The Long Road to New York
Mar. 23rd, 2025 07:13 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
canyonwalkerNYC Quickie Travelog #2
DEN Airport - Sun, 23 Mar 2025, 2pm
It's been a long road to New York City today, a longer road than it had to be... but maybe easier?
Traveling nowadays is always a series of tradeoffs. The most direct flight coast-to-coast? Stupid expensive. Or only middle seats in steerage left. Or both. The next most direct flight? Nonstop to EWR. Which is fine if you're staying in New Jersey, but to upper midtown Manhattan it's 4 trains on 4 different systems. Or 3 trains plus walking 2km. Or $100++ for Uber/Lyft. So I chose to fly Southwest to LGA. Which means taking a connection. On the plus side, my Southwest elite status and Southwest's open seating policy— soon to be RIP— guarantees I can get a decent seat. And a midday connection in Denver means I can eat lunch at a real table and choose something tastier than an airline snak-pak. See? Tradeoffs.
Then there's the tradeoff of departure and arrival times. Flying west to east already makes scheduling hard, given the 3 hour timezone change. When flying with a connection the choices are often leave stupid early, arrive stupid late, or both. I found one itinerary that wasn't ridiculous on either end— depart 9:20am, arrive 8:05pm— but it meant hauling up to OAK airport, 40 miles from home.
Then there's ride-hailing services. Those have become a tradeoff all unto themselves. You want sneaky fees and shell games finding a driver? More and more, those are standard. When I hailed a ride at 7am this morning the app spun for a few minutes then assigned me a driver 12 minutes away. Then that ride disappeared. "We're looking for a new driver," the app told me. Then, "We're still looking for a new driver." My estimated pickup time telescoped to 20 minutes past when I first pressed the "Buy" button.
Fuck that, I decided and woke Hawk up to drive me to OAK. Fortunately for her this didn't come out of the blue. We discussed last night the possibility of me needing her to give me a ride at 7:15am. Yes, that's how enshittified Uber and Lyft have become; that I now routinely make a Plan B for "What to do if Uber and Lyft are useless."
Well, I got to OAK in good time, no thanks to anyone but my gracious spouse. And the flight left on time, so here I am in DEN, as planned, with time to eat lunch at a real time and without my elbows pressed in against my sides. OTOH it's still hours to NYC, and I'm not going to get to my hotel until at least 9pm local time— and even that only if things continue to go (mostly) right. Tradeoffs.
Update: MOAR tradeoffs in traveling to NYC!
DEN Airport - Sun, 23 Mar 2025, 2pm
It's been a long road to New York City today, a longer road than it had to be... but maybe easier?
Traveling nowadays is always a series of tradeoffs. The most direct flight coast-to-coast? Stupid expensive. Or only middle seats in steerage left. Or both. The next most direct flight? Nonstop to EWR. Which is fine if you're staying in New Jersey, but to upper midtown Manhattan it's 4 trains on 4 different systems. Or 3 trains plus walking 2km. Or $100++ for Uber/Lyft. So I chose to fly Southwest to LGA. Which means taking a connection. On the plus side, my Southwest elite status and Southwest's open seating policy— soon to be RIP— guarantees I can get a decent seat. And a midday connection in Denver means I can eat lunch at a real table and choose something tastier than an airline snak-pak. See? Tradeoffs.
Then there's the tradeoff of departure and arrival times. Flying west to east already makes scheduling hard, given the 3 hour timezone change. When flying with a connection the choices are often leave stupid early, arrive stupid late, or both. I found one itinerary that wasn't ridiculous on either end— depart 9:20am, arrive 8:05pm— but it meant hauling up to OAK airport, 40 miles from home.
Then there's ride-hailing services. Those have become a tradeoff all unto themselves. You want sneaky fees and shell games finding a driver? More and more, those are standard. When I hailed a ride at 7am this morning the app spun for a few minutes then assigned me a driver 12 minutes away. Then that ride disappeared. "We're looking for a new driver," the app told me. Then, "We're still looking for a new driver." My estimated pickup time telescoped to 20 minutes past when I first pressed the "Buy" button.
Fuck that, I decided and woke Hawk up to drive me to OAK. Fortunately for her this didn't come out of the blue. We discussed last night the possibility of me needing her to give me a ride at 7:15am. Yes, that's how enshittified Uber and Lyft have become; that I now routinely make a Plan B for "What to do if Uber and Lyft are useless."
Well, I got to OAK in good time, no thanks to anyone but my gracious spouse. And the flight left on time, so here I am in DEN, as planned, with time to eat lunch at a real time and without my elbows pressed in against my sides. OTOH it's still hours to NYC, and I'm not going to get to my hotel until at least 9pm local time— and even that only if things continue to go (mostly) right. Tradeoffs.
Update: MOAR tradeoffs in traveling to NYC!
