Tales & Trails of a Traveling Wiseguy

Italy Travelog #6
Rome - Sunday, 25 May 2025, 10:40am

This morning we've headed out on what will be a busy day touring Rome, much of it on foot— the way we like to tour. We started with a walk from our hotel down to the nearest metro station, about a mile away. We could've taken a hotel shuttle, free, to the center of town. But as we still would've had to take a taxi from there to the Colosseum we opted to walk to the train and take the train to the Colosseum station. Riding transit is also part of how we like to tour. We like to see the city like locals. Plus, the train was just 1.50€ each, less than a short taxi ride from the shuttle stop would've cost.



The walk down to the Cipro station was fun. We saw a lot of residential Rome on our way down the hill. One thing that's interesting is how winding and jumbled together everything is. And this is a part of Rome that was built post-1950, so it's not like the streets are based on ancient cow paths. And while the streets zigzag back and forth climbing the hill our hotel sits atop, there are numerous sidewalks/stairs for pedestrians only that shortcut the route down to the train station.

It's interesting to see how close together everything is here. And the cars parked along the street are tiny. An American-style compact car— there are some of them here—looks huge by comparison. Another interesting bit we saw is that there are apparently community trash cans. Every block or so there's a line of dumpsters with labels for trash, recyclables, food waste, etc. It looks like people walk their own trash out to the community bins. That makes trash pickup simpler— and reduces the clutter of every house and apartment building having its own trashcans near the street.



From the Cipro station we rode a train into downtown and changed at the Termini station, pictured above. From there it was just a few stops south to the Colosseum. Ah, how much easier it is to get around Rome than in ancient times!



The Colosseum is right across the street from the metro stop.

We arrived early for our 10:30 tour so we walked around to see the outside of the Colosseum from different angles.



I also used different cameras. For today I'm carrying both my Fujifilm dedicated camera, which captures beautiful, rich colors as in the photo immediately above, as well as my always-in-my-pocked iPhone.

Part of our reason for walking around different sides of the Colosseum was we were trying to find where we were supposed to meet our guide. Apple Maps and Google Maps both sent us on wild goose chases to find the where "Colosseum Plaza 33" was. Different wild goose chases. It turned out our guide was meeting us right at the metro stop. There's a tiny "33" stone above the metro exit. It would've been nice for them to tell us, "Meet us right outside the metro station" before 10:35am.

NYC Quickie Travelog #3
Midtown Manhattan - Sun, 23 Mar 2025, 10pm

In my previous blog I wrote about the long road to New York today. Well, I was less than half way there I wrote that. I still had a connecting flight from Denver then dealing with getting across town.

My connecting flight from Denver was 30 minutes late. We were all set up to leave on time but then one of the crew was MIA. We lost 15 minutes waiting for a replacement to be sent over, then another 15 minutes because the plane was full and there were several "spinners" in the aisle. Well, at least it was my connecting flight, not the originating.

We landed at La Guardia airport. Choosing LGA was a matter of tradeoffs, as I noted in my previous blog. Immediately upon planning a trip to NYC I considered the tradeoffs of which airport to fly through:

• EWR has plenty of nonstops ex-SFO on my preferred airline, United, but is the least convenient for getting to upper Midtown. Also, UA flights had only middle seats left 6 days out.


• JFK has nonstops on other airlines, but I'd have to sit in a crappy seat. Transit options are middling.


• LGA is the closest airport but it'd require a connection. OTOH, my preferred carrier Southwest flies there, and I knew I could get a good seat with them. And it's the most convenient transit-wise.

So I chose LGA. And how convenient is it, transit-wise? From LGA one can ride the Q70 bus, for free, to the Jackson Heights station, and from there ride one of many subway lines heading to different places in Manhattan, including the 7 train which stops at Grand Central, 4 blocks from my hotel.

So, I took the Q70 to the 7 train and walked the last 4 blocks, right? Haha, no. It's freaking cold in NYC this evening. I did not pack an appropriate jacket for this. I didn't want to stand outside in the feels-like-34 weather waiting for buses and trains and hoofing it. So I called a ride with Lyft. For nearly $60 it's an expensive tradeoff. My company can afford it for having me travel late on Sunday.

But first I had dinner. In the airport. Yes, I chose to eat in the airport! It was another tradeoff. LGA is actually not the badly outdated shithole it was when I was traveling to NYC frequently in the late 00s. Now it's renovated and modern and beautiful. I saw an appetizing restaurant there so I figured I might as well eat while it's convenient— and still well before 9pm. See, that's the other half of the tradeoff. If I'd gone to my hotel first I'd have been eating after 9pm and I'd have been scrounging to find a place nearby that's open late on Sunday night.

This morning I got an email that struck me as strange right off the bat. Lyft was advertising to me that I should use their service for my commute. "WTF?" was my immediate thought. "Hiring a ride to/from work every day would be expensive!" ...Not that I actually have a commute right now. I've been 100% remote the past 5-6 years and partly remote another 5 years before that. But I've also had plenty of in-office jobs, and I've both driven and used transit for commuting, so I have a strong sense of how (un)realistic this is.

People who read my blog regularly should know that when it comes to a proposition like "Does it make sense to use ride share services for commuting!" I don't just say Yes or No and move on. If I think it's a plausible idea I'll do a back-of-the-envelope calculation to be sure. And even if I think the idea is absolutely nuts I'll still work out the math just to demonstrate how cracked it is. 😅 So here's some math— and some thinking about the situations where ride-sharing for a commute might make sense.

My company's office, the one I was officially de-assigned from back in, like, 2018 in a cost-cutting move— is 10 miles away. A quick check on ride-share apps shows the fare to get there right now is about $24. Let's call that $27 with a tip. But that's mid-day. I could imagine commute hours trips easily running $30-35 with traffic and demand pricing. That's $60-70/day.

Spending $60-70 per day on a commute is a lot. If you do that every day, let's say 20 working days (average) per month, that's around $1,300 per month or $15-16k per year.

This reminds me of the calculations I did when I was starting my first professional job. I worked out that the costs of taking transit (which really wasn't designed for the commute I had) were higher than the costs of owning a car. And yes, I considered not just the monthly cost of a car loan but also insurance, maintenance, and gas. My calculations showed that the transit costs I avoided paid for all my car costs— meaning I had the car for leisure use nights and weekends basically for just the cost of extra gas I needed to buy.

Indeed, "It's cheaper just to drive" has been the answer for most commutes I've had since then. And those have ranged anywhere from just over a mile each way to nearly 40 miles each way. The one thing that has swung the needle in favor of transit versus driving was when there was no free parking at the office. That would change up the calculation of driving vs. ride-sharing, too. For example, one of my customers says that parking near his downtown SF office is $20 even in the company-sponsored garage. Though rather than motivate him to use transit or ride-sharing it actually just motivates him to limit his in-office workdays to one a month.

Another thing that could swing the needle in favor of ride-sharing is if you don't go to the office every day. Suppose you need to be in-office 2 days a week. Then the example commute I described above averages $130/week, $520/month, and $6,200/year. That starts to compare favorably with the costs of owning a car.... Though if you don't own a car you've probably got to add on a lot of ride-share trips for other things such as grocery shopping, visiting friends, and occasional dining out. I don't see many ways ride-sharing to work makes sense for people living in areas that make driving a practical necessity.

Thanksgiving Travelog #5
Washington, DC - Sun, 19 Nov 2023. 9:45am.

Today Hawk and I are visiting the Holocaust Museum in Washington, DC. Our tickets aren't until 10am, though, when the museum first opens, and we arrived in town at 9:30am. That means there's time for an impromptu tour of Washington, DC!

After passing by the Pentagon and seeing the Jefferson Memorial and the Washington Monument as we drove into town via I-395 and the 14th Street Bridge, we parked on Independence Ave just off 14th Street. It's half a block from the museum and not much further from various other things....



This view of the Washington Monument isn't from our parking space, but it is close. We crossed to the west side of 14th Street and took a few steps up onto the grass. Yes, one of the cool things about Washington, DC is that lots of iconic places are practically right next to each other.



As you walk north on 14th Street from Independence Ave you cross the National Mall. This is a huge lawn bookended by the Capitol to the east and... frankly, the Lincoln Memorial to the west. The Washington Monument is somewhere in the middle. Across the Mall from 14th Street you can pretty easily see the Capitol. It may look close but it's actually not. It's over a mile across the lawn to the building.



We concluded our mini-tour by looping back to our parked car to stow our heavy jackets, figuring we won't want to drag them around inside the museum. The pic above is of Independence Ave, where we parked. (Ours is one of the vehicles on the right.) I included this photo to show just how close to downtown we were able to park.

Street parking is free in Washington on Sundays. It's a policy designed specifically to encourage tourism. Of course, a wide-open street like this will be filled up by later in the day.

Choosing an early time for our tickets was part of a plan to keep things simple. By leaving relatively early in the morning we completed the 24 mile drive into the city with no traffic slowdowns. And we were able to park right away, no circling the blocks, just steps from the museum. This is so much better than the weekday travel default of parking at a satellite location on the Metro Rail system and riding a train into town. Plus, having the car with us makes it easy to visit some friends who live about 10 miles north of here for dinner this evening.

Today I had a business trip to San Francisco. ...Okay, it's not a business trip so much as a business drive. Downtown SF is 40 miles from my home in Silicon Valley. But as little as I travel for business anymore compared to years ago, driving to SF for a 3 hour long customer meeting felt like a bit of a work adventure.

Drive or Transit?

Initially I planned on getting to SF by taking public transit. From home I can walk to Caltrain one mile away, ride Caltrain to Millbrae Station, transfer there to BART, and ride BART into downtown SF with a station less than 1/2 mile from my client's office. But I'd have had to catch a 6:57am train, which would've meant leaving home at 6:40am, in time to meet my customer 10-15 minutes ahead of our meeting allowing time to get badged in and set up in the meeting room.

Leaving home at 6:40am seemed kind of... ugh... so my idea #2 was to car-pool with Hawk to the Fremont BART station near her office. We could leave home at 7 in plenty of time to catch a BART green line train that would get me to downtown SF with no transfers. Idea #2 seemed like a plan. But then Hawk's plans changed and she needed to work from home today. That left me with plan #3: drive.

The Last Mile Takes 20 Minutes

I left home at 7am sharp, figuring on up to 90 minutes of drive time plus 15 for parking to meet the client at his front desk at 8:45am. Good news: because I left early, the first 39 miles of the trip took way less than 90 minutes. I had exited the freeway and was on city streets in SoMa in 45 minutes. Bad news: the last mile of the trip took another 20 minutes. And it would have taken even longer if I didn't commit two traffic offenses right at the end. 😳

The last mile also would have taken longer pre-pandemic. In 2019 driving in SoMa was like trying to drive through a street carnival. There were so many office workers in crosswalks that you basically couldn't make a turn anywhere. Oh, I'm not talking about a left turn; those are illegal almost everywhere in SoMa already. No, I'm talking about a right turn. At a green light. Maybe one car would manage to turn right per cycle because the crosswalks were always full.

Parking: The Process is the Punishment

The company I was visited, a major tech company in San Francisco, has a crazy parking process at its site. The garage requires badge access to enter. Does that mean it's only for employees? No, visitors are welcome to use it— and pay $12/hour for it— but they need to get a visitor badge first. ...Which mean I had to park, to go in to get a badge, to come back out to my car, to enter the garage to park. Fortunately there was a loading zone I could use. That was one of those two traffic offenses I mentioned, though. 😰

The New Normal: Far Fewer People in Offices

When I met my client we made smalltalk about how SoMa is way less crowded that it used to be. That "Last mile takes 20 minutes" problem I mentioned above? It would have been twice as long in 2019. Credit the pandemic to making the streets actually driveable again. Even though the pandemic is over, it ushered in a new normal. With office vacancy rates at 40% in SF and employees still preferring to work remotely, there are way fewer people coursing through SoMa on a workday.

We also chatted about return-to-office (RTO) policies. His employer, a major tech company, announced over a year ago it was instituting an RTO plan. At the time it was a transitional, three days a week plan. Many other companies announced similar 3-day plans and it became kind of an industry standard. Yet the reality more than a year later is that his company quietly backpedaled on the plan. Employees are asked to average just one day a week in-office, and even that is not enforced. He personally rarely works in the office. And he was the only person in-office for the meeting. Ten of his colleagues joined remotely on the videoconference.

As I'm flying to Detroit today I'm also traveling down Memory Lane. That's because when I started traveling regularly for work back in the mid 00s my first trip was to Detroit. (Yeah, I know, lucky me. 😂) What's changed about travel, particularly air travel, between then and now? Here are Five Things:

1) Driving to the airport. In the mid 00s I began nearly every air trip by driving to the airport— driving my own car, parking it in an airport lot or 3rd party lot nearby, and riding a shuttle to the terminal. Taking a taxi both ways was as expensive as parking for 3-4 days, and taking a taxi to the airport generally meant 30+ minutes of wasted time as the taxi dispatchers could never accurately predict when a driver would be available or how many times he would take wrong turns driving to the address. It was still several years before ride-hailing services like Uber and Lyft were created. Nowadays I almost never park a car at the airport. Lyft and Uber are cheaper than parking fees, and their modern technology makes it easy and quick to get curb-to-curb service.

2) Air stairs at SJC Terminal 3. Back in the mid 00s SJC Airport was still a bit of a fossil. The original terminal, renumbered Terminal 3, was an older, ground-floor level building. It didn't have jet bridges. Boarding a jet meant walking outside across the tarmac and then ascending stairs to the aircraft's hatch. It was primitive... but also special. Who else boarded/disembarked by air stairs? The President, the Queen, the Beatles. I'd always pause at the top and imagine waving to the cameras.

3) Newspapers and magazines. Back in the mid 00s I'd try to always have a newspaper and a magazine or two to read while sitting in the terminal and aboard the aircraft. Although I had a laptop computer, airport wifi wasn't yet a thing. ...And when it did start becoming more common in airports a few years later it generally pay-per-use. Ubiquitous free wifi was still years off.

4) Jets were not full. In the mid 00s travel was still in recession in the aftermath of the Dot Com implosion and 9/11. As a flyer that meant usually the center seat in a three-across row would be empty. Through most of the teens flights went out full or pretty much full. There was another travel recession in 2020 due to Coronavirus, of course, but since last year jets have been flying full most places I go.

5) Renting a car. I almost always rented a car on business trips. Similar to item 1, taxis were not a reasonable way to get around, nor was commuter rail, except in a few major cities. And even when I traveled to major cities, it was rare that I was working or staying downtown. Most of the time I was at IT campuses out in the suburbs.

Aboard WN1855 at Oakland Airport (OAK)
Thu, 13 May 2021. 7:30pm.

Today's a day of planes, trains, and automobiles... and shoes. Not only am I using all three types of vehicle transportation today— a train to Hawk's office, driving from there to Oakland airport, then flying to Spokane, Washington— but I'm also burning shoe leather. I started today's journey by walking to the train station. It's almost a mile from home.

BTW the train was just about empty this afternoon:



Pre-pandemic this train would've been SRO.

Alas our flight this evening isn't as spacious. The agent says it's almost 90% full. The chance of Hawk and I sharing a row with an empty middle seat seems poor, so we've decided to split. She's up front, having taken a medical pre-board; I used my A-01 boarding card to snag an exit row aisle seat. So far it's actually comfortable... though there's still a 2 hour flight in front of us.

Once we land in Spokane we're still not there. We'll bed down tonight in the town of Colville, in remote northeastern Washington about 90 minutes by car north of Spokane. Why not stay in Spokane where there are nice hotels instead of driving late at night? Driving out to Colville tonight positions us better position for hiking tomorrow. There are a few waterfalls up there we'd like to visit, and getting a leg of driving out of the way tonight before leaves more daylight Friday to enjoy the great outdoors.

Gotta go now; aircraft doors are closing momentarily. For the first time in 448 days it's time to fly!