Hey Driver, Please Hang Up

How often have you been a passenger in a taxi, bus or trolley when the driver has whipped out a cell phone and started yakking? I’ve seen it rather a lot lately.

The issue is getting some attention after 49 people suffered minor injuries when a trolley in Boston rear-ended another trolley. Police said the driver ran a red light while texting his girlfriend on his cell phone. The Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority now forbids drivers from even carrying cell phones on the job.

In another recent case, the Peter Pan Bus Lines suspended a driver after a passenger took video of him tearing tickets and talking on a cell phone while driving between Boston and New York. The video is posted on YouTube.

On my recent Peter Pan bus trip, the driver didn’t touch a cell phone. I was sitting right behind him, so I would have seen it. But I have seen drivers answer phones on other buses, and then carry on brief conversations. Taxis drivers have been worse, some of them driving aggressively with one hand on the wheel, one hand on the phone and the mind on who know’s what.

I wish all public transit drivers (and private transit drivers, for that matter) could be trusted to use a cell phone only on breaks, so that they could enjoy the convenience of a conversation with the family at lunchtime or a text message from a friend. But until we can be sure of  that, I think the MBTA has it right. No cell phones in the driver’s seat, at all.

Kauai’s Hanalei Bay Named Best Beach

Dr. Stephen Leatherman, who releases a Top 10 list of U.S. beaches annually, has chosen Hanalei Bay on the Hawaiian island of Kauai this year, the Associated Press reports.

Coincidentally, I was there just last week. If you click on the photo below, you can see some more of my pictures from the bay:

Hanalei Pier

The annual beach award is a little bit contrived. Previous winners are retired so that a new beach can be named each year. It’s all for a good cause — to raise awareness and support for beach conservation.

Hanalei Bay is an excellent choice, a beautiful two-mile stretch of sand with minimal development. My husband dislikes the concrete pier at one end of the beach, but I enjoy walking out on it.

I made a trip to Hanalei Bay one of my top priorities when I got to Kauai last week. When I arrived I found people swimming long-distance across the bay, fishing on the pier, surf paddling, sailing, doing tai-chi on the beach. Yet the bay is so big it never seems crowded.

I walked from one end of the bay to the other, stopped to do a yoga lesson with help from my iPod, swam and soaked in the placid, clear Pacific and swam across the gentle, refreshing Hanalei River. It was truly idyllic.

Pilot Pay Issue Is No Surprise

The astonishing idea that you might get what you pay for in airline pilots, as in so many other things, has hit the mainstream.

It is a bit irksome, however, to read the suggestion that the Colgan Air crash in Buffalo somehow revealed a hidden truth. Pilots earning $23,900 a year! Who knew?

Plenty of people knew. And many were writing about it, notable among them Liz Fedor of the Minneapolis Star-Tribune, who wrote in July 2007 about the poor pay of regional airline pilots, and Patrick Smith, the Ask  the Pilot columnist at salon.com, who has written extensively and incisively on the subject.

Just a few months ago, Capt. Chesley “Sully” Sullenberger of Hudson River splash-landing fame warned of the consquences of inadequate pilot pay.

Why weren’t we listening?

AA Pilot May Need AA

An American Airlines pilot has been arrested at Heathrow after failing a breathalyzer test, which of course means more headline fun for the British press:

Drunk airline pilot ’4 times over limit’

Apologies for the delay to your flight, the pilot is drunk 

For a little context, Terry Maxon at The Dallas Morning News’ Airline Biz Blog has a neat wrapup of aviation-related drunkenness.

Videos Make Fun Of Cleveland, With A Swipe At Detroit

A couple of spoofs of Cleveland tourism ads are getting some attention on YouTube. The first one invites visitors to “come and look at both of our buildings:”

The follow-up video declares that Cleveland’s main export is “crippling depression,” and takes a swipe at Detroit. (If this was an attempt to incite a smackdown, it’s not working, reports The Detroit News.)

I’ll Remember This Alamo

When I picked up a Jeep I rented from Alamo for a week on Kauai, I got such an apocalyptic hard sell for the collision-damage waiver that I’ll hesitate to rent from Alamo again.

Read the rest of this entry »

Beaches Want To Be Free

A little give and take along a right of way to Secret Beach in Kilauea.

For the past six days I’ve been going to the beach, all over Kauai.

I  drive up, park, get out of the car and hit the sand. There is no admission charge and no parking fee — ever. Hawaii is like that. Even where there are no public parking lots or bathrooms, public access trails are well-maintained.

A woman I know who’s lived here all her life said she was astonished when she went to California and found that people have to pay to go to the beach. In New England, too, there are charges to use the local, state and national beaches in the summer.

But what if there was no charge? What if we did as Hawaii does, and maintained parking areas and facilities for all residents and visitors? No private beaches. No fees.

Wouldn’t that be good for all of us, residents, tourists, business people?

go! Is No Aloha

A bankruptcycourt judge has blocked Mesa Air Group from renaming its go! subsidiary Aloha, the Honolulu Star-Bulletin reports.

“Mesa succeeded in inflicting great harm, not only upon the Aloha corporate entities, but also upon thousands of Aloha employees and their families,” Judge Lloyd King  wrote. … “It is difficult to imagine a court overlooking what Mesa has done and putting its stamp of approval on Mesa’s subsidiary, go!, becoming Aloha.”

In other words: I knew Aloha Airlines, I flew Aloha Airlines and you are no Aloha Airlines.

A price war with go! in the Hawaiian interisland market is widely blamed for driving Aloha out of business. That bitter history is one reason to block the appropriation of the name.

Another is that allowing go! to pretend to Aloha’s 80 years of interisland flying experience would be misleading to the public. As a pilot recently pointed out to me about commuter airlines flying under the brands of the major airlines, customers have a right to know exactly whose plane they’re getting on.

My Kauai Photos

Tunnels Beach, on the North Shore of Kauai.

You can see more photos here.

No Watering The Geyser

Two seasonal concession workers at Yellowstone National Park were fired after a Web camera caught them urinating on the Old Faithful geyser, the Associated Press reports.

What is with volcanic activity that brings out the puerile in people? The husband and I watched several visitors, of several different nationalities, posing at Hawai‘i Volcanoes National Park on the Big Island  in such a way that a distant volcanic plume appeared to be emerging from the seats of their pants. Nose-holding was optional.

Tacky, yes. But unlike peeing on a geyser, not a crime.