Writing Travel

I was a teenage runaway

 

I'm not ready to tell all of that travel story just yet, but I will say that my first flight was at age 16 on a student standby ticket, ORD-LGA on American Airlines.

The cost: approximately $68 one way. I paid cash, earned scooping ice cream for a few weeks the previous summer.

This was long, long ago, before the Internet made travel research so easy. I don't remember finding that fare in a guide book, so I must have learned about it word of mouth from a college student.

Now I'm a middle-aged runaway, constantly looking for airfare deals to fuel my travel fantasies.I set up alerts on Airfarewatchdog.com and Kayak, and use the flexible date features on airline sites to find the cheapest dates to fly.

This week, my urge to drop everything and run away to Los Angeles for BlogWorld Expo went unfulfilled. Even so, I learned a bit about buying airfare last minute.

Having missed a $99 one-way sale ORD-LAX on American and Virgin America, I watched as Delta maintained a $149 one-way fare until two days before my target departure date. American's fare went as high as $414 one-way for the cheapest restricted economy ticket. Then, just a day before the departure date, American dropped the outbound one-way fare to $249 when purchased as a round trip as late as an hour before flight time.

I'm not certain yet if I've discovered a pattern, but I'll be watching to see how often walk-up prices are lower than fares for tickets purchased two or three days before a flight.

What is your experience with last-minute airfares? Have you ever purchased a plane ticket for leisure travel at the last possible moment? Please share in the comments.

Mid-America road trips for wimps, part 2

First of all, dear reader, I want you to know I am home again safely after spending more than two weeks with my extended family in southern Illinois.

I had intended to stay a week or less, just long enough to recover from the solo drive south and make the rounds to see as many cousins as possible.

And yes, I intended to blog from the road, but I'm a wimp. Besides that, real life happened.

Mid-America road trips for wimps, part 1

 

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A quick informal update: I'm en route to visit family, risking all for my first solo automobile adventure in more than 10 years. The how, why, and wherefore is a story all its own.

Today, however, I want to give a big shout-out to CoPilot Live, sponsors of TBEX '10. During the conference, I was the lucky winner of their GPS mapping product for smartphones.

Before I hit the road yesterday, I installed the app on my iPhone 4 and downloaded maps for Illinois, where my travels are focused, as well as maps for contiguous states Indiana and Kentucky, where my wanderlust may take me.

Two weeks ago, when I was in the car with my husband on the same route I'm now traveling alone, I was kicking myself for not having downloaded CoPilot Live before we set out. With two iPhones and a Blackberry between us, we were pretty much SOL without data service in the rural areas we visited.

On the first leg of my drive yesterday, CoPilot Live worked in the background to keep me on track while I listened to Alexander McCall Smith's latest serial novel, Corduroy Mansions on Audible.com. Granted, the route was pretty simple at that stage, a straight shot south through farms and small towns on Illinois Route 47 and I-57.

Late supper at Bien Trucha

Late supper at the fabulous Bien Trucha in Geneva, Illinois: Rick Bayless would love this authentic Mexican haute cuisine.

No reservations taken, so get there early to put your name in for a table. The kitchen closes at 8:45 pm. We lost count of how many latecomers were turned away.

Arriving before 7 pm, there was a 90 minute wait, so we started on the patio (cash only) with guacamole and a couple of Tecates. If we'd had more cash on hand, I would have gone for one of their special margaritas made with fresh lime juice.

Join the beta test of Wazzamba and compete for a Paris getaway

I don't ordinarily post unedited press releases, but this one seems worthy of attention.

And who knew there was a real place called Zug in Switzerland?

WAZZAMBA TO AWARD VALENTINE GETAWAY
Virtual World Players Can Win Real-World Romantic Vacation in Paris

Zug, Switzerland – February 8, 2010 – Wazzamba (www.wazzamba.com), the first online virtual world to give away real-world travel prizes, has announced a contest for a romantic trip for two to Paris in celebration of Valentine’s Day.  Potential players can log on to www.wazzamba.com and try for the highest daily score anytime during the week of February 8 in order to win the Paris GetAway.