driving across the United States (which once included Texas!) was one of the greatest ways to see the massive scale and the endless variety of our great country.

When exploring an unknown country or city, many of us would carry books (written works containing several hundred pages bound together) with detailed maps and recommendations on the best hotels and restaurants to visit. Of course, I’ll bet there’s much more detailed and accessible information available for travelers in the year 2110, especially with the recent introduction of the Apple iBrain, but we liked traveling our way. Yes, believe it or not, we actually enjoyed the feeling of getting lost in a new place, of rolling the dice on an unknown restaurant, of using sign language to express ourselves to foreign shopkeepers and taxi drivers.

Which reminds me… If I can offer you one piece of advice for your own travels in 2110, it’s this: Don’t over-plan! I’ll bet you have easy access to reviews of every dive bar and chicken shack in Pyongyang, but our most memorable travel moments usually happened spontaneously. Yours probably will too.

As you can see, a lot has changed in the travel world in the past hundred years – not just how we travel but where we travel. Although space travel is common for you now, it was barely a hundred years ago that even the world’s most beloved ex-boy-band member couldn’t scrape together the funds to make it up to the International Space Station.

But despite all the differences, we have much in common too. As travelers, we share the need to explore, to experience the world’s complexity and diversity and vastness. We feel an undying need to learn the world’s languages, meet its people, sample its cuisine, and hear its music. Though separated by time, we are, essentially, the same. We are travelers.

Best wishes from the distant past,

Aaron

p.s. Have you been promised flying cars your entire lives? So were we. Don’t hold your breath.

Jon Bowermaster: Dispatches from St.John – Day 1

by Jon Bowermaster on

I’ve been lucky over the years to plan my work/travel calendar in order to miss the worst of New York’s winters, specifically the entire month of February. This year, early that month, I panicked, realizing that I had no plan … that I was at home in the Catskills, locked down under damp, gray, twenty degree skies, day after day. So I did the only rationale thing possible for someone with deep connections in the travel world: I contacted friends who manage a resort in the Caribbean and asked if they had any room available. Which led in short order to the U.S. Virgin island of St. John, where I’d been once before. As close a hop as the Caribbean is from New York, my knowledge of the place is surprisingly thin so I went back to what I knew.

Days after daydreaming of islands, I was ensconced in a tented camp at Maho Bay Camps, standing on my small deck overlooking Little Maho Bay on a bright and sunny morning, staring into the trees that surround fill every morning with sizable iguanas, napping and munching.

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St. John is just twenty square miles around, smaller than the Dallas Fort Worth airport or the island of Manhattan. Originally home to Arawak, Carib and Taino Indians today the volcanic knob is home to 4,500 who share 39 beaches and scores of trails carved through jungle forests, mangrove swamps and scrubby, cactus-dotted hills with a million tourists each year. Two-thirds of the island is officially national park thanks to President Dwight D. Eisenhower’s signature on Public Law 925, establishing it on August 2, 1956.

(Which had nothing to do with the naming of the trio of islands that comprise the USVI – St. Thomas, St. Croix and St. John. Why Virgin Islands, anyway? One theory has them named in 1493 by Christopher Columbus, inspired by the unspoiled-ness of the place, after the legend of St. Ursula, the 14th century British princess and Christian who along with 11,000 virgins suffered martyrdom at the hands of the Huns. Others theorize they were named by Sir Francis Drake, who sailed through in 1595, and dubbed them for Queen Elizabeth, known as the Virgin Queen.)

Prior to the U.S. buying the three islands from Denmark in 1917 (for a mere $24 million), Europeans had been here for a couple centuries (what happened to the Taino is another mystery; they had lived here for nearly 1,000 years but when Columbus sailed by he reported no human population). In the 1700s the Dutch and Danish built big sugar cane plantations on the islands, using Danish prisoners to do the work. When they suffered from disease and conditions and died, the landowners began the import of slaves from Africa. By 1733 there were more than 1,000 slaves working more than 100 plantations working on St. John alone, a scenario that continued despite a couple revolts until slavery was discontinued in 1848.

The American’s initial idea was to use them for a military base. But in the 1930s St. John was already being considered in some circles as a future national park. World wars slowed the official process. By 1950 the human population had fallen to less than 1,000 and 85 percent of the land had reverted to bush and second growth tropical forest when Laurence Rockefeller bought half of St. John and quickly deeded it to the park system. Today the USVI National Park owns 52 percent of the island, including 7,200 acres above ground and another 5,600 acres of underwater marine sanctuary. Thanks to its parkland status St. John is without question the wildest of all Caribbean islands, its natural life closest to what it was like 600 years ago when Columbus first sailed past.