Monthly Archives: July 2012

TRAINS: Bring back the North American Rail Pass

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old train station

© Josefhanus | Dreamstime.com

A month-long pass for rail travel between the United States and Canada? It seemed like a great idea. So why did Amtrak decide to kill it?

Anyone who’s even explored the possibility of traveling in Europe has probably heard of the Eurailpass, which lets you travel between a certain number of European countries in a month, or allows you a certain number of train travel days per month.

It’s a great, economical way to see Europe, with the comfort and convenience of train travel as a bonus. And as an absolute fan of rail travel, I sure wish we had something like that here in North America.

So it came as a somewhat unpleasant surprise to learn that, until relatively recently, we did. It was a cooperative venture between our Amtrak and Via Rail of Canada. For one set fee of $423, you could travel for 30 days in both countries.

It was called the North American Rail Pass and it was a great idea. Until 2008, when Amtrak unilaterally discontinued it.

You can get a USA Rail Pass good for 15, 30 or 45 days of rail travel, or a California Rail Pass good for 21 days up and down the state, but those obviously are good only in the United States.

Likewise, you can get a Canrailpass from Via Rail good for coast-to-coast travel across Canada, but only Canada.

The idea of a rail pass that allows travel between the two neighboring North American giants, with all their beautiful scenery and great cities? Gone. Dead.

It wasn’t Via Rail’s idea to kill it off. Amtrak did that. I just don’t know why.

To make it easier for U.S. and Canadian rail passengers to travel between the two countries by train made so much sense for both sides.

Canadians could do a lovely little loop from Toronto south through Chicago and Memphis to New Orleans, then back north via Atlanta and Washington DC aboard the Amtrak Crescent before crossing back into Canada and hitting Quebec City and Montreal on the return.

Americans, meanwhile, could head north from Los Angeles aboard the Coast Starlight up to Vancouver, BC, where they could head east across the Rockies and the great plains, then past the Great Lakes to Toronto before heading south to New Orleans, only this time swinging west aboard the Sunset Limited back to LAX.

So far, I haven’t found anything that gives a clear explanation for why Amtrak decided to do away with this. What was Amtrak afraid of?

If it wants to emphasize USA Rail Passes, fine, but why not offer both? Rail travelers who wished to confine themselves to the US or Canada would simply buy one of the national rail passes in either of those countries, while travelers who wanted to ride the trains on both sides of the border would still be able to do so for a great price. Everybody wins.

Or they did…until four years ago.

Especially in this era when so many people find air travel to be such a miserable experience, wouldn’t it make sense for Amtrak to seize on every opportunity it can find to encourage travel by train, even if it meant sharing some of the proceeds with its northern neighbor?

If I ever find out what Amtrak’s rationale was behind killing the North American Rail Pass, I’ll be sure to share it with you. Meanwhile, we fans of rail travel can hope that sanity one day returns — and brings back the North American Rail Pass along with it.

ADDENDUM
I’ve reached out to Amtrak’s public affairs people to see if anyone will tell me why Amtrak chose to unilaterally do away with the North American Rail Pass. When I get an answer, IBIT will publish it.

Edited by P.A.Rice

SAFE TRAVEL: Can your hotel room be hacked?

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A security expert claims that with $50 worth of hardware and a few hacking tricks, he can break into almost any hotel room locked with a card key. If true, as many as 5 million hotel rooms worldwide may be at risk.

Some time this evening, a young man named Cody Brocious will step out in front of a large audience at Caesar’s Palace in Las Vegas.

At that moment, he will demonstrate how, with about $50 worth of palm-sized hardware and in a matter of seconds, he could break into their hotel rooms.

Or mine.

Or yours.

You know those plastic magnetic card-key locks that have replaced conventional metal keys at thousands of hotels around the world?

Well, according to Mr. Brocious, 24, such locks produced by a certain company have built into them not one but two different vulnerabilities that render them virtually null and void against a hacker with a modicum of skills and access to a Radio Shack store.

For a detailed breakdown on all this, check out the Forbes magazine story here.

Mr. Brocious plans to demonstrate this vulnerability himself this evening at the technical security conference known as Black Hat USA, which began last Saturday in Vegas and runs through Thursday.

The number of card-key locks vulnerable to this particular hacking technique are estimated to be somewhere between 4 million and 5 million worldwide.

Uhh…yikes?

If you’re in the room, there are plenty of old-school defensive measures you can take, not the least of which are deadbolt locks that come standard with most hotel rooms around the globe. Travel suppliers also sell special wedges you can use to stop anyone from entering the room while you’re inside.

You could even prop a chair or a suitcase against the door if you felt like it.

The real worry begins once you leave. At that point, the only thing standing between you and whatever you leave in your room is that card-key lock.

Not all card-key locks contain the twin vulnerabilities being outlined by Mr. Brocious. But enough of them do — and if he’s right, the knowledge of this vulnerability is already sufficiently widespread — to make this a concern.

So far, we haven’t heard anything definitive from the company that makes this particular type of lock. IBIT will let you know what, if anything, they intend to do about it.

Edited by P.A.Rice

The clueless traveler’s guide to airport security

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© Outline205 | Dreamstime.com

Following these tips will make every trip to the airport a memorable experience — for all the wrong reasons.

Anyone who travels by air these days knows what a hassle it has become. I’ve tried in the past sharing tips on how to make things easier on themselves, but judging by what I see going on in airport security lines, I’m not sure it’s working.

So this time, I’m going to go 180 degrees the other way, and tell you how not to go smoothly through the lines.

This advice especially applies for those of you out there who crave attention every moment of the day. Follow these tips and you’re guaranteed to draw the fixed gaze of every other traveler behind you — not to mention every TSA inspector in sight:

1) Be spontaneous
The first step in every airport security check-in these days is a security officer who will ask to see your identification and boarding pass. You could have these documents in hand, ready to be quickly scanned and then be sent on your way — but how boring is that? Wait until you’re standing directly in front of the inspector — with scores of other travelers lined up behind you — to start fumbling about for your docs.

2) Dress to impress
You know you’re going to have to go through metal detectors, of course. Less imaginative travelers will have made sure that their flying clothes have nothing metallic on them anywhere. They’ll wear belts with plastic instead of metal buckles, or maybe even choose clothing that requires no belt whatsoever.

But not you. The airport is the perfect place to wear every piece of metal you own. Belt buckles the size of steaks. Hoop earrings big enough to drive a Scion through. Metallic baubles, bangles and beads over every inch of clothing.

And don’t forget those ultra-fashionable boots with all the metal buckles up to your knees, each of which you’ll have to undo to take them off — and yes, you will have to take them off to go through security.

But of course, you already knew that.

3) Load up
Remember those metal detectors? Who cares! Make sure your pockets are stuffed with spare change, your house keys, cell phone, anything with metal. I mean, you never know when you might need your house or your car keys on the airplane, right?

You could follow the example of the travelers who go through their pockets and put anything metallic in their carry-on bag before they even get in line, but who wants to bother with all that, right?

After all, once you’ve reached that walk-through metal detector, you’ll have plenty of time to fish and fumble through your pockets and purse as scores of other travelers — all of whom are as eager to get to their gates as you are — wait for you to do something you could’ve done already.

4) Attitude is everything
Some travelers bring a positive spirit and energy with them to the airport, understanding that airport security is shared suffering, a necessary evil that we have no choice but all get through together as best we can, with a minimum amount of hassles and drama. But that’s not you, right?

Airport security is the perfect place to get your swag or your diva on.

Forget all those thousands of other folks at the airport, trying to get on planes just like you are. The moment you step into the terminal, it’s all about YOU.

Don’t worry about keeping control over your bags. For that matter, make sure you bring suitcases the size of small cars as carry-ons. Bump into the folks in front of or behind you with your oversized carry-ons, the better to show off your traveling style.

Make terrorism and hijacking jokes in the presence of airport workers, airport police and TSA inspectors, none of whom have a sense of humor when it comes to this kind of humor.

Complain long and loudly about how slowly the line is moving, knowing that you yourself have done nothing to help accelerate the process. I mean, who are they to hold you up?

And when you’re traveling abroad and being held up by airport security screeners in some foreign airport, be sure to emphasize to them that you’re not just any old passenger. You’re an American citizen, by God!

Follow these tips and you’ll to make every trip to the airport a truly memorable experience, whether you want to remember it or not.

Coffee, tea…sharp metallic object?

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Delta is trying to figure out how needles found their way into six sandwiches served to its passengers.

A half-dozen sewing needles have become the focus of law enforcement investigators on two continents. That’s what happens when they wind up in peoples’ food aboard airplanes over the Atlantic Ocean.

By now, you’ve heard the story. Six turkey sandwiches, served in Business Class aboard four different Delta Airlines flights from the Netherlands, had sewing needles in them.

The flights were bound for various destinations in the United States and all left Amsterdam on the same day.

Three passengers found those needles the hard way, taking a bite from their tampered sandwich. Among them were a father and son, who each found a needle in their sandwich, while flying on two different Delta flights out of Amsterdam that day.

One passenger was stabbed in the roof of his mouth. Authorities have since put him on HIV medication as a precaution.

The sandwiches came out of an Amsterdam flight kitchen belonging to Gate Gourmet, an airline catering company that provides meals for roughly 10,000 airline flights from nearly 30 countries…a day.

You can pick up more details on this incident from this National Public Radio story here.

The incident is casting a glaring light on something few of us ever really closely examine— airline food. We may love it, hate it or be utterly indifferent to it, but few of us have a clue about how it finds its way to our seat. We have no idea who’s producing this stuff, how or where.

Have you ever seen an airline chef? Neither have I. Airline catering serves hundreds of millions of people 24/7, but from the consumers’ point of view, it may be one of the world’s most invisible industries.

The companies have names like Gate Gourmet, Servair, Dnata. Together, they’re among the world’s largest employers. Gate Gourmet alone has 22,000 employees.

Their flight kitchens, located on or near the grounds of major airports, are more like factories than kitchens, each preparing thousands of breakfasts, lunches, dinners and snacks around the clock.

That may not sound too appetizing, but it has to be that way. You can’t cook fresh on airliners.

Never mind the time constraints of trying to prepare 300 to 1,200 meals for a single flight in the cramped confines of an airplane galley. Open flame in a pressurized cabin equipped with oxygen, seven miles above the Earth?

Not happening.

Enter the caterers.

Several airline catering firms are owned, though not necessarily operated, by individual airlines, while others are independent contractors. All of them serve multiple airlines.

So when the flight attendant asks you “beef or chicken?” on that American Airlines flight, nobody tells you that your dinner may be coming to you courtesy of Lufthansa, the national airline of Germany.

Lufthansa owns LSG Sky Chefs, the world’s largest airline catering outfit, preparing some 500 million meals a day for American — and about 300 other airlines around the world — from 200 flight kitchens in 52 countries.

So who’s Number Two? Gate Gourmet. The needle guys. And this is not the first time there have been issues with its airline food.

Eight years ago, the Food & Drug Administration zeroed in on a Gate Gourmet flight kitchen in Honolulu after 45 travelers were exposed to carrots contaminated with Shigella bacteria.

Shigella causes dysentery, which at best is miserable and at worst can kill. But that incident was about lax food safety procedures, not a deliberate attempt to hurt somebody.

It gets better. Gate Gourmet actually belongs to a family of companies, including one called Gate Safe, which is dedicated in part to…

…wait for it…

…airline catering security.

Gate Gourmet says it’s conducting its own investigation. Delta, in turn, says it’s taking its own measure to protect the food aboard its aircraft. Dutch authorities and the FBI are already on the case.

Everybody…and I do mean everybody… is taking this one seriously. Believe me, this one’s going to get interesting.

Edited by P.A.Rice

EGYPT: Safe for tourism?

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The kidnapping last Friday of two black Boston-area visitors touring the Sinai peninsula is but the latest in a string of abductions targeting Americans in that Egyptian territory in 2012. It raises questions about how safe the country really is for international travelers.

Two African-Americans from the Boston area, the Rev. Michael Louis and Lisa Alphonse, have been abducted from a tour bus in Egypt by a Bedouin tribesman who wants to swap them for his imprisoned uncle. He also kidnapped the group’s Egyptian guide to act as translator.

Rev. Louis is 61, Ms. Alphonse 39. According to the minister’s son, they were among a group of Boston-area tourists on a missionary trip to Israel who set out to visit St. Catherine’s Monastery in the Sinai, one of the oldest working Christian monasteries in the world and a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

The son, Jean Louis, also says his father is diabetic and may soon need medication.

The kidnapper has identified himself as Jirmy Abu-Masuh, 32. He claims his 62-year-old uncle was imprisoned because he refused to pay a $100 bribe to police while traveling to the Egyptian city of Alexandria. He claims his uncle also is a diabetic and has not been receiving medical treatment in prison.

Abu-Masuh has told reporters the two kidnap victims are being well treated, but threatened to kill them both if authorities try to arrest him. He’s also threatened to kidnap more tourists from other nationalities.

To read details about this story as reported in London’s Sunday Mail, click here.

I don’t know if Rev. Louis and Ms. Alphonse were the only black Americans on the bus, or even the only Americans, so I can’t say at this point they were singled out either for their race or their nationality.

But media reports from the region have been pretty consistent in saying that this abduction is not an isolated case. This from the Sunday Mail article:

“Friday’s abduction is the latest in a series of kidnappings Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula over the past year.

“Abducted tourists are rarely harmed and usually released within days. In February, the AP interviewed two American women from California who say their Bedouin kidnappers gave them tea and dried fruit, and talked about religion and tribal rights. They were allowed to bring their Egyptian tour guide with them.”

That latter point gives reason for hope that the hostages eventually will be freed unharmed. As disturbing as the kidnappings themselves, however, is that they appear to be part of a trend.

Counting the Rev. Louis and Ms. Alphonse, a half-dozen American tourists have been kidnapped so far this year in the Sinai, a sprawling, arrowhead-shaped desert peninsula of roughly 23,000 square miles and a population of less than a half-million people, of whom about 80,000 may be Bedouins (the rest being ethnic Egyptians and Palestinians).

Even before the fall last year of Egyptian dictator Hosni Mubarak, government control over the region was spotty at best, and parts of it have become a haven for drug-smuggling, prostitution rings and other forms of organized crime. Add to that a longstanding grievance against corrupt police by the Sinai Bedouins, and you have a potentially volatile mix.

Coupled with ongoing political tensions in Egypt proper, this might give some travelers pause about visiting the land of the pyramids, which doesn’t help the hundreds of thousands of Egyptians whose livelihoods depend on tourism.

Does this mean I cross Egypt off my bucket list altogether? Not necessarily, though I’d probably be inclined to wait until more of the political dust settles before booking a trip to Cairo.

On the other hand, I won’t be trekking across the Sinai anytime soon.

Edited by P.A.Rice

WTF: Orbitz shows Mac users higher hotel prices?

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It sounds like the start of a bad Internet joke. As it turns out, however, Orbitz is quite serious about this, and they have their reasons. But are they good reasons?

There are things you read that amaze you, things that leave you perplexed. And then, there are the things that just make you want to shout “What the eff!” at the top of your lungs.

This one is definitely come from behind Door Number Three.

The Chicago-based online travel agency Orbitz has used what’s known as “predictive analytics” to conclude that people who own Apple computers tend to send more on hotel rooms than Windows PC owners.

So Orbitz has programmed its Web site to automatically show you higher priced hotel rooms if you’re on a Mac.

This sounds like the start of a bad Internet joke. Trust me, it’s not. Orbitz is actually serious about this. They fpund that Mac users on average spend about 30 percent more when choosing hotels, so they created an algorithm to automatically sniff out Mac owners looking for hotel rooms on Orbitz — and automatically show them pricier rooms.

The Wall Street Journal first broke this story, and you can read all about it here.

It’s not as if this were the first time that a business ever tried to track the spending habits of its customers and adjust its offerings accordingly. It’s just that computers, the Internet and analytics software give businesses more powerful, pervasive — and sneakier — tools with which to do it.

Still, am I the only Mac user out there who’s offended by this?

I’ve been Apple computer user for the last five years. I work on an iMac at home and on a black MacBook when I’m on the road. I love the easy, intuitive way they work, Apple’s willingness to innovate and reduced vulnerabiity to viruses (up to now) compared with Windows-based machines. And yes, I know that Macs happen to be more expensive than PCs.

Does that automatically mean that I don’t hunt for bargains when I look for hotel rooms?

Conversely, if you’re a PC owner, does that automatically make you a cheap mofo, the Ebenezer Scrooge of the travel world?

As you’ll see when you read the WSJ article, the company put a lot of time and effort into analyzing the spending habits of Mac owners. And yet, they still seem to have missed the most important point about us.

We Macanauts tend to be an independent lot. We think for ourselves, do our own analysis and make our choices based on what suits our own individual needs. And we’re not really big on being dictated to, by anyone for anything.

It’s why we own Macs in the first place.

If we were content to follow the rest of the herd, we’d all be on PCs.

I may or may not continue to use Orbitz after this. But I won’t be doing my online hotel shopping there, ever.

Meanwhile, if you want to protect yourself against this kind of digital snooping, the folks at Budget Travel suggest that you clear your cache between online searches to keep sites like Orbitz from tracking you this way.

For the rest of the Budget Travel story about this, click here.

Put that in your algorithm, Orbitz.

“Go ‘head on.”

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Sometimes, I feel as if I’m traveling for those who never got the chance.

Two very “deep” black women recently made me stop and reflect on my travels. One was economist, author and commentator Julianne Malveaux. The other was fellow travel blogger Renee King.

Ms. Malveaux, in New Orleans for the Essence Music Festival, posted on Facebook about what she saw in the eyes of passing sisters while taking a walk along Bourbon Street:

“In the time I walked I was stunned by the number of sisters without joy in their eyes. Oh, they were looking good, and there was some laughter, but too many were walking down Bourbon like it was a death march (perhaps I exaggerate slightly), a duty, not a joyful experience.”

Meanwhile, my friend Renee wrote on her blog about a high school friend who, like her, dreamed of venturing beyond their native Alabama, but never left.

“She has settled comfortably into a life where she only gets to see the beauty of the Maasai through photographs gracing the pages of National Geographic.  She will only get to experience that moment through someone else’s vantage point and never realize the sheer joy of witnessing first hand, the completeness that traveling brings to a life.”

Their comments took me back to my senior year of high school in New Orleans, to a house on the corner of Magnolia and Amelia streets, where a crew of young hustlers used to hang out on the front steps, waiting for dark, when they would melt into the night. They were all varying degrees of high energy and boisterous swagger, but they had those same joyless eyes.

I was the schoolboy, always with an armload of textbooks, still struggling through a world they’d long ago abandoned.

Back then, I had delusions of being a sketch artist. One afternoon while passing by the crew, I dropped my sketchpad. One of them snatched it up and started thumbing through it.

“What’s that?” one asked. The Eiffel Tower, I told him.

“You been to Paris?” he asked suspiciously.

“No, but I wanna go one day,” I replied.

I told them about some of the places I’d already been and some of the ones where I wanted to go…and that’s when it happened. They actually invited the schoolboy to sit on their steps, anywhere I wanted.

Anywhere, that is, except the top step. That was reserved for their leader, their shotcaller, a sinewy, bare-chested kid with skin the color of burnt mahogany. He had a rough, uneven Afro, a gap-tooth smile and an easy laugh that rolled like a wave.

He also had a fist the size of a grapefruit with the density of granite, and it was clear that he’d already used it more than once.

“You really gonna go all them places?” he asked me with a steely look. I nodded and said yes.

He flashed those gapped teeth at me, threw back his head and laughed.

“Well, go ‘head on, podnuh! You go ‘head on!”

It became almost a weekly ritual after that, pouring out my bucket list on those steps while the crew looked over my drawings. Slidell, on the other side of Lake Pontchartrain, was as far as most of them had ever been, but there I sat, babbling on about all the places I wanted to see in the world someday.

I could’ve been talking about going to the moon.

I went on to college in Northern California. They never left the NOLA.

Four years later, back to visit family, I went by the old spot. The shotcaller was still there. Same gap-tooth smile, despite recently having been stabbed.

The rest of the crew? One by one, he ticked off their names. In jail. In hiding. Dead. My heart sank.

Then he asked me, “You been to any of them places yet?” Not yet, I told him.

“You still going, though, right?”

I promised him I would.

“Well, you go ‘head on, podnuh.” And he strolled off down the block.

I never saw him again. By now, he’s with the rest of his old crew. In jail. In hiding.

Or dead.

Sometimes when I travel, I imagine that they’re with me, seeing what I’m seeing, learning what I’m learning, their eyes wide, their minds ablaze.

Letting me sit with them and dream aloud about travel was their way of keeping me safe. I didn’t realize that then. I never got the chance to say thank you, or to show them the world beyond Magnolia and Amelia.

Edited by P.A.Rice

IBIT on the radar!

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Black Enterprise recognizes “I’m Black and I Travel” as one of seven black travelers to follow on Twitter. Makes me want to start packing again…for anyplace!

It looks as if the three years of toil that have gone so far into this travel blog are paying off. I’m Black and I Travel is starting to hit the bigtime.

Just today, the online edition of Black Enterprise magazine published a slideshow entitled “7 Black Travelers to Follow on Twitter.”

Guess who’s Number Two in the batting order? Yep!

“What makes Greg Gross’ Twitter stream so unique is the narrative and context he provides during his travels…”

I had no idea they were going to do that. I only found out through fellow African-American travelers on Facebook who happen to be friends of mine. Are we deep into social media or what?

Speaking of friends, the other six black travelers deemed worthy of following on Twitter also happen to be friends of mine, and damned good travelers, travel writers and bloggers in their own right:

  • Kiratiana Freelon @kiratiana
  • Mario Nicholas @MarioTravels
  • Andrea Adams and Teri Johnson @travelistastv
  • Brian Peters @brianepeters
  • T Davis-Merchant @tryitfoodtravel

On behalf of all of us, thanks and much love to Black Enterprise for the social media shout-out. The only thing cooler than this would be to see an even longer list of black travelers singled out by Black Enterprise for 2013.

So get that passport, come on out here and join us. It’s your world. Get into it!