If everything was right with the world, we’d be packing for a seven-day road trip. The plan was to leave tomorrow, take our time driving through New Mexico to see friends in southwestern Colorado, then leisurely make our way back to Arizona through Utah and the Navaho Nation. Alas, not everything is right with the world and the trip is off. Instead, we’ll be driving to Las Vegas to spend a couple of days with our son and daughter-in-law, but not until Halloween weekend. Well, at least we can put off packing for a few weeks.
A couple of years ago we planned a weekend getaway to Palm Springs and booked a hotel through Expedia. Something came up and we had to cancel our plans, thankfully (we thought) early enough to cancel the reservation and get our deposit back. It turned out the Expedia booking was non-refundable (a policy they bury in fine print on the online reservation form), even though the hotel’s own cancellation policy allowed guests to cancel without penalty right up to 48 hours before. I decided then and there to only make reservations directly with hotels and motels on future trips.
Which isn’t as easy as it used to be. Yes, you can bypass sites like Expedia and Booking.com and find hotel phone numbers online, but even though I did that and talked to actual front desk folks when making reservations for our Colorado trip, when we had to cancel it turned out two of our four hotel reservations had gone through Booking.com anyway, and we had to contact them to cancel. Which one can only do through an “AI agent,” no less, with no possibility of talking to an actual human. With Booking.com, you need your confirmation number and a PIN, and you can’t cancel without it. In that particular case, for a hotel in Flagstaff, I found the email confirming our reservation (sure enough sent from Booking.com and not the actual hotel), but it didn’t contain a PIN, just a confirmation number. No dice. Turned out Booking.com had sent several emails confirming that reservation, and one of them did indeed contain a PIN. Armed with that, I was able to call the AI agent back and cancel the reservation. And would you believe the AI agent was programmed to act as if it was doing us a favor in approving the cancelation? The whole setup, I firmly believe, is designed to so stymie customers they’ll either not figure out how to cancel until it’s too late to get their money back, or simply give up in frustration. Kafka ain’t in in.
Is there a foolproof way to ensure you’re making a reservation directly with your destination hotel or motel, and not being diverted to a third party like Booking.com or Expedia? I thought phoning hotels directly and making reservations through the front desk was that way. Apparently not. Maybe next time we’ll just hit the road and start looking for motels that have the “vacancy” sign lit up when we get tired.
So anyway, Las Vegas. Gregory is looking for tickets to an invitation-only classic car event at the Wynn, and maybe I’ll brave the Strip to visit one of the luxury watch boutiques in the Caesar’s Palace Forum. It’s my birthday weekend, after all. Not that I can afford a luxury watch, but maybe I can try some on and take wrist selfies with my iPhone.
Speaking of watches, my one fancy Swiss piece, a Breitling, is broken. The date doesn’t advance at midnight, although I can still set it manually with the crown. There’s a certified watchmaker nearby and I’ll take it to him later this morning.
Donna’s been after me about some swelling in my jaw. It’s on the right side, under my ear, and I honestly didn’t notice it until she pointed it out. Rather harshly, I might add, telling me I’m starting to look like the Elephant Man. So I saw our doctor, who sent me to imaging, where they injected me with dye and put my head in a tubular science-fictionish device, and now we know it’s a salivary gland. But as for what’s causing the gland to swell, only a biopsy will tell, and that isn’t scheduled until later in October, just before our rescheduled road trip. More to come on that.
It’s getting cooler, so sometime this month or next I’ll make another trek to Pima Air & Space Museum to see what’s new. I always take a bunch of photos and put them up in a photoblog afterward, so check back for that if you’re a fellow aviation enthusiast. Speaking of which, I’m seeing reports that the USAF is considering buying new F-16s from Lockheed-Martin. As with the ongoing F-15EX purchase from Boeing, we’re talking about a legacy fighter that is still in production for allied customers in more advanced versions than the ones made for the USAF decades ago. And in both cases, the F-15 and the F-16, legacy status notwithstanding, we’re talking about modern, lethal fighting machines, arguably as good as newer fighters in service today. Am also seeing reports the USAF is looking into reopening the C-17 production line, but that’s a different thing altogether. The last C-17s rolled off the line in 2015, eleven years ago. Reopening a production line is almost as hard as starting up a new one, but the USAF is short on cargo (and tankers too) and needs to do something about it sooner rather than later, so we’ll see what happens.
That’s the haps, folks. Hope you’re all well and ready for the holidays. More soon.