Recorded in the beautiful home office of Chateau’ Relaxo.
Tonight it’s the random show, which is an episode dedicated to a multitude of topics, none of which are worthy of a complete episode.
First an update on my recent road trip home from Georgia.
As a recap, the Hampton Inn Duluth, GA, required the employees to wear masks, not patrons. The break the seal sticker was still across each room’s door jamb. However, they were serving a full hot breakfast.
On the way home, we stayed at the Hilton Garden Inn Valdosta, GA, and things were a bit different. While the staff was wearing masks there was no break the seal stickers across the door. The biggest change that I experienced was Hilton’s recent decision to drop the elite breakfast program beginning July 1st.
This was Hilton’s announcement - Through the end of the year, Hilton will be offering a food and beverage credit instead of providing a “free” breakfast as a Hilton Elite member.
Here’s what I got at the Hilton Garden. $10.00 per day, and since I was traveling in tandem “we” got $20.00.
The positive, you can use it anywhere on the property, which is nice. The negative is $10.00 at a Hilton Garden Inn won’t cover the cost of breakfast.
During both stays, I was presented with a “To our valued guest” letter outlining housekeeping procedures, the towel refreshment policy, and asking that we place any trash in the hallway for daily pickup.
On the heels of that, Hilton might be saying goodbye to housekeeping while they try to keep 2019 room pricing in place as they spend less. Permanently getting rid of daily housekeeping has the travelverse interwebs whipped into a frenzy. So much so that road warriors are threatening to leave Hilton for Holiday Inn, and the reason is that they offer both free breakfast and daily housekeeping.
You had to know that I would have a take on this.
First, one of the reasons that I stay at Hilton Garden Inn, properties, is the free cooked to order breakfast. I’ll take the $10.00 credit and use it to pay for the last beer of the night.
Second, housekeeping, are you seriously going to brand-hop over the fact that there’s no one to clean up after you every day? At home do you use a new clean towel every day? Do you empty the trash cans every single day?
If you want to migrate to IHG, aka Holiday Inn, consider this.
IHG’s Spire Elite level requires 75 nights in a calendar year or collecting 75,000 elite qualifying points. With less than 25 weeks left in the year, that’s three nights per week.
If you want, you can buy your way into their InterContinental Ambassador level for only $200.00.
If you want to brand hop don’t do it mid-year, wait till January 1st.
I dare to ask this, but Can Women ‘Hack’ Disney Parks for Free Shirts by Showing Their Boobs?
Amanda DiMeo posted on TikTok her ‘hack’ for scoring a free shirt at the Walt Disney World resort theme parks.
Here’s the skinny. According to Amanda, show some underboob and you get a free Disney shirt of your choice. Amanda recently entered the park and Disney wrote her a ticket, possibly an under boob ticket. Next, Amanda converted that ticket into a free shirt valued at $75.00.
When I first saw this my BS meter went off so I headed to Snopes, and this just might be legit as I saw at least one other person supporting Amanda’s claim.
The internet is a funny thing, as it has a way of reminding you of your past. Case and point my 2017 blog post, “Why Working Remotely Is Better Than Working In An Office Full Of People” just showed up in my memories. 2017, if I’d only had a crystal ball.
Let’s see what has changed in the last four years.
IN 2017 I wrote - For most of my career, I’ve worked remotely, even before it was “the thing to do“. 2020, If only I had a crystal ball.
Now I’ve always had an actual office with a door and everything, I just don’t spend a lot of time in it. Normally my office is an airport, hotel, customer site, rest stop, and every so often my home. 2021, More often than not my home.
A valuable lesson I learned early on, is that nothing good happens in the office. In 2021, still true.
First, I’m not anti-social, far from it. I have seven followers on Instagram, twelve people follow my tweets and there are twenty-one hundred connections on MySpace. Not to brag, but you could say that I’m a social dynamo. Long before TikTok.
So what are some of the advantages of working remotely?
Fewer Interruptions – Monday 9:00 AM meeting. You head in fueled on caffeine and the prayer that no one asks you anything requiring more than a yes or no answer. 9:45 AM the meeting ends with an agreement to meet again, or as we like to say, “Circle back around” later in the week. You head back to the cubicle farm and on the way, Brad from finance grabs you for one of his infamous “Do you have minute?” questions. 10:20 AM you’re 80 minutes into your day and already behind. Plan for eleven more of these types of interruptions before Friday. Are you glad you’re now a remote worker?
You Spend Less Money – Working remotely allows you to save money! WHAT…… Yes! Grace won’t be hitting you up because her son is selling wrapping paper for his last-place football team. Mike the Cub Scout leader won’t be looking for you to load up on those holiday tins of popcorn. By the way Cub Scouts Council everyone throws the buttered popcorn section out, it sucks, give us cheese and caramel. Don’t get me started with Janice and her colorful signup sheet for Girl Scout Cookies. When you work remotely, none of that happens. In 2021 the internet might have replaced these face-to-face interactions.
It’s Healthier – Ever walk into the break room looking for that second hit of caffeine only to find a dozen Krispy Kreme’s? Or a box of Dunkin Donut Munchkins? How about a mid-morning pizza? Picture this, it’s Monday morning you’re two hours into your weekly diet, this time it’ll be different. You walk into the office only to find that Jim’s wife decided to “surprise” the office with a pan of warm Slutty Brownies. Oh well, there’s always next week. My doctor once thanked me for working remotely. In 2021 every trip to the bathroom requires a quick trip through the kitchen.
Committee Free – If you’re not there grazing at the cubicle farm you can’t be “nominated” to be on a committee. That means no Birthday Committee, no Picnic Committee, no Holiday Party Committee. Now if you want to appear to be a team player you can volunteer to be on a committee. Since most committees need meetings your services are useless, but you’ll be a hero for volunteering. In 2021 we now have Zoom & TEAMS at our disposal.
No Drama – This can add years to your life. Inner-office drama can be like a wood rasp on your nerves. From the passive-aggressive refrigerator notes to wondering who the hell took your stapler, it’s exhausting. Many years ago, we had an incident, a restroom incident, and it was the women’s restroom. The women’s restroom had three stalls, and at the time, we had three women working with us. It seems that each of the women had claimed their own stall, which seemed all well in good. Good until one of the women went into one of the other two stalls after a hearty lunch….. I’ll let you put the rest of the story together. The result was a stream of e-mails and trips for all three to human resources. Honestly, in 2021 there is less workplace drama. This was recently brought to the surface after one of the Chateau’ Residents got their first “corporate” job. They had been employed only a few weeks when someone in the office, someone that they had never really interacted with, had a birthday. We all know what that means, a $5.00 contribution to the office birthday present pool. They were perplexed as to what to do…. My suggestion was that $5.00 was a cheap entry into the office inner-circle. Looking back across my career we had an office administrator that was in charge of not only collecting the birthday funds but she was charged with ordering the cake and purchasing the group gift. After a year or two, someone did the math and figured out that $5.00 from 33 people netted $165.00.
While working remotely has advantages, it also has disadvantages; often you’re the last to know things. For instance, you never want to be called to the office and they say, “Make sure to bring your company-issued laptop and company car keys“.
Hurricane Elsa, Let it go. Early July and Florida has already had its first Hurricane, a Cat 1 but a hurricane never-the-less. Side note - a tropical storm has winds between 39 and 72 mph. A category 1 hurricane is when the winds reach 74 mph.
A hurricane regardless of its classification produces two things, first, it’s a gentle reminder that we live in Florida, and it’s hurricane season. The other allows for all the amateur weather prognosticators to tell us that a hurricane this early in the season is an indicator that we’re in store for a busy hurricane season….. Whatever.
Hurricanes are weird, you can have up to weeks’ notice of impending doom, and all you can do is wait, and listen to the news.
During the week leading up to the impending doom, Floridians tend to experience a variety of things, such as -
You will see meme after meme of Jim Cantore. All have the common theme of “You know it’s about to get real when Jim Cantore shows up”.
You will stock up on booze and snacks, it makes sense, three days later you will have eaten most of the snacks and drink most of the booze
You’ll rush to make sure your generator is in top shape. You should’ve done that in February, but you didn’t.
The Nextdoor app will completely embrace the impending doom replacing the normal posts of -
Animal spotting - coyote, bear, etc.
Gunshots or fireworks?
Door-to-door scammers. Again, duh.
Dirt bikes and quads on public roads.
When it comes to hurricane prep the worst is that one neighbor who begins boarding his house up 5 days before the predicted landfall. In 2018 when neighbor McNeighborly began prepping I immediately felt I should be doing something so I went to Home Depot and bought batteries, a couple of lanterns, and an AM radio. None of which have ever been opened.
Back to Elsa, she rolled North through Florida on July 6th & 7th, the CEO and I were headed south back into Florida on July 6th & 7th. We had a planned stop in Valdosta the night of the 6th and took advantage of one last night free of kids and dogs.
At this point, we knew the storm was going to bypass O-Town and we predicted that we’d have a three or four-hour drive back home through the rain. That prediction came true. Elsa
During dinner, the CEO asked this question, “If an approaching hurricane is going to be catastrophic will a hotel comp your stay?” The answer is yes & no or no & yes.
In the case of Elsa on July 5th, President Biden approved an Emergency Declaration for Florida.
Not all of Florida, but 15 of the 67 counties. This declaration allows FEMA to coordinate all disaster relief efforts focused on alleviating the hardship and suffering caused by the emergency on the local population. FEMA is tasked with negotiating and providing vouchers for hotel rooms as well as other items during and after the disaster.
Outside of that, the private sector will oftentimes step up as well. In 2018 Hurricane Florence moved up the east coast. Airbnb offered up their OpenHomes Program which has found temporary housing for over 50,000 people. Both the Atlanta and Charlotte Motor Speedways opened up their onsite campgrounds. And many hotels provided greatly reduced rooms.
Florida airports took note of the storm with Tampa International closing to commercial flights at 5 p.m. July 6th and reopening the next day.
Airlines also posted travel alerts for July 5th - July 7th.
Delta, Southwest, American Airlines, JetBlue, and Frontier Airlines issued alerts for Fort Myers, Tampa, and Sarasota, and Bradenton.
United Airlines went with eight airports
And Air Canada completely missed the mark with travel with alerts for Fort Lauderdale and Orlando.
One to never miss a financial opportunity Disney added Hurricane Meal Kits to the Menu of Select Walt Disney World Resort Hotel Restaurants
One of the adult kits includes a bagel and cream cheese, yogurt, cereal, and a small low-fat milk, fresh fruit, and simply orange juice for $8.
The other adult kit is $10 and has a turkey and lettuce wrap, fresh fruit, carrots, chips, chocolate chip cookie, and large Dasani water.
Not the greatest value on the planet, but you’d never get that much food inside the park for $8.00 or $10.00, besides if Elsa hadith, you could’ve had a couple of meals for a twenty-dollar bill.
Thankfully Elsa didn’t leave a trail of destruction, and by Thursday Florida was back to normal, meth, old people, exotic cars, and plastic surgery.
A recent View From The Wing post I saw was - My 5 Biggest Travel Mistakes And Mishaps
Author Gary Leff listed his -
Showing up at the airport in the afternoon for a morning Sydney – Los Angeles flight
Snuck into a United Airlines club lounge when my ticket would have granted me access, only I didn’t realize it. That was over 20 years ago and I still feel rather dumb for it.
Showed up at the Novotel Bangkok hotel only to learn I’d made a reservation for the following month
Drove to the wrong Hyatt in Miami out of sheer habit, I’d simply gotten used to staying at the Hyatt Regency Coral Gables.
Let my AAdvantage miles expire when I was a teenager.
This got me thinking with over two decades of business travel what are my 5 biggest -
Using my company-issued credit card for the first 5 years of traveling.
Letting multiple free flights on AirTran expire.
Flying into Buffalo International Airport but booking my rental at Buffalo Niagara Falls Airport.
On a flight back to Atlanta, we were diverted to Columbia, SC, and I decided not to get off the plane to grab a rental for the three-hour drive home. 8 hours later we landed back in Atlanta, GA.
The accidental rental car in Nashville, TN.
Question of the day, Are you a pizza expert?
When ordering pizza, other than having the password for the website are you the one they ask for recommendations?
If so, I’ve got a deal for you. Here’s your chance to be the “Head of pizza” for your state.
Sponsored by the app SLICE - Slice is looking for 50 state representatives to join Slice’s P.I.E. Society — that’s the Promotion of Independents Everywhere — as their state’s resident Head of Pizza.
Requirements -
Maybe you were guest of honor at your delivery guy’s wedding
You’re passionate about your community and supporting small businesses
There are a few more, but it comes down to liking pizza.
Responsibilities -
Eat pizza
Visit and/or order from new pizza shops every week
Capture content that shares the unique story behind the pizza
Evangelize your state’s best pizzerias
Qualifications - along the lines of.
Minimum of 10 years experience eating pizza
Knowledge, to the half-second, of how to microwave leftover pizza to perfection
Understanding of which pizza styles should be eaten folded and unfolded
Here’s what you get -
Year’s supply of free pizza (not all at once)
Content creation kit to document your pizza journey
$500 toward travel throughout the year
A whole slew of Slice gear to show your pizza pride
Tonight we covered:
Changes at Hilton
Hurricane Elsa
My top 5 travel mistakes
And your chance to be your state “Head of Pizza”
As I told you this was going to be a random show, I hope you enjoyed it.
If you want detailed show notes, links and pictures head over to podpage.com/travel-stories/
Leave a message on Anchor, or shoot me an email at TravelFrick@gmail.com.
As I always say, travel safe, stay safe, and thanks for listening.
Thanks for listening.
The Random Show - Travel Stories, Episode 145