0717 - Return

The OO, the entire Staff, and a small transparent ovoid have returned to tranquil (relatively) Anguilla from the giant Atlanta metrocomplex. The purpose of the trip was to insert the ovoid into the OO’s right eye, and the result was remarkable – viz (stands for videlicet, namely): immediate corrected 20/25 sight. Modern medicine is remarkable. The other eye gets done in January, since no one without a private jet would travel from AXA to ATL and back during the year-end holidays. American Airlines insists on routing all Anguilla flights via San (ugh!) Juan, where the trip is no fun. Indeed, reports are that all U.S. airports are overcrowded, flights stuffed and delayed, and airways dangerous.

Anguilla remains an oasis of calm, of course, with the phone company (C&W) not responding for 73 hours to desperate cries that the phone and Fax here were cut off during the OO’s trip. The fault operator responds that the repair crews don’t work on weekends, an apparently not on Wednesdays, Thursdays, and Fridays, either. See – they are calm.

We are offering Readers a travel tip. That is: do not send out your laundry when staying at an Atlanta Hotel. You see, at the Intercontinental where the Staff was lodged, it costs – get this – US$3.25 to have a pair of common white crew socks washed. Stiff. But, on the shelf at Walgreens (and how one yearns for a Walgreens and a Wal-Mart on Anguilla), you can buy TEN pairs of the same socks for US$6, or 60 cents a pair. So, buy new socks and take the used ones home, saving $2.65 a pair; fill your sock drawer to boot. Other savings are almost as good: a black cotton dress shirt at Target costs $17, but having it washed, ironed, and put in a plastic bag costs $8 at the hotel. So, buy new shirts made in Vietnam and they cost, net, only $9. See why it was good for the U.S. to get out of Vietnam?

Mention of Vietnam brings to mind the political situation in Atlanta. In the section where the OO stays (Buckhead), the expensive condos are continuing to rise, the fine restaurants proliferate and are always full, and, time was when the inhabitants were fierce Republicans. Now, even the fiercest GOP types are depressed and convinced that the administration is incompetent. Of course, Atlanta has a dangerous drought, the reservoirs are way down, and the price of washing socks may double unless it rains. And, somehow, this too is attributed to the W crowd. That’s not fair, but neither is the feeble response that Hillary will raise the price of clean socks.

Now, if you don’t mind returning to the subject of the airline mess, what is or are the cause or causes? First of all, as you well know, the airlines are not really well-run businesses. They usually don’t make money and often go bankrupt. The managements are much more concerned with dominating markets than with profits, or for that matter, making passengers happy. Then, the airports and the airways are mixtures of local and Federal mismanagement, and of course it costs money to build more airports (and the locals hate them) and it costs money to upgrade Federal air traffic controls, and that is not as much fun as invading Iraq, and the result is an overcrowded mess. What’s more, none of the current airports were designed to handle passenger and baggage inspections, or indeed to permit smooth flight connections. And then, somehow the free market doesn’t operate, and tickets for the popular flight times cost no more than the non-busy times. Yes, it’s a mess.

The Staff here has an answer to the air travel woes. Turn the ticket pricing over to an Atlanta hotel laundry. You’ll pay more, but you will be crisp, starched, and plastic-wrapped. Or, go via Vietnam. Send your socks to Anguilla with the savings.

Next time: Decisions [OO #718]