Jetsetting Blues
Today is fly back to NYC day. We are big fans of JetBlue and their direct transcontinental service, especially their new Mint Service. It is as good as any international or domestic carrier that we fly (acknowledging that many of the Asian and Middle Eastern carriers are pretty awesome if you have mega-bucks). For some renovation reason JetBlue has been relegated for eighteen months to the old Terminal 1 at SAN and that was a shock to our systems. Terminal 1 is like LaGuardia vintage 1977 where Terminal 2 is like 2001:A Space Odyssey with updated electronics and kinetic light art. The advantages of Terminal 1 are mostly about the normal pub food available. Terminal 2 wants to either be your vegan friend or your upscale nouveau bistro with prices to match.
Before boarding, I used the extra time to rearrange some flights at the JetBlue counter. We are “early to the airport” sorts and the counter was not overly busy, so it was a good time to wrestle these flight changes to the mat. I am a pretty internet savvy guy and I’m happy to transact online for just about anything. As for phone commerce, I will even talk through anything to anyone at a call center in Southeast Asia. Who among us has any alternative but to work through heavily accented and script-following robo-agents? But I am enough of an experienced traveler to know that separating my and my wife’s flight records and rebooking all on different flights, but in reversed direction than the original flights, will be much more easily handled in person. Sure enough, Dean, the JetBlue counter agent got the Mosaic (JetBlue’s top loyalty club) concierge to help. Don’t you just love a good concierge? Life is so much easier when you have someone like Dean on your side.
Kim and I have decided that we will drive out to San Diego in December rather than February. The drive is ostensibly for the benefit of Cecil, our dog, who is three pounds too heavy to fly in the cabin. Thank God for that since Cecil’s temperament with strangers and strange situations would not make me look forward to that flight for 5-6 hours. The price to be paid is a cross-country road trip. Luckily, I like driving and I don’t mind the chance to be on the open road. I’ve done it before. The trick is to plan everything out in terms of route and pet-friendly hotels along the way. They should have a Green Book for dog hotels. The truth is you don’t need that anymore. Just go on Google hotels and adjust the filter to pet-friendly and any other parameters you want and use the modified Google Map to trace your intended route and voila. You can even click to book and be done with the reservations as quickly as you began. The route I’ve chosen takes us down through the Shenandoah Valley to Knoxville, Tennessee. From there we will go to Nashville for a Grand Ole’Opry lunch and through Memphis (the cotton capital of America) into Arkansas and Huckabee country (we’ll duck if we see Sarah). We will overnight in Texarkana, which is apparently in both Arkansas and Texas at once. That will leave us a whole day to cross Texas to El Paso to see what Beto might be up to. El Paso to San Diego across Arizona should be a relatively easy last day. Four driving days totaling 3,000 miles seems almost leisurely to me. I’ve done it in two and a half before. It’s forty-four hours of driving more-or-less if you can keep from too much gawking and dawdling.
I had already booked our JetBlue Mint flights to go out in December for the holidays, returning to NYC in early January. I wanted Dean to change that up for me to fly back to NYC in early January and Kim in late January, with us both returning to San Diego for permanent domicile in early February. That was not only easy for Dean to do, but we had our choice of seats (even to the extent of getting the little private single Mint suite, complete with half-door, when we flew alone). The amazing thing was that not only did this change not cost me anything in fees, but we got back a credit rebate into my JetBlue travel bank of $1,700. That would more than pay for four days travel and lodging to cross the country by car. As best I can gather, moving our flights out of the holiday season to the post-holiday season accounted for the 35% price reduction. Funny that their pricing dogma is such that they would give me cheaper flights when I would have gladly taken a straight-up trade.
I’m expecting that Kim and I will traipse back and forth to New York enough to keep our JetBlue Mosaic status going into 2020 and beyond. We’ll see, but I’m sure that with a little focus that will be a worthwhile endeavor. I’ve already estimated ten trips in 2020 and probably dropping to five in 2021. That should be enough to keep us at the front of the line at boarding (the only real benefit of a Mosaic membership I use).
The older I get, the less I seem to mind the long flight times. Today is 5:20 due to a southern route we have been mandated by the FAA controllers. In business class, where, despite the less-than-plush seats, the comfort level is quite acceptable, the movie and TV selection on JetBlue is excellent. Today I watched a docudrama on a North Sea saturated diving operation (using a bell and divers off a computer-controller dive boat) where a diver became detached in rough weather and lay at 91 meters down for 38 minutes. He survived unharmed despite having only five minutes of emergency oxygen, presumably due to frigid +4 degrees C water temperature. I can also fill in with live TV, so I needn’t miss a beat of Trump nonsense on MSNBC if I want. I might as well be in my living room, except onboard I get an attendant call button, which is quite handy if not over-used.
Any way you slice it, the trip East costs a day with time change. Westerly travel is more like half a day. I consider most of the travel time productive, even waiting around at the airport. The beauty of modern life is that with iPad and iPhone (which is literally all I need), I can be virtually in the office or at home. Between FaceTime and Zoom I might as well be there. There is no news in this for most road warriors. We are all connected all the time. I don’t even need software to speak of since the pre-package Apple tool suite works just fine for everything I need. Word processing, spreadsheets, presentations, photos, browser…it’s all there and fully populated from the Apple Cloud for $99/year. It’s not even that expensive to be fully wired in.
On our last Mint flight five days ago, a mother was walking her child through to the economy section. The child asked his mother why they didn’t sit in these nice seats. The mother replied that “these seats are just for rich people, dear.” That compares to our Tesla gull-wing door comment from a passing father to his children when he muttered so we could hear, “so unnecessary.” Kim and I use that expression all the time now to bring ourselves back to earth. We are not rich, but we might be affluent. We can afford Jetting in Mint while we have to travel a lot. In fact, I would say unequivocally, “so necessary” for now. Perhaps over time we will gravitate back to coach if we shrink a bit with age. My guess is that we will just travel less. In the meantime, pray for JetBlue and our return to Terminal 2.