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The Lusty Lady is no more, for better or for worse. That section of 1st Avenue was notorious for shady businesses: a donut shop that coordinated teenaged prostitution, tattoo shops, bars that catered to non-English speaking sailors for prices that they didn't fully understand, and a place...

Oops, I was wrong about the streetcars. At least, somewhat. Yes, the Sculpture Garden displaced the streetcar sheds for maintenance. And yes, the cars are indeed identical to the Melbourne streetcars. But it seems we bought ours from them, not vice versa. So apparently five of them still exist...

No on the streetcar, sadly. They tore down the storage sheds for the cars to make the sculpture park. I think the classic streetcars ended up in Melbourne Australia. At least, they looked identical to me. The solution for the homeless is anyone's guess. Housing in the area is crazy-expensive...

Car availability, coupled with the weekend closure, makes the LA Union Station rental at least iffy, if not downright unlikely. In the Before Times, we rented several times from Hertz there, and almost inevitably the type of car we had reserved wasn't available, and once we were told that there...

My husband lived in the UK for his first three plus decades. He was a mad-keen cyclist (push-bikes, of course) as a kid, and used to cycle from Cheam in Surrey down to Brighton, buy a stick of Brighton Rock as proof he made it there, and cycle back. He was nine at the time. I suspect no parent...

Last week it was 5.29 at the gas station across the street from the university main gate. Friday down to 4.99 (and 9/10s!---why was that bizarre pricing ever adopted for gasoline, since we've never had a unit of legal tender that was a tenth of a penny.) Still high enough to make me take public...

Assuming that the train isn't running late, the prime scenery you'd be missing by getting off in Oregon is Mount Rainier. If you've never seen a glacier-clad volcano, it's something to behold. The other consideration is, if you are a restored train station buff, both the Portland and Seattle...

I remember going to the '64 Worlds Fair from central Pennsylvania myself. My dad had been given tickets by someone he worked with, and it was a surprise to us kids, who were awakened in the middle of the night to get dressed and go. I remember getting to the World's Fair about when it opened...

Actually, those emergency mylar blankets do work. I've long kept one in my emergency earthquake box in the trunk of my car. Never needed it for an earthquake yet, but I got caught in a major traffic jam in a snowstorm in Seattle where I was reluctant to keep my car running--carbon monoxide and...

In fact there have been many cases of construction debris and tools being accidentally left in 787s, including metal debris left adjacent to wiring. The South Carolina assembly crews are being pushed hard to get planes out the door, and not surprisingly, stuff like that happens. When Qatar...

My husband, who worked at Boeing for thirty years before retirement, came away thoroughly disgusted with the post McDonnell Douglas merger impact on the corporate culture. In place of a safety-first culture of deference to engineering, they went to a 'shareholder-value' culture of reducing the...

Abuse of guest workers is, sadly, not limited to the Middle East. When I was in Hong Kong not that long ago, there were parks where the 'guest workers' who tend to Hong Kong children and housework went on their meager off days to share Southeast Asian snacks and listen to their preferred music...

Hmmm...Coast Starlight, Empire Builder, California Zephyr, Capitol Limited, Sunset Limited, Southwest Chief, Lake Shore Limited, Vermonter, Cascades, Pacific Surfliner, Keystone, bunches of NEC, and the Broadway Limited (RIP). Still missing a lot of trackage, I realize.

And the name chosen for the merged entity has little to do with who is the real buyer and seller--whose CEO and bigwigs run the new merged entity. See America West and US Air, which kept the US Air moniker and was run by America West corporate, and later US Air and American, which kept...

One great thing to pack with a toddler is a couple of mini cans of Playdo. They've got little sets of them at craft and hobby supply places, in the areas where they sell little favors for kids birthday parties. Keeping little fingers busy... Also, snacks and a few new dollar-store toys to dole...

I think that is why we shouldn't ask for details. :)

Hard to imagine this actually happening even in the day, though. Suppose said deputized passenger got injured during the 'ejection'... I did find myself wondering whether taking an Amtrak trip with a tight connection that would result in a financial loss if the train was late is a 'game of...

Not the shortest flight, but I believe the shortest flight by an Airbus A380. I was on a flight from Paris to London--the last leg of a flight from Seattle where the original last leg got cancelled and replaced by the A380. It was early on in its certification, but the Johannesburg airport had...

King St Station is quite close to a stop on the light rail that goes to the airport. I'd suggest renting at the airport--there really are few options in the downtown area that I am aware of. The Enterprise on Capitol Hill has definitely closed.

I very much agree that sleeper passengers deserve and may expect better than they are getting. The problem is that sleepers are in high demand, so much so that it is often hard to book one when you want to travel, despite eye-popping fares. Myself, I would prefer that Amtrak invest in more...