Travel


Warning: Undefined variable $category_id in /home/juanmonr/juanomatic.net/wp-content/themes/monroy2014/category.php on line 7

Less for More

It’s no secret that this year has been an extraordinarily light year in terms of travel. As late as September, I had not boarded an airplane since returning from California in early January. Since then, I have flown one revenue flight on United this year, amounting to a paltry 3,186 elite qualifying miles and two measly segments.

My revenue flight map for 2014 looks pretty bare.

My revenue flight map for 2014 looks pretty bare.

This is much less than last year, for example, where I flew enough to qualify for Premier Silver on segments instead of my usual method of qualifying on miles. Last year, I flew thirty segments over 24,472 miles. That was possible when I visited Sarah’s family, who all live in the middle of the country and visiting them almost always requires a connecting flight, more than my own kin, where I can rack a bunch of miles with each nonstop flight to LAX and back.

I sat in more planes in 2013 than I probably had ever before.

Where I sat on more planes in 2013 than I probably had ever before.

I also spent well over $1,200 compared to the $130 I spent so far this year. The only other flight I have planned for 2014 is to visit my family in California over Christmas. And that flight is on American Airlines, although I seriously considered taking the three-day train from New York to Los Angeles, via Chicago.

My decline in travel will cost me my elite status on United. But I’m not upset about losing it, especially since United has announced cuts to its Mileage Plus elite program despite raising the spending requirement by 20% earlier this month. The biggest cut that would affect me is losing the ability to upgrade using miles on p.s. flights, between JFK and LAX/SFO, without paying a fee. Currently, Premier members are exempt from paying the the fee for upgrading with miles, which costs between $75 and $250.1 The exemption to this fee will be cut on February 1, 2015. I do have a revenue flight in early January that involves a SFO-JFK segment on a cheap K fare, and I wonder if I should use miles to secure an upgrade, or if it’s even worth it because it’s a shorter flight than the westbound segment, or whether I should just use those miles to snag a Saver award down the line.

These cuts are exactly why I cut my air travel spending on a single airline for the sake of loyalty. It’s just not worth it.


  1. The fee depends on the booking class of your economy class ticket. The lower your booking class, the higher the upgrade fee. 

United Airlines, or Why Mergers Suck

Tim Wu, the Columbia law professor, candidate for Lieutenant Governor of New York, and celebrity advocate for Net Neutrality, is leaving United Airlines and will presumably never fly them again! Like so many loyal customers, he blames the merger between Continental and United as the primary reason:

The United merger is a grand example of a consumer sinkhole—a merger that proves to be not just a onetime event but an ongoing disaster for consumers (and shareholders) who suffer for years after.

For the most part, I agree!

The merger has made it a lot more expensive to fly in an cramped aluminum tube. It is the biggest reason why I haven’t travelled much this year. And because there’s no chance I will ever get an upgrade, I would be getting a worse product than in the past. In short, passengers like me are getting less for more. That’s exactly why mergers suck, and why you should be on the defensive when a company you like to patronize merges with another. It’s good only for the top executives and the financiers who arrange the unholy union.

Mergers suck as much as this early mashup of Continental Airlines, doing business as United.

Mergers suck as much as this early mashup of Continental Airlines, doing business as United.

The mergers in the airline industry, whereby we now have only three network carriers, has diminished competition. When one company raises prices or reduces the quality of service, another company can follow suit because consumers have no viable alternative. Since Delta merged with Northwest Airlines in 2009, it has implemented all kinds of draconian requirements for attaining elite status, implementing a spending requirement in addition to flying a requisite number of butt-in-seat miles or segments, and tying Delta miles to dollars spent on travel rather than the more logical way of earning miles based on distance travelled. United has followed suit with each of these policies and, earlier this week, even raised the amount of money required for attaining each level of elite status.

But what annoys me the most, and where I disagree with Wu, is that a merger can in fact yield a better experience for a consumer. It might be a case of the grass seeming greener, but from a distance, combining Delta and Northwest has apparently yielded a better product even as it draws the ire of the bean counters. There’s WiFi on almost every flight, and because there’s a first class cabin on just about every plane it flies, you have a better chance at an upgrade.

I have a close family member who works for United, and I worry about the future of the airline in the prolonged wake of this merger. I also miss sitting in Row 9 on flights between JFK and LAX, and I hate schlepping from New Jersey when arrive on a flight to “New York.”

Dear United: It’s Not Me, It’s You

Chart showing that I have flown Zero Premier Qualifying Miles flown and Zero Premier Qualifying Segments flown, with Zero Premier Qualifying Dollars spent in 2014

Summer is almost over, and while in the past I was flying a ton on United, visiting family and friends, this year the situation is very different. I haven’t flown a single revenue flight on United this year.

But it’s not like I have been flying on the other guys, either. My diminished travel is due my trying to save money and because airline consolidation has made flying very expensive. Even on the competitive JFK-LAX route, it’s hard to find a flight for less than $400. Not too long ago, I remember easily finding an “L” fare in February for about $240 roundtrip.

The other thing factor is that flying on United is kind of miserable these days.

Since the merger, they’ve made a lot of cuts. Some I accepted as reducing redundancies, but others changed my whole reasoning for sticking with one airline. They’ve gutted the frequent flyer program for leisure travelers like me. Over the years, United has been following Delta’s lead in making flying less pleasant, such as requiring us qualify with dollars spent on tickets, tying our frequent flyer “mileage earnings” to dollars spent instead of miles flown, taking away our pillows and blankets, and devaluing our miles when we go to redeem them. They could at least follow their lead on the good stuff, too, right? Why not improve the clubs and provide some decent snacks and palatable booze for free? Why not finally add WiFi to the entire mainline fleet? Why not, at the very least, make a goofy safety video?

Last year, I only had a handful of revenue flights before Labor Day: a roundtrip to Louisville, Kentucky and a five-segment vacation/mileage run to Burbank. However, I flew a bunch in the fall to Paducah, to Indianapolis, to Memphis, to Nashville, and a six-segment trip to Burbank (via Washington and San Francisco on the outbound, and via San Francisco and Cleveland on the inbound). All those flights added up qualifying for Silver status, not only with miles but also on segments.

This year, though, I shop around since there’s no point in remaining loyal.

Newark to Philadelphia via Washington Crossing

After much anticipation and excitement, I finally rode my bike from New York to Philadelphia for Bastille Day weekend. After riding from Long Island City to Manhattan to catch a PATH train to Newark, the ride covered two states, and each state offered a very different experience.

PATH Train to Newark

The New Jersey part of the ride, from Newark to Pennington, was cycling nirvana after completing the first five miles, from Newark to Springfield. Those first five miles along Springfield Avenue went through some relatively blighted parts of the city with some pretty poor roads to match, but thankfully, traffic was light for a weekday morning, but I swear I must have watched every signal turn red as I approached it. The rest of the ride was on some very pleasant back roads. There was one significant climb in Springfield but once I crossed I-78, it was an exhilarating downhill.

Map of Newark to Philadelphia via Washington Crossing on a bike

I rode through the first quarter of the ride at a pretty good clip, averaging close to 16 MPH, and it was much faster than I had anticipated. For example, I had planned to reach my first breakfast stop in South Bound Brook around 9:30. I arrived there around 8:30.

After eating breakfast, I followed the Raritan and Millstone Rivers along Weston Canal Road but encountered a road closure. My planned route had me head north on the Manville Causeway, but the bridge that spans the Millstone River is closed for repairs. I had to detour by continuing south on Mettlers Road and then west on Amwell Road. The benefit of this detour is that I came upon a duck crossing, and to my surprise, the drivers of New Jersey patiently waited until every duck had crossed and without a single one of them blasting their horns.

I had arrived at the fifty-mile mark, in Hopewell, by 10:30 AM.

Hopewell, New Jersey looks quaint

I figured that if I kept that pace, I could arrive in Philadelphia as early as 2:30 PM. While that might sound great, it presented a logistical challenge. My friends weren’t due to arrive until much later in the day, around 5:00 PM at the earliest, so I decided to take my time once I arrived at the New Jersey–Pennsylvania border, 62 miles from the start, at about 11:30 AM. I slowly walked my bike across the Delaware River, toured the Washington Crossing historic site, took some photos, and made a few phone calls.

Washington Crossing in New Jersey

A little after 12:15 PM, I headed out on the Pennsylvania section of the ride. My route basically followed the Delaware, keeping the river on my left. For the first four or five miles, through Yardley, the ride was absolutely pleasant. But once I crossed Trenton Avenue, into Morrisville, the ride became much uglier. First, there were long stretches of industrial sections and the roads were in terrible shape with potholes. Second, because I was riding between the Delaware River, I-95, and the Northeast Corridor rail lines, my route was dotted with various distribution centers. That explained the endless stream of eighteen-wheeler trucks passing me as I headed towards Philadelphia. At one point, I had to turn on to a short section of Tyburn Road in Morrisville and to get on what seemed like a highway on-ramp to ride over a railroad. Compounding the danger was that the bridge was undergoing construction so there was no shoulder for me to ride next to high-speed traffic. I had to wait for a sufficiently long break in traffic and sprint for about a half-minute until I reached the first off-ramp. That was the most death defying riding I had done in a long time.

As if merging onto a highway with no shoulder wasn’t bad enough, I had to salmon on a narrow road with high-speed commercial traffic barreling towards me. For whatever reason, the eastbound lane of Bristol Pike east of Tullytown just ends. My route sheet instructed me to continue riding, and I did so because there was no other way for me to continue riding, other than to ride on, US-13, an actual highway. There was however a three-foot-wide shoulder on the left side of the road. As soon as I saw that, I carefully rode my bike like a velocipede on that narrow shoulder.

Finally, much like the beginning of the ride in Newark, the ride went through some blighted neighborhoods, and despite the presence of bike lanes on Torresdale and Aramgino Avenues, the roads were in terrible shape. Much like the beginning of my ride through Newark, it seemed like every stop light I approached turned red.

Phinished

I arrived in Philadelphia’s City Center just before 4:00 PM. I checked in to our weekend rental, and immediately grabbed a shower. I needed it!

Biked to Philadelphia

The last bit of the ride, just under forty miles, took me about three hours to complete. It was so absolutely stressful, especially compared to the New Jersey part of the ride, that upon returning to New York, I began searching for more pleasant routes from New Jersey to Philadelphia. It appears that the best way to do that is to ride a bit north of Washington Crossing and cross the Delaware River at Lambertsville, New Jersey, continue to New Hope, Pennsylvania, and approach the city from the northwest. I’ll take that next time.

And, yes, there will be a next time. I had a great time in Philadelphia, and if you know a better way to get there, other than by bicycle, I’d like to hear it!

Cheesesteak Century

Tomorrow, I will be riding my bike to Philadelphia, and spending the weekend there, because…

  • It’s something I’ve heard New York cyclists do.
  • It’s something I’ve always wanted to do.
  • It’s something cool to do in observance of Bastille Day.

One of the more challenging parts of the ride is getting to New Jersey. One option is to go all out and ride over the George Washington Bridge and head southwest towards Philadelphia. It’s something better suited for riders living in upper Manhattan but not for someone in Long Island City, Queens. A second option is to take the ferry from Manhattan, at either West 39th Street or Wall Street, and go to Paulus Hook in Jersey City. This is a very common option and an especially nice one because it keeps you above ground the entire day, and it’s a quick trip that would only cost $9 for me and my bike. A third option is to take a train, either NJ Transit or PATH, to Newark and start there. This is the option I have selected.

My plan is to start from home and ride to the World Trade Center to catch an early morning PATH train. From there, I will cross the Hudson River into New Jersey and continue to the end of the line in Newark. I will start pedaling just outside of Newark-Penn Station. Part of me feels like a cheat for taking the train and starting in Newark, instead of New York proper, but two factors changed my mind:

  1. There’s only one feasible way to get from Jersey City to Newark, and it sucks. This requires you to cross two rivers, the Hackensack and the Passaic, along US-1/US-9. From all accounts, it’s a treacherous route. Traffic is heavy and moves fast. There is little room on the shoulder to ride. There’s also a steel bridge to cross, and I’m terrified of crossing steel bridges on a bicycle. This seems like a terrible way to start a long day on the bike.

  2. Continental United Airlines refers to its northeast hub as New York/Newark, NJ. If they get to pretend that Newark is the same as New York, so do I!

A map image of a planned route from New York/Newark, NJ to Philadelphia

My planned route will go through the hills of Summit and Middlesex before descending into South Bound Brook, briefly following the Raritan River as it splits into the Millstone River, which I will follow for about 20 miles. I will then head southwest through the towns of Hopewell and Pennington and then crossing the Delaware River where George Washington himself did in the town, appropriately called Washington Crossing. The rest of the route follows the west and north banks of the Delaware River to Philadelphia.

I have planned a few stops for food and fluids:

  • Mile 28. The town of South Bound Brook has some fast food chains and independent delis where I can have breakfast. It comes after riding through the most significant hills of the day, which appear to be rollers in the elevation profile.
  • Mile 64. After crossing the Delaware, the town of Yardley offers some sit-down and more casual options for lunch. I’m considering the Yardley Inn, which offers a three-course lunch for $15, or maybe opt for a simpler lunch at Cafe Antonio.
  • Mile 85. I’ll be going through a few towns as I follow US-13/Bristol Pike, and there appear to be a great deal of shops, service stations, and eateries for that last stretch into Philadelphia.

The one part of the trip I can’t control is the weather, and it looks like I’m getting a great day tomorrow. The forecast high will be in the low 80s, with little humidity, and it even looks like I’ll have a slight tailwind as get through central New Jersey. That’s so much better than my last really long ride with a steady headwind over a 150-mile route.

Liberté! Egalité! Phraternité!

Yes, Bastille Day is less than a week away. And if you’re looking for a way to observe the weekend, the Eastern State Penitentiary in Philadelphia is staging a “completely historically accurate” reenactment of the storming of the Bastille that sparked the French Revolution. The anniversary of this day serves as the French national day.

The event is free to attend, but they also are offering a VIP “French Bourgeoisie” experience for $40, which includes a high-perched seat, beer, and a gift bag. After the vainqueurs successfully storm Bastille and the ancien regime is overthrown, the Penitentiary will open for a rare evening tour. I wouldn’t mind taking the tour because I missed the Obscura Society’s May road trip to Philadelphia, where they toured the Penitentiary and the Mutter Museum.

Since I plan to ride to Philadelphia this Friday and spend the weekend there, I might consider adding a pair of culottes to my Bastille Day wish list.

Primer on “Angry Philadelphia”

Next week, if all things go according to plan, I’m planning on finally riding from New York to Philadelphia.1 It’s one of those rides that all New York City bicyclists talk about doing, such as riding to Montauk, but I’ve never headed that far south on a bike. I am really looking forward to doing that.

Despite now living in New York City for almost thirteen years, I’ve only been to Philadelphia four times.2

  1. The first time was for a baseball game at Veteran’s Stadium. It was Labor Day 2003, the game was between the Red Sox and the Phillies, and it was Mike Schmidt Bobblehead Day. The nine-inning game lasted about four hours, the score went back and forth, and the game was decided by Trot Nixon hitting a grand-slam off maligned Phillies reliever Turk Wendell. My friends and I drove home after the game.
  2. The second time was for another baseball game, between the Dodgers and Phillies at the new Citizens Bank Park in 2005. Although the two ballparks were located close to each other, you can experience the difference between a 1970s cookie-cutter, multiuse stadium and a 2000s retro inner-city ballpark. You really can feel the forty year time-warp. Again, we drove back the same day.
  3. The third time did not involve a baseball game. It was for a talk at the University of Pennsylvania. While I didn’t drive this time, I did take the “ghetto train,” using SEPTA and NJ Transit, with a connection in Trenton, back to New York City.
  4. Last April, Sarah and I needed to burn a free night at the Omni Hotel, and we booked a one-night stay around it. It was the first time that I got to explore the city a bit, and I really liked it. I immediately regretted that we didn’t book a second night.

But next week, after cycling through New Jersey and crossing the Delaware, George Washington–style, I am going to stay not just one, but two, two, two nights. Sarah is taking the train, and my friends from Washington, D.C. are also coming up to spend Bastille Day weekend in one of our nation’s earliest capital cities. To bone up on the city and its people, I listened to an episode of the podcast, Like I’m an Idiot, where a guest explains a topic to the host, Josh Cagan, like he’s an idiot. In this episode, native Philadelphian Mike Monteiro explains why Philadelphians are angry.

The episode reveals that the anger stems from various nationally known incidents, such as fans throwing batteries at sporting events and Frank Rizzo, the mayor of Philadelphia, ordering the police to bomb a part of his own city in 1985. We also learn that Philadelphians now wear that anger as a badge of distinction. Good for them!

Towards the end of the episode, Cagan reveals that despite living in New York City for many years and on the East Coast his entire life, he only went to Philadelphia three times.

You see? I’m not the only New Yorker who doesn’t go to Philly!


  1. I’ll technically start pedaling either in Jersey City or Newark to shave off some miles and riding through some automotive wasteland, specially US-1/US-9 between Jersey City and Newark. 
  2. I did pass through Philadelphia as part of a vacation/mileage run to Portland, via Houston and Seattle, back in April 2011, but I’m not going to count it. 

New Amtrak Baggage Cars to Hold Bicycles

Amtrak will be getting new baggage cars on their long-distance trains. Those trains include the Lake Shore Limited, a twenty-hour train between New York and Chicago, and the Cardinal, another train that travels between Chicago and New York but takes twenty-six hours. The most exciting part of the baggage cars is that they will enable passengers to bring their bicycles on the train without boxing up the bikes.

The new baggage cars will be used on all 15 long-distance routes, which means the benefits of improved reliability and an enhanced climate-control environment for baggage will be available to our long distance customers by the end of 2014 . Also, the new cars will be equipped with built-in luggage racks that will be able to secure unboxed bicycles…

Yes, it’s exciting to see one nineteenth-century form of transportation (the train) supplement another nineteenth-century form of transportation (the safety bicycle). It also makes taking a train a viable and affordable option for traveling to distant bicycle events, such as October’s Hilly Hundred in Indiana. Last year, I had to box up my bike, take it to Newark, and then ship it to and from Indianapolis.

https://www.flickr.com/photos/juanomatic/10446223305/

As great a step forward this is, it’s still not the same as allowing bicyclists to walk their bikes onto the train, as is the case on certain trains in California and the Midwest. It’s also nice to have that option aboard our the Metro North and Long Island Railroad commuter lines.

IMG_9835

Allowing bicycles onto Amtrak trains that run north of New York City would immediately open up new destinations in upstate New York, such as Rhinebeck and Hudson, and parts of Vermont for some great foliage rides.

And if you want to read about today’s passenger rail travel in the United States, Kevin Baker takes a long-distance trip on the “Twenty-First Century Limited” in this month’s Harper’s.

Biking and Eating for Airline Miles

One of the highlights of riding to Montauk last weekend was stopping at Tully’s Lobster in Hampton Bays for a lobster roll. Growing up in California, I am relatively inexperienced when it comes to lobster rolls, as it’s not as much a thing as it is out here, so I can’t tell you if it’s the best lobster roll in the Hamptons. All I know is that I like what I like, and I like the Tully’s roll a lot.

Tully's Lobster Roll

Another bonus to stopping there for lunch, aside from not having to fight hungry and tired cyclists for scraps at the depleted rest stop in Westhampton, was that I earned airline miles for eating there because the Backbay Grille, the restaurant operation at Tully’s, participates in the Rewards Network dining program. A few friends of mine are really into earning miles while we eat, and we each have stories about getting that surprise email informing you that you dined at a participating restaurant a few days.

That’s what happened to me. I had to have a conversation with myself to figure out where I earned these miles:

Where on earth is the Backbay Grille? Did I really eat there on Saturday?

But I rode to Montauk on Saturday….

Oh, right!

As a VIP member, I get five miles per dollar[1]. My twenty-dollar lobster roll, with tax and tip, earned me 118 airline miles, which puts me 1/169th of the way towards a domestic economy-to-business class upgrade. All I had to do was ride almost as many miles on my bike, 101.8 miles apparently, which makes riding for airline miles a pretty terrible deal.

And if that calculation is not bad enough, because I was cycling, I was primarily eating for energy. I don’t want to know how much I paid per calorie.


  1. In the halcyon days of the dot-com bubble, it used to be ten miles per dollar.  ↩

“It’s Russia!”

David Segal, writing for the New York Times, describing the hotels near some of the prominent Olympic venues in Sochi:

To appreciate the hotels in this area it is probably a good idea to think of them not as hotels but rather a rare opportunity to experience life in a centrally planned, Soviet-style dystopia. Only then will you understand, perhaps even enjoy, the peculiar mix of grandiosity and bungling that defines these buildings. Though called hotels, they look like austere, upscale apartments inspired by the Eastern bloc — Bauhaus meets the Super 8.

I’ll have to borrow that last bit, “Bauhaus meets the Super 8,” when I write my next critical Trip Advisor review.

There are a lot gems in this article, but the one that explains the attitude towards the slow progress on finishing the hotels and shopping areas is described by a shrug. “It’s Russia.”