Random Travel Thoughts

I was watching some news special on these new body scanners in which the poor reviewer, in some secret bunker and not anywhere near where the actual scanning is being done, is subjected to vivid depictions of everyone’s private areas and they mentioned that if you go through the scanner you won’t get patted down. This was of interest as I went through a scanner the other day and immediately following was told that I had to be patted down. I want an explanation TSA.

What is it with car rental companies messing with the body type designations of their freaking cars? In my itinerary, the mid size car I was supposed to get was described as a “Pontiac G6 or equivalent”. Pontiac doesn’t exist anymore but a G6 is the exact same car (minus badging) as a Chevy Malibu, which is in the same class as a Ford Fusion, Honda Accord, Toyota Camry, Hyundai Sonata and Mazda 6 among some others. I was rented a Nissan Sentra, what anyone else on the planet would describe as a freaking compact. This is a horribly dishonest practice and all the rental car companies do it, so why don’t they all just be correct, is there some advantage in ticking off customers at first encounter?

Panama City Beach, Florida is a great place to visit and is very easy to navigate. I ensured that I had pages printed with all of my intended destination addresses on it for my GPS and I didn’t need it once. Being a tourist destination the actual beach front is dominated by hotels, making beach and near-beach front property expensive and kind of undesirable.

Flying can be simple or it can be difficult and one of the biggest contributors to the outcome is the awareness of the person sitting next to you on a flight. Larger people are the worst to sit next to. It’s not their fault, they’re just really big people and the seats just are not big enough to contain them. One of my quirks is a need for personal space and I was stuck with an older woman sitting next to me last week from Dallas to Albuquerque with no sense of space whatsoever. It was so bad that it was as if she could have been sitting on me. I’m certain that this woman understood how uncomfortable I was and used that to take up even more space, ensuring that I couldn’t use my right arm to aid holding up the book that I was reading. On approach she stuck out her arm, pointing out the window between my face and my book. What a jerk. These people need to be stopped.