The Mongrel Dogs Who Teach

Category: travel

  • The Mongrel Dogs in Transit Hell: Airline Insanity

    I am currently in LAX International Airport. I’ve been here since 10:30 AM and it is currently 9:00 PM. If you knew my itinerary, you’d see that this is the time listed for boarding Continental Flight 1803, nonstop LAX to Newark/EWR. You can probably guess that I am not actually getting on that plane at this moment. You see, it’s raining in Houston.

    Now, I am not in Houston. I am not going to Houston. As mentioned, my flight is nonstop and so is not stopping in Houston. Nonetheless, rain in Houston has added about half an hour to my departure time each hour since 4 PM.

    (Aside: I’ve received no fewer than six email alerts warning me that the flight will be delayed — although I was also warned that I had to show up at the airport at the printed time, since the airline reserved the right to leave then after all. I’m not exactly what the point of the alerts are, to tell you the truth. I mean, if I can’t leave for the airport any later, than why do I need to know that the plane is going to be held? It’s some sort of weird Calvinist thing: I’m delayed if I do and delayed if I don’t. I can know my fate but I cannot do anything about it. [And if that’s not a true metaphor for a citizen in the hands of corporations, I don’t know what is.] )

    Back to my delayed flight. Despite the frenzied pace of email alerts, actually very little information has been shared about why. Apparently, even though — as I said — my flight neither originates in, terminates in, or passes through Houston, I have been bolluxed by the remnants of the tropical storm Erin, which has delayed the plane I’ll be taking, which is for reasons unknown to anyone but God, flying out of Houston.

    Now… The people of Houston have known, of course, that there’d be rain in Houston. The people at CNN and Weather Channel and every podunk news outlet in all the land knew that there’d be rain in Houston. Heck, I’ve just spent the past fifteen days at sea and even I knew that there would be rain in Houston. But somehow the airliines, with state of the art equipment and a literally million-dollar information infrastructure, somehow did not know that it would be raining in Houston.

    More below the fold.

    (more…)

  • The Mongrel Dogs at Sea (10): Managed Disequilibrium

    Every night, the crew of the Regal Princess find some live entertainment to put on in the grandiosely-named International Show Lounge. Sometimes it’s in-house, like a crew sing-along. Usually, it’s more like a Vegas revue: Sometimes piano, sometimes comedy, sometimes live performance, sometimes old Broadway standards. For the most part, I’ve avoided this like a leper colony. It’s wildly not my usual type of entertainment and is in fact quite explicitly pitched for passengers who have the advantage over me of multiple decades of life experience. Before reaching Hawai’i, I did venture in once to see a so-called comedian, and had my impression utterly confirmed: It was cheap and lazy comedy, based on ancient stereotypes that went well past the border of offensive. It was un-funny.

    But tonight I was a little bored after walking around Maui all day and I was having trouble getting the wireless to work smoothly. So I decided to take a chance on tonight’s act, a guy named Greg Kennedy who is, of all things, a juggler. I was not in a receptive mood. I’d more or less written off the hour it was going to occupy. Truth be told, I was ready to be significantly unimpressed. A juggler? In today’s world?

    (more…)

  • The Mongrel Dogs at Sea (7): Maui

    Today was the final port of call in Hawai’i, at the port of Lahaina. It was another transfer-by-tender affair. The seas proved a bit rougher this time compared to Kona; I got bumped around a bit. Nothing serious but a little unnerving.

    Lahaina is a cute little tourist trap. I went on the Atlantis 4 submarine tour. We had to take another launch out to the sub. Despite fears of being cramped in a sardine can for hours at a time, the sub itself was very roomy and comfortable. We dove to 80 feet and then 140 feet, hovering off the coral systems that grow just offshore in Hawai’i. Although the scenes were ethereally beautiful, I was a little disappointed how washed out everything was. Of course I knew that Rayleight scattering meant that most of the long-wavelength stuff would be overwhelmed by the background blue “hiss” (a phenomenon the guide got 90% correct, to my surprise) I hadn’t appreciated how strong the attenuation would be, though. I guess Jacques Cousteau faked it a bit in all those documentaries. He probably brought his own light source.

    (more…)

  • The Mongrel Dogs at Sea (6): Security Silliness

    I was going to write today about my visit to the USS Arizona and USS Missouri memorials and how moving it was. I suppose I’ll get to that, though maybe not today. Right now I’m going to blog about one of the deepening madnesses of the 21st century, the traveler security checkpoint.

    Let me say at the outset that I understand why we have these checkpoints and, in their basic incarnation, I agree they’re a good thing. Although I don’t believe for an instant they necessarily stop anyone, they at least make the terrorists have to work harder and be smarter, and that at least reduces the number of incidents, not to mention mindless me-tooistic attacks. Although one wonders if it’s a net positive to breed a harder-working, smarter terrorist.

    But since 9/11, this process has spiraled wildly out of control with little check on it. The list of banned items grows daily, follows no discernible pattern, and irritates travelers without adding an iota of actual safety. As with the super-tight security in the months following the WTC attacks, it’s more about appearing to do something to improve security rather than actually doing anything.

    Today’s example that set me off: I’m in Honolulu, near the end of my Hawaiian adventure, and I’m trying to wrap up my souvenir gift list. I come across a nice set of hand-crafted wooden candle holders – three concentric rings that each hold a little tea candle. This strikes me as appropriate for one of the names on my list, so I buy the handle, check the name off the list, and take my purchase over to the port security checkpoint, a mere 100 yards away.

    You might guess what happens next.

    (more…)

  • The Mongrel Dogs at Sea (5): Footloose on Kauai

    We made our third landfall today, on the island of Kauai. For various reasons I had not signed up for any of the escorted excursions, so the day was pretty much my own. I stayed on ship until a little after noon. For the first time this trip I was unimpressed with the Princess Cruise customer service. I stayed onboard in part to take care of lunch before rooting around Kauai, because I didn’t know what I’d find to eat. But for reasons unexplained, the dining schedule was off at almost all of the eateries on the ship. The main dining room had a “closed” sign, the buffet was unstaffed, and even the old reliable burger bar was not open. Sigh. Luckily, there are multiple backups for eating on a cruise, and Plan D worked. 🙂

    I went online to find things to do in Kauai for a day. Unfortunately – but, in retrospect, predictably – most of them were the same sort of thing as the tours I’d already passed on. So instead I walked around the beach for a bit and then spent some time just riding the various shuttles that ran from the pier to sundry locations on the island. It was not an earth-shattering day. On the other hand, both of my “tour days” have wiped me out so it was actually nice to have a little bit of a breather. Tomorrow, it’s the Arizona memorial and the Mighty Mo.

  • The Mongrel Dogs at Sea (4): Review: Next

    Insta Rating: 4 out of 5

    OK, it’s a little odd to be reviewing a movie when I’m supposed to be off on a wonderful cruise. But as mentioned before I was pretty wiped out, so I decided to take advantage of the onboard movie theater and catch Next starring Nicholas Cage and Jessica Biel. I remember when this came out but I never got to see it, despite being a sucker for a Philip K. Dick movie

    Nicholas plays Chris something, who was born with the very Dickesque talent of being to see the future but only his own future and only two minutes ahead. He’s making a living as a second-rate Vegas magic act and just trying to have a normal life. The only exception to the rules of his talent is that he saw Liz (Biel) at a diner some indeterminate time in the future. He’s been visiting that diner for a week trying to meet her, which he does, acting in a manner which he hopes isn’t too creepy (but which kind of is).
    Unfortunately for Chris, there’s an FBI agent who’s somehow become aware of his talent and wants to use it to track down a missing Russian nuclear warhead which has been smuggled into the US. The movie is about bringing Chris around to the greater good and stopping the bad guys.

    More below the fold.
    (more…)

  • The Mongrel Dogs at Sea (3): Kona

    Today we stopped at Kona, which is also on the Big Island. Although I got just as little impression of this town as I did of Hilo, I think I prefer it. It seemed smaller and more relaxed. Although, the hilly terrain would probably spell the death of me.

    The Kona Highlights tour lived up to its name, in that we were shuffled from site to site with very little time (about 15 minutes) at each. Actually, I liked it that way. I am not a tourist, as could be attested to by anyone who’s traveled with me. I don’t like to dawdle and I don’t sightsee all that gracefully. So hitting the high points briefly is probably the best way for me to do it. In principle, were I to return to Kona, I now know I’d be happier spending time at, say, the City of Refuge instead of the Royal Coffee plantation. I wouldn’t have been sure without sampling both.

    I’ll admit, my positive impressions of this tour compared to yesterday probably owes a bit to the much more comfortable motorcoach as opposed to squirrelly converted van. Although, on the other side of the scale, this bus had more than its fair share of annoying children. I know I’m turning into a grinch on the matter but I really wish more of these activities had been explicitly labeled “kid friendly” or, more to the point, “kid-unfriendly”.

    More below the fold.
    (more…)

  • The Mongrel Dogs at Sea (2): Island Burning

    Today I stood on the roof of Hawai’i. Tonight I watched an island burn.

    The first was my scheduled tour of Mauna Kea and the observatories perched at 13,500 feet above sea level and, more importantly, above the cloud layer. According to our guide, a “Pacific inversion” ensures that clouds all form below 11,000 feet in Hawai’i, and this seemed borne out by what I saw today. Of course it’s risky to extrapolate from one data point, but it was undeniably cool to be standing above the cloud deck.

    Six or seven observatories dot the top of Mauna Kea. Much like gas stations crowding busy intersections, the observatories are all drawn to Mauna Kea by that combination of height and clarity: You’re already above a lot of the atmosphere by 13,000 feet, and what is there, is not often occluded by clouds or rain. Also, of course, it’s attractive to be based in Hawai’i. Maybe the high-energy physicists get all the cool conferences (Aspen, St. Croix, etc.) but at least the astronomers get to work in Hawai’i. 🙂

    The observatories all looked remarkably alike, coming in two flavors: Radio-disk farms and domes. I wondered aloud what some future archeologists would think, should our civilization vanish and these domes be discovered forlornly occupying the desolate lava-sculpted mountaintops. Veronika, the about-to-graduate psych major sharing my row in the touring van, answered immediately, “Temples”. She’s probably right – “religious purposes” is anthropologist shorthand for “We have no idea”. And yet it’s probably not as far off as it seems at first blush. The ancient Hawaiians climbed Mauna Kea to bury their elite, to commune with their goddess, and to figure out where they were in the Universe. The tech is different but we still do the third.

    More on that burning island below the fold.
    (more…)