Ogden, Utah – 1 city, 2 worlds

We were running behind schedule when we rolled into Ogden, having spent the prior 3 days stuck in Boise. So, our impression of the town is based on the merest whisper of experience, a walk downtown, and a pretty good meal.

Ogden seems a two-worlds kind of place. On the one hand, the natural beauty, mountains, and rivers draw outdoorspeople of various stripes in waves. They migrate in according to season. Winter is for snowboarding and skiing. Spring and early summer are for kayaking. Mountain bikers like to shred trails from snow melt to snow fall. Hiking is a year-round pursuit, with some fairly strenuous trails. Rock climbing and bouldering are also popular. In short, just about anything that can be done outdoors by the young, healthy, and adventurous is done here.

It has been our experience that mountain bikers, kayakers, and snowboarders tend to be on the left-leaning side of the political spectrum. Live-and-let-live, who-I-date-is-not-your-business, with a leaning toward organically grown recreational botanicals.

According to our sources, including some ex-locals, Ogden itself is on the far end of the other side of that spectrum. As with all things Utah, the Mormon Church influence is undeniable here. Conservative, less-is-more politics, mind-your-ps-and qs attitude, eschewing recreational anxiolytics of all sorts (legal or not).

Our visit to the Roosters Brewing Company and Restaurant on the main drag (25th St.) seemed to personify this dichotomy. The place is large and inviting, with a long bar just inside the entry way. Behind the bar you can see the brewing vats, merrily turning grain into liquid refreshment.

There was a mild wait for tables inside the restaurant on the night we visited, but the bar area seemed cozy and inviting – and fairly empty. So, we hopped on an available seat near the door and settled in. We noticed a family with small (cranky) children entering and putting their names on the waiting list. No seats were available in the lobby, but there were plenty of bar stools. Sorry, no luck: Utah state law prohibits children from sitting in a bar area, even just to wait for a table.

And so, we sat there, feeling a bit guilty about our comfort, sipping a Polygamy Pale Ale (not too hoppy, a bit of a bitter finish), and chowing down on the beef tenderloin with mushroom gravy (rich, tender, flavorful). And thinking about dichotomies.

Business Tripping – An Honest Assessment of Airport Security

No analysis of air travel would be complete without looking at one of the major stressors of flying – that of the security system. At the risk of having our next 100 flights include the joys of body cavity searches, let us offer an honest assessment of the current system.

It stinks.

The entire security process seems to be expressly designed to reduce terrorism threats by inconveniencing normal, law-abiding citizens. We think it would be better served by inconveniencing terrorists, but that’s just us.

In addition, the system appears to be expressly designed to prevent the LAST terrorist attack and not the NEXT one.

For example, how long has it been since the TSA decided that the ban on all liquids was a bit of an over-reaction? Dunno, but in just about every airport in the land, you will still hear a canned announcement that it’s now OK “effective immediately” to bring appropriately stored liquids in your carry-on luggage. But, of course, this announcement is only heard once you’re already INSIDE the airport. AFTER you’ve gone through security. WITH your appropriately stored liquids. Don’t you think it’s time to jettison this little bit of announcement nonsense?

And who needs to be told over and over and over– once again inside the airport beyond security - to “not accept packages from strangers”? Is this really a big concern? Haven’t you dealt with hazardous packages, liquids, shoes, and now underwear(!) already? And really, when was the last time anyone agreed to take a stranger’s package on the airplane? (“Ignore the ticking sound – it’s a clock for my Uncle Mustafa.”)

We also had the experience (on our last business trip) of being told to handle our personal belongings in one manner at one airport and a completely different manner at the very next airport. Really guys, we don’t care which way you want us to put our shoes and our laptop in the bin – just make it consistent, OK? And don’t lecture us on the “proper procedure”. It may be your procedure, but it certainly isn’t everyone’s.

And is it really enhancing security to have random gate checks of passengers? After they’ve already passed through security once? Or is it merely an indication that there are too many security people scheduled and they’re bored silly? Honestly. The elderly lady from Chester, Pennsylvania who is trying to get from Philadelphia to Atlanta to see her grandkids is not a security threat. The random wanding thing is just not necessary and makes you look like jerks.

And we are not making this up: We were recently scheduled on a connector flight at the end of the airport, where the gate was also near an emergency exit. Where the alarm was apparently stuck in permanent HOLLER mode. And the security response to this? Ear plugs for the gate agent (we are SOOOO not making this up). So, let us respectfully suggest that security should give up one or two “wanders” in favor of one or two people who can fix defective alarm horns.

It’s been suggested, only partly in jest, that the way to REALLY make us secure in the air is for everyone to fly naked. I would modify that by allowing people airport-issue orange jump suits. Everyone strips down to the buff - undies included - and gets a disposable jumpsuit, some slippers, and a pair of socks. We could then eliminate the need for scanning devices, wands, and all the rest.

Of course, the airlines would probably want to charge $25 for each jumpsuit. And anther $25 to put your clothes in the cargo hold with your checked luggage.

This is Not Sweden - Lindsborg, Kansas

A dala does not a country make.

We had heard about Lindsborg, Kansas, and its self-appointed title of “Little Sweden, USA”. And throughout the great flat plains of middle-of-nowhere Kansas, there were promotional billboards touting the wonders of this little slice of Scandinavia. It was about an hour out of our way, but what the heck…we like Scandinavia. Let’s go see it.

First off, let us declare that we arrived in town on one of the hottest days of the year – not Swedish weather at all. And the Swedish bakery, which offered the smell of powered sugar-covered delights, was closed, with no indication of when it might re-open for business (if ever).

The landscape around Lindsborg is also decidedly not Swedish; just the broad, flat plains of Kansas with row upon row upon row of corn. And the town itself is as flat as the proverbial Swedish pancake.

The downtown is tiny, tidy, and neat, with some of the downtown facades done in what some might be forgiven to mistake for a Bavarian architecture (pitched, gabled roofs, etc.). We didn’t see this type of architectural façade anywhere in the Sweden we’ve visited.

Aside from the facades, the “Swedish” aspects of the town we spied were as follows:
* One souvenir shop selling hand-crafted items of a Swedish/Scandinavian nature and a Swedish craft store.
* One corner restaurant which featured Swedish meatballs and other similar cuisine (we did not partake, so will not judge -- but the smells were authentic enough)
* Fiberglass “dalas” on various corners of the town center. Dalas are a stylistic representation of a horse, which originally were wooden toys for children. Lindsborg’s fiberglass dalas were decorated by local artists.

By far the highlight of the town is an art and photography gallery run by Jim Richardson, who has been a photographer-writer for National Geographic for more than 15 years. On our visit there, Jim was in town and was extremely gracious in showing us around and telling tales. His photography is stunning – but none of the works on display during our visit featured Sweden in any way.

Every October, the town gathers for an old-fashioned Swedish festival - the Svensk Hyllningsfest. Locals dress in traditional garb and dance funny dances to accordion music. We arrived three months too early for the festival, so cannot report.

Our bottom line is – if you MUST go to “Little Sweden”, plan to go to Lindsborg for the Svensk Hyllningsfest. If you can’t get there for the festival, plan to arrive at lunchtime so you can get a plate of Swedish meatballs.

If you’re not interested in such things…well, we went so you don’t have to.

Business Tripping – That is Not Your Bag

Flying, whether for business or for pleasure, involves carrying essential items with you from one place to another. Unless you WANT to be detained at the airport for a search of your underwear, luggage is an essential part of just about every traveler’s basic equipment list.

We have to say that the industry has completely screwed the pooch with its bag policies. And by “pooch”, we mean “anyone who travels”.

In an attempt to keep apparent ticket prices low, the vast majority of airlines are now charging for checked luggage. $25 for the first bag seems to be the going rate – which means that $99 ticket to Orlando and back for Spring Break is really going to cost you $150 if you check a bag on both ends of the trip.

So, most people, not being wasteful spenders, try to carry on as much as they can. But, of course, this means that there are inevitably WAY more carry-on bags now than available storage space. (We mean the storage space in the cabin – there’s now pu-lenty of space in the cargo hold). And so, people jostle for space, jump the line when they can, put their bags anywhich way, all to the great consternation of the beleaguered flight attendants.

Airlines, of course, have garnered somewhere in the range of $2.5 BILLION in checked baggage fees over the past year. So, one would think they’re going to change their policies only through a joint act of Congress, the European Union, and the United Nations Security Council.

We once had a client who would ship her clothes via Fed Ex to international destinations just to avoid all of this hugga-mugga. Of course, the cost was WAY more than a $25 checked bag fee. But it reduced her travel stress, and it was considered a legitimate business expense by the bean counters (go figure).

We think first checked bags should be free. But, of course, there’s no guarantee that if that happened, people wouldn’t just check one bag and STILL try to stuff a 5-pound ham into a 3-pound can (or overhead bin). So, maybe the change in policy has made us all just a bit more careful about how many shoes we bring on a trip. (Really, do you need that pair of espadrilles just for that one outfit you might want to wear once on a trip?)

Of course, if you fly out of small regional airports, the bag situation gets even more surreal. Because you CAN bring your luggage through the security screen – but you CAN’T bring it on the airplane with you. That’s because the overhead bins on the regional jets are only big enough to hold Smurfette’s purse.

So, you have a situation where you “gate check” the bag – for free. And where does that “gate checked” bag end up? Why, in the cargo hold, with all of the $25 bags, of course. Where they get teased and have their pigtails pulled.

Ike’s Place

If you’re going to Abilene, Kansas for any reason whatsoever, missing a visit to the Eisenhower complex would be like going to New York City and not even LOOKING at the Empire State Building. In short, pretty much impossible.

The Eisenhower complex houses the Presidential Library, his boyhood home, and a fairly large museum. And a WAAAAAAY larger than life statue of Ike in a Superman pose.

The white clapboard house where Ike grew up looks like something Frank Capra would insist upon if he were making a biographical movie (It’s Ike’s Wonderful Life). Everything about the house SCREAMS turn-of-the-century sensibilities.

The museum is somewhat of a quadruple-stuffed Oreo affair. On either side, the pre- and post-war Ike is honored. It’s OK, but frankly, a bit boring and maybe a bit too Capra-esque. Football hero goes to West Point and all that on one side; and quite arguably the blandest Presidential administration of the 20th Century on the other (and considering the 20th Century featured Calvin Coolidge’s administration, that’s a whole lotta bland).

But the stuffing – the REAL reason to spend $8 and at least 90 minutes of your time – is the World War II memorabilia. The museum is chock-a-block full of artifacts from the war, and especially from the D-Day invasion for which Eisenhower was “Supreme Allied Commander”. Everything smaller than a tank that could fit into a building devoted to the art of making war in the 1940s is on display there. There, you also get a hint of Ike’s true gift – organization and planning. Unlike Patton or McArthur, Eisenhower was a thinker and an arranger. Logistics, contingencies, and down-to-the-last-dot-on-the-last-i detail were the areas in which he excelled. He did not get shot at – although the museum hints that this was somewhat of a source of frustration for him. Why anyone would WANT to get shot at, we cannot speculate.

In any event, the time course of WWII, the run-up to D-Day and the aftermath are all there, carefully preserved for students of history and of war. Hopefully, no such museum will be deemed necessary or desirable ever again.

Business Tripping - Making a Connection

In the past few months, we have had to forego the pleasures of leisurely hauling-an-Rpod-with-a-Jeep travel for the harsher realities of business travel. Which means flying.

There is something inherently and exponentially more stressful about air travel than any other method of getting from one place to the next. Much of this stress has to do with the no-kidding-we-mean-it certainty of the airline schedule. If you’re not there when they want you to be there, you are SO not getting where you need to go.

Since we fly out of a small regional airport, the stress of getting to the gate on time includes the stress of making connections. Over the past couple of years, we have learned a valuable lesson, to wit:

• Even though the airlines and the travel sites will sell you itineraries with 30-minute windows to make a connection, this is not a wise choice. Because the theory of being able to make a short connection and the actual ability to do so are two vastly different things.

First, let’s acknowledge that the schedule the airline has printed on your ticket is designed to make them look good for the government statistics, not to actually tell you when things will happen. So, to them, “On Time Arrival” equals “wheels touching down at the very tip of the destination airport runway”. Not the inevitable 10 minutes of taxiing, the 5 minutes of waiting for the gate agent to jockey the jetway into place, and the 15 minutes waiting for all those idiot people ahead of you to collect their bags and say “bu-bye” to the pilot.

THEN, no matter how you plan it or where your ultimate destination might be, you can almost certainly be guaranteed to need to hustle as far as architecturally possible within the airport to reach your next gate. Since the gate agent for THAT flight is under absolutely no obligation to wait for you AND since their “On Time Departure” statistic depends on having the airplane leave the gate exactly on time – well, you get the picture. “On Time Departure” does NOT mean “on time with all of the passengers who are in the airport with tickets, even those with close connections.”

So, as a general rule, we believe that the minimum window between the stated arrival time of one flight and the departure time of the connecting flight should be 45 minutes. In some hubs, an hour is barely sufficient. If you book a flight with less time than this for a connection…well…some airport seating areas have been officially designated as torture devices by Amnesty International.

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