Video Captures A Day’s Worth Of Airplane Arrivals At San Diego International

by Grant Martin on

Remember that New York Magazine cover by Ryu Ho-Yeol showing the departure of a score of aircraft from a German runway? It’s actually a composite image stitching all of the aircraft together, and we’ve now the same thing in video format.

Over the Black Friday weekend, filmmaker Cy Kuckenbaker captured every single aircraft landing on one runway at San Diego International airport and merged them into one composite piece of film. It’s an impressive task when you consider the moving background and the number of clips involved. Take a look at the impressive shot above.

Need More Legroom? Buy Some, Says Airline

by Chris Owen on

Legroom in coach continues to be a big issue with air travelers who would love to stretch out like those lucky people in first class. Side-to-side room is also of interest as those flying on airlines without assigned seating hope no one sits next to them. Now, one airline has a way to make it all better.

“Main Cabin Extra makes travel more comfortable by providing you with 4 to 6 inches of additional legroom and Group 1 boarding,” said an email I received from American Airlines encouraging me to pay a bit more for coach seats. That’s an extra fee they don’t have to talk me into either. On American Airlines 767-300, 757 and 777-300ER aircraft I have paid as little as $9 for the pleasure.

Added on up until the airport check-in cut-off time, prices range between $8 and $118 per flight and can be purchased when checking in for a flight through airport self-service machines, AA Reservations, and through select travel agencies.

Different airlines call it by a different name but it all adds up the same: more space.
Ask me to pay $20 for checking a bag (or up to $150 for an overweight bag), $50-$150 per ticket to make a change in plans or any one of a score of other fees and I simply won’t do it. Tell me I can stretch out for a few dollars and I am all for it.

“Airlines aren’t chasing volume anymore, they’re chasing the bottom line,” explains Mike Boyd, chairman of Boyd Group International, an Aviation consulting firm in Evergreen, Colorado, in a Fox News report.

Indeed, holiday airfare shoppers already know that the number of flights is down as airlines choose to fly full planes that generate more profit. Not all that long ago, three classes of seating were available and clearly defined. At the top was first class, followed by business class, then economy coach seating. Today, premium economy is coming more into focus as one of the best travel values available.

“Part of this is this premium economy thing. Business class has become the battleground,” added Boyd. “That went up and up in terms of perks but has become too expensive, so now we’ve gone back to introducing another class – we’ve gone full circle. And internationally, premium economy is what business class was 20 years ago.”

Personally, it surprises me that more travelers don’t choose this inexpensive travel option. There are a limited number of exit row or expanded economy seats available but I almost always find one for a small fee when checking in for a flight.

Another steal, perhaps the gold ring of travel values, is same-day upgrades to first class on the day of departure. Domestic flights are commonly $50 more; international flight upgrades to first class (complete with bragging rights that define one as a savvy air buyer) can be a couple hundred.


[Photo credit- Flickr user Fly For Fun]

Travel Planning Made Easier With 3 Tools We May Already Have

by Chris Owen on
Travel planning commonly starts with a destination. It may be a required business trip to visit a client. Our periodic vacation time might be coming up and we want to explore options that will fit our budget. We might just be daydreaming of a bucket-list destination and want to keep track of what it costs to get there. A variety of smartphone apps are available to help. Those with a stake in any given destination will want us to come visit their place of interest. But at the end of the day, the numbers and information we gather can be difficult to manage. Some tools we might already have available can help.

Spreadsheets are great things for compiling the data we accumulate when researching travel. Take an airline ticket for example. We may start with a price comparison site like Kayak, providing variables like the “From” and “To” destination points, the dates to “depart” and “return” and others.

Very quickly those few initial choice can turn into an unruly mass of choices that may be otherwise difficult to manage as Kayak invites us to check Orbitz, Priceline, Hotwire and others. A spreadsheet via whatever program we may be familiar with can make order of that chaos.

Friends who have been there and done that can beat just about any visitor-generated website reviews. If uncle Bob, who we trust personally and know to give good advice, says destination x is best done a certain way, we take that to the bank and book it.
Uncle Bob may also have contacts at our destination and know the rules and regulations about getting there. On international travel, it’s always a good idea to double-check, but knowing that we don’t need any visas (or that we do and need to apply for them in a timely manner) when planning a cruise in the Mediterranean, for example, is good information to have up front.

Travel sources that have proven themselves to us can gain nearly as much trust too. By consistently following an expert on a certain topic, be that anything from adventure to business or cruise travel, we get to “know” and trust their words of wisdom. Those sources are putting their reputation on the line whenever they make a recommendation and we do well paying attention.

If I were going to Hawaii, for example, my first stop would be Gadling’s Maui-based freelance writer Kyle Ellison who lives there and knows the ins and outs of the destination.

Just considering these three tools can help make sense of travel options, giving us a baseline of reliable information that can serve us well. When it comes to planning hotels, airlines, car rentals and other elements of a trip, having our personal sources of information and our “go to” way of keeping track for all things related can help us get the most from our travel. Nothing beats having a good system in place up front.

The point is to use sources you know and trust. For example, PC users might use One Note, Bing Local Scout, Windows Phone and SkyDrive as we see in this video:




[Photo credit- Flickr user Dr Aek Muldoon]

Vagabond Tales: In Search Of Placerville’s Apples And Outlaws

by Kyle Ellison on

When it comes to travel there are really only two forces that drive us to the destinations we visit.

Either we hear about them from somewhere else, or we stumble upon those we know nothing about.

In the case of the Nicaraguan rodeo, that was a stumble. For nearly anywhere else, however, either we have read about it in a book, learned about in school, watched a documentary about it on television, see it featured in a magazine, or heard from a friend that this place is amazing and you should go visit if you ever get a chance.

In the case of Placerville, California, however, I learned of it through somewhat of a unique channel … eavesdropping.

While working as crew on a sailboat in Hawaii, I once overheard the conversation of a visiting couple about their recent day spent in a place called Placerville.

“I don’t know about that place,” the rotund, slightly graying woman mentioned to her neighbor on the catamaran. “There was something eerie about it. It’s just so far removed from everything, and if I were a mass murderer on the run from the law that’s definitely where I would go. Placerville.”

For reasons unbeknownst to me, this conversation – which I wasn’t even a part of – stuck with me for the better part of a decade. I would see the name “Placerville” on a map and would immediately picture outlaws. Someone would mention the name Placerville and I would feel compelled to ask if they had seen any mass murderers.

Given this strange fascination, I was recently taken aback when my wife asked me if I wanted to go wine tasting and apple picking for the day.

“Sure”, I agreed. “Where are we going?”

“Placerville.”

%Gallery-171913%Now don’t get me wrong, the wine tasting in Placerville is a great reason to visit, but for some reason I was expecting to hang out in a town full of whiskey and gold as opposed to wine and apples. Something about the image of train robbers and prospectors sitting around a campfire sharing thinly sliced Fuji and decanting their zinfandel just doesn’t seem quite right.

Nevertheless, after driving an hour east from Sacramento into the brisk, autumn air of the Sierra Nevada foothills, something caught my eye that suggested a bit of lawlessness still permeated the town.

Right there on Main Street – an historic thoroughfare, which does indeed look like a Wild West throwback – was an effigy of some poor chap hanging from a noose for all the town to see. As I would come to find out, when gold was discovered in nearby Coloma in 1848, the area around Placerville would become ground zero for the California Gold Rush, and everyone from entrepreneurs to ne’er do wells set out West in the hope of striking it rich. For a short period of time, Placerville would actually become the third largest city in all of California.

None of which, however, explains why there is a dead man hanging from a noose smack in the middle of downtown.

As history has indicated, the West in the mid 1800s was somewhat of a lawless arena. Saloons and brothels were built upon the nugget-filled Earth and rough and tumble mountain-folk engaged in Darwinian survival. Despite the degree of lawlessness, however, occasionally criminals were still brought to justice.

And as it just so happens, the place where outlaws would meet their maker was right here in these foothills in an outpost known as Hangtown, their criminal corpses swinging from a tree, which once stood in the same place I find myself standing right now.

Turns out, from 1849-1854 the town of Placerville was officially known as “Hangtown,” due in large part to the copious amount of public hangings, which would take place right along Main Street. One Placerville legend speaks of some thieves who were tried in an impromptu, 30-minute trial and were hung within the hour.

Standing there across from the historic Cary House – a classic brick hotel built in 1857 where the elevator was purchased with a gold nugget found in the basement – I realized that this wasn’t just a place where outlaws went to hide, but this was also a place where outlaws went to die.

That was then, however, and this is now, and seeing as California did away with hanging in 1937, the town’s outlaw nature, it would seem, is something of the past.

While the gold rush history of Placerville is apparent (the hardware store is still proudly an authorized dealer of metal detectors), the main draw, I would find out, is exactly what we came here for in the first place: apples and wine.

Within a short driving distance from the historic downtown there are over 50 vineyards belonging to the El Dorado wine country, as well as over 55 ranchers who make up the Apple Hill Growers Association. The result of all the agricultural abundance is a day trip where you can spend hours meandering the simple backroads, casually sip on zinfandel and syrah, and shop through markets, which teem with fresh produce.

It’s about the most wholesome, least outlaw-laden environment imaginable.

So after half a decade of picturing a town overrun by Unabombers in hiding, I instead found a welcoming gold mining outpost with affable viticulturists and farmers. Granted, there is a hanging puppet swinging in the downtown corridor, but there is also a group of children in a pumpkin patch laughing as they climb a hay bale.

This, I suppose, is precisely the reason we travel; to either confirm the notions we hold of somewhere or dispel what myths we might have believed.

In the case of Placerville, I came to find hermits on the run from the law, and I left with a car full hot apple pies.

Want more travel stories? Read the rest of the “Vagabond Tales” over here.

[Photo Credits: Kyle Ellison]

A Traveler In The Foreign Service: Interview With A USDA Foreign Agricultural Service Diplomat

by Dave Seminara on

The U.S. Department of Agriculture’s (USDA) Foreign Agricultural Service (FAS) is very much an under-the-radar career opportunity for Americans who are interested in trade promotion and living overseas. Compared to the other Foreign Affairs Agencies, the FAS is quite small. At the moment, there are only 166 FAS Foreign Service Officers (FSOs) but they serve all over the world in 96 offices in embassies and consulates overseas in 74 different countries.

FAS officers provide reporting on overseas agricultural trends and U.S. agricultural export possibilities. They promote U.S. agricultural products and work on other issues such as food security. So far this year, we’ve interviewed a diplomatic courier and FSOs from the State Department, USAID but I wanted to talk to someone from the FAS to give readers a better understanding of what they do. Scott Sindelar, who is currently the FAS Minister Counselor at the U.S. Embassy in Beijing, has been a member of USDA’s FAS since 1987, has served in China, Taiwan, Thailand and South Africa during his distinguished career. I spoke to Scott about how he joined the FAS, what the lifestyle has been like for his family and the pros and cons of the Foreign Service.What was your background before you joined USDA?

I joined USDA in 1987, so I’ve been here for more than 25 years. I’m 56. I grew up in the suburbs of Minneapolis. I graduated from college in 1979 and I went to The Phillippines as a Peace Corps volunteer. I ended up staying four years. I moved back to Minnesota after that and there was some culture shock. Being in the Peace Corps back then was very different then what it is now.

There was no email, no Internet. We sent letters by regular mail. I was there for two years before I talked to my parents on the phone.

Did you get married while you lived in The Philippines?

Yes, I did, in 1982.

Almost everyone I know who was in the Peace Corps got married while they were overseas.

I know, it happens all the time.

And how did you become a member of the FAS?

I went to graduate school and got a masters in agricultural economics at the University of Minnesota. I saw a poster there before I graduated about the Foreign Agricultural Service. The recruiter came through and I learned about the Foreign Service. I delayed about 18 months before interviewing – I worked at Auburn University – and then ended up at USDA.

Do you need a master’s to get into the FAS?

At that time, the minimum requirement was a master’s in agricultural economics and some overseas experience and if you had farm experience that was a plus. When I joined, in my class there were only a few people who had actually grown up on a farm. Now, you still need a master’s degree, but it can be in international business, development, marketing; it has to have some economics in it, but we’re casting our net wider now.

So a master’s in say, phys ed wouldn’t work?

No.

Does it help if you speak a foreign language?

It does.

Did you go right overseas?

I was hired initially as a civil servant, then you can choose to move laterally into the Foreign Service, but you have to have at least 18 months working in Washington in a regular professional job as an economist or marketing person. If you choose to try out for the Foreign Service, that’s a rigorous process – there’s an examination, a series of oral interviews, and if you have foreign language capability, that’s where that comes in.

We had partnerships with different agricultural sectors – the American soybeans Association, the Wine Institute, the Washington Apple Commission. Those are non-profit trade association groups. Congress gives us money to work with these groups to do market development overseas. So my first job in Washington was assisting with that program, then I was a wheat analyst for a while.

I’m sorry, did you say wheat or weed?

Wheat!

And what countries have you served in?

I did Chinese language training for my first overseas assignment and went to Beijing. I served there from ’91-’95. In ’95, I went to Bangkok, and was there until ’99. Then I worked in Washington for three years and in 2002, I was assigned to Shanghai on a one-year gap assignment. Then I went to Tapei in 2003 through 2007. And in 2007, we moved to Pretoria, South Africa – I covered all of Southern Africa in that job and in 2010, I came back to Beijing where I am now a Minister Counselor.

You do four-year tours?

Typically. We’re assigned on a three-year tour with an automatic extension for a fourth year if we request it at the end of our first year.

China is nothing at all like it was when you first arrived in 1990. It’s much easier to live in China as a Westerner now, I imagine?

I was in Beijing 20 years ago, I was in Shanghai ten years ago, so I’m back every ten years or so. But yes, compared to the way it was here in the early 1990s, it’s much easier to live here now in terms of the lifestyle. But it’s also a bit more complicated. China has grown up quite a bit – so there are traffic problems now.

Back in 1990 most of the traffic was people on bikes, I imagine?

Absolutely. Bicycles and buses. It was nice. It was a bit of a hardship post because pollution was bad then and it’s bad now too. You couldn’t get a lot of the amenities then that we can get here now but the pace of life was different and it was still an older China, so the city itself was a little more interesting.

They hadn’t demolished all of the old hutongs then.

Right. Now we have lots of five-star hotels and wonderful restaurants but it’s not as exotic as it may have been at that time. If you’ve never been to China before though, it’s still exciting.

China doesn’t have the dual pricing system where foreigners pay more for things any more, right?

Oh yes, that’s gone. Even as diplomats, there are fewer restrictions on our travel now than there were 20 years ago. We used to have to get approval to go places. Almost anywhere. In order to go to Annhui Province, for example, we needed the permission of the local foreign affairs office and they would make the arrangements for our meetings. We couldn’t independently set up our own meetings. And they would accompany us on meetings too. Now, if we want to go look at the corn crop somewhere, we just go.

Not to Tibet though, right?

Places like Tibet are more problematic, or Xinxiang – places like that, they want to know what we are doing there.

How many FAS FSOs are there in China?

We have 12 FAS officers in China.

So there are only 166 FAS FSOs and 12 are in China?

We are the largest FAS post.

FAS operates 96 offices in embassies and consulates overseas in 74 different countries but do you have offices in the most dangerous places that are unaccompanied posts, like Afghanistan, Pakistan and Iraq?

We serve in all those places.

The State Department has had a hard time staffing some of those posts. Is it the same at USDA?

My number two here did a tour in Iraq. We have a deputy director arriving in Shanghai next summer who served in Afghanistan. We haven’t had a problem staffing those hardship and unaccompanied posts as State has.

Is that mostly because of the hardship pay and danger pay incentives?

I’ll give people credit for wanting to serve in places like that. My deputy here wanted to go. It’s an opportunity and a challenge. And he was in Baghdad in 2002-3, a particularly tough time in Baghdad.

Do you have kids?

Yes, two boys. My oldest son is 24 and he lives in Washington, D.C., my youngest son is 18 and he will graduate from the International School in Beijing next spring.

How did your kids cope with all the transitions from one school and one country to the next?

We have a very good Foreign Service family and I’m proud and grateful for them. My wife has been working as an eligible family member for years. And that’s a great opportunity for spouses. She’s been able to work toward a pension and it’s been fulfilling for her. My kids have never complained about the lifestyle. They’ve usually been ready to move on to each next post and they’re excited to get to the next place.

Sometimes it’s hard to say goodbye to friends but they became accustomed to it.

And FAS FSOs get the same perks as State Department FSOs – free education for your children, free housing and so on, right?

Yes, it’s the same. We’re a Foreign Affairs Agency, so those benefits are the same.

Have the travel opportunities been a big selling point of this career choice for you?

Absolutely. Every place we’ve served in has been a hardship post, so we get R & R leave and have used that to travel. We probably never would have had the chance to travel to Australia and New Zealand, Vietnam, Cambodia. When we lived in Bangkok, we traveled all around Thailand.

What types of jobs has your wife been able to get at the various posts you’ve served in?

She’s mostly worked in consular jobs. She has tenured status as a civil servant at the State Department as well. But she’s also worked as a General Services Officer on procurement. She did some interesting work in Bangkok with extraditions. She’s had a fascinating time. Most spouses could make more if they stayed in the U.S., but if you balance the lifestyle out it makes it pretty attractive.

What’s been the most difficult part about this career choice for you?

Separation from the rest of your family and friends. The long distances can be challenging. We’ve missed I don’t know how many weddings, graduations, funerals. If you’re close to your extended family or you have a good network of friends in the U.S., that can be difficult. It’s easier today thanks to Skype and Facebook and the ease of communication, but it’s not the same was being there. You can’t always be there for Thanksgiving or Christmas. But if you have a family then your own nuclear family has an opportunity to grow stronger together.

And what’s the most rewarding aspect of the FAS for you?

The work gives you the opportunity to experience the world. Very few other careers do that. I’ve always felt that embassies are great communities; if you need support, you have your colleagues. If you want to get out and explore the country, you can do that.

Read more from “A Traveler In The Foreign Service.”

[Photo credits: USDA, Jonathan Kos-Read Telmo32, US Army and Archangel Raphael on Flickr]