Everyone and their brother has been calling to arrange travel this week. It's a deluge, and I've got the sandbags, baby. I'm sick of answering the phone, not because I don't want to take calls, but because I always say the same thing when I answer it and I want to hear myself say something new. If I try to be funny, though, it always backfires because it's inevitably some corporate VP who doesn't think smartass travel agents are amusing. I have to confine myself to joking with the sales force down at InformaDataNetSysCo who at least appreciate a break from the same old air-car-hotel requests.
I realize not everyone wants wry commentary with their order, but sometimes I can't help it. You ought to see what the airlines charge for last minute and weekday travel. If you aren't staying over a Saturday night and you're booking with less than seven days notice, everyone assumes you're traveling for business and will be expensing it to the company, and they gouge you. Going from the coast to Chicago on Monday and back on Wednesday? $1800. Going Friday and back on Sunday? $400, which is pretty ridiculous to start with. The planes are full so it's not going to change any time soon. The airlines are raking in the money. Are they lowering prices? Nope, they're raising them. Are they paying their staff more? Nope, which is why there's two concurrent pilot strikes (Northwest and Air Canada). Lots of people remember the halcyon days of cheap mid-week travel, lowered prices on red-eye flights, savings when you booked several months in advance. Long gone, along with actual food served on flights. Nowadays you're lucky to get more than peanuts or some of those dreadful mustard-coated pretzels, even on flights of more than two hours. So I try to ease the pain of higher prices and lower service standards by providing a bit of comic relief. It goes over pretty well with the minions who travel economy class.
Speaking of ridiculous airfares, this minion just paid $132 to fly into Phoenix rather than $432 to fly into Flagstaff with a connection in Phoenix. I never stop marveling at how much more it costs to fly into small towns with relatively low air traffic compared to the more heavily traveled cities. For a third of that connecting fare I'll rent a car and drive two hours through attractive desert scenery to Sedona, thanks very much. I'll have to stop for food along the way, though. I'm sure airline peanuts won't make a very good breakfast.
In between arranging flights and amusing the masses, I've been seeing the bonecracker three times a week. It's effective. My neck and back are feeling connected again. I'm sore as hell after every session but I feel fine the next day. Those muscles haven't been used properly in years, I think, so now that things are realigned and they have to work again they protest by getting sore. It makes me want to start taking aerobics again, or take up some kind of activity at any rate. I'll look into it, as soon as I can manage to do more than fall asleep at eight every night.
