Booking travel

By On · 8 Comments · In Travel

I had to bite the bullet and book some travel yesterday. First off, I had a JetBlue round trip awards ticket that had to be booked by Sept. 27th, and so to avoid succumbing to a brain fart and forgetting to book it in time, I booked it yesterday. Of course, I could not book it for the dates I really *need* a ticket to New York — that is, July 2010, when I’ll be attending Readercon and staying through to participate in the KGB reading the following week — so I booked it for the middle of February. Why the middle of February, you might ask? I have no idea. I needed a date, and it seemed far enough out that I could conceivably need to be in New York at that time. Anyway, according to my JetBlue ticket, I’ll be in NYC from Feb. 15-Feb. 21. That puts me in town for a KGB reading (I always like scheduling my trips around KGB readings) and perhaps I can work with a couple of my East Coast clients to make the trip worthwhile. In any case, I’ve got a lot of time to put that trip together.

A trip I *don’t* have a lot of time to put together, on the other hand, is the impending journey down to San Jose for World Fantasy at the end of October. Yesterday, I finally just went ahead and booked Amtrak tickets. I had thought to fly, but even the cheapest airplane tickets are more expensive than the train, and even though the trip is awfully long, I can get a lot of work done (Amtrak trains must have WiFi, right? They DON’T? Are you f*ing KIDDING me? Oh well, at least I don’t need WiFi to write … oh wait! All my files are on Amazon S3!! Oh well, I guess I’ll just have to download a few megabites to my laptop before I leave …) Finally, I am assured that Amtrak tickets are fully refundable in the unlikely event that I have to bail out of the con altogether.

The only other con between now and the end of the year is OryCon, which I don’t have to make travel arrangements for at all, other than to gas up the car.

So I guess I’m set, at least through the end of the year.

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  • http://www.jkathleencheney.com/ J. Kathleen Cheney

    Yay! See you at WFC!

  • http://www.jkathleencheney.com J. Kathleen Cheney

    Yay! See you at WFC!

  • Sherwood Smith

    I love long train rides–it’s amazing how inspirational I find that ever-changing scenery outside the window. I hope you will find it the same, if you do go by train.

  • Sherwood Smith

    I love long train rides–it’s amazing how inspirational I find that ever-changing scenery outside the window. I hope you will find it the same, if you do go by train.

  • http://kevin-standlee.livejournal.com/ Kevin Standlee

    Not only do they not have wi-fi, but for a significant chunk of the trip, you won’t have cell-phone coverage, either. But the seats are more comfortable than an airplane flight, and you don’t have to take off your shoes to board the train, nor turn off your computer an hour before you get to San Jose.

    And you also will arrive even closer to the WFC site coming by train than by plane — a short light-rail ride that will drop you off outside the hotel’s back door (the light rail system has a stop in the train station, in a rare example of joined-up thinking).

    Mind you, I’m biased toward train travel. I took the train from Salem, Oregon to Montreal and back for Worldcon (via Emeryville, Chicago, and Schenectady going out and Schenectady, Chicago, and Los Angeles coming back). As I never tired of saying, I cashed frequent-flier miles into Amtrak points to take the train.

  • http://kevin-standlee.livejournal.com/ Kevin Standlee

    Not only do they not have wi-fi, but for a significant chunk of the trip, you won’t have cell-phone coverage, either. But the seats are more comfortable than an airplane flight, and you don’t have to take off your shoes to board the train, nor turn off your computer an hour before you get to San Jose.

    And you also will arrive even closer to the WFC site coming by train than by plane — a short light-rail ride that will drop you off outside the hotel’s back door (the light rail system has a stop in the train station, in a rare example of joined-up thinking).

    Mind you, I’m biased toward train travel. I took the train from Salem, Oregon to Montreal and back for Worldcon (via Emeryville, Chicago, and Schenectady going out and Schenectady, Chicago, and Los Angeles coming back). As I never tired of saying, I cashed frequent-flier miles into Amtrak points to take the train.

  • http://serge-lj.livejournal.com/ Serge

    Have a wonderful time at the con!

  • http://serge-lj.livejournal.com Serge

    Have a wonderful time at the con!