This weekend I’m joining the throngs of New Yorkers who flee the city on summer weekends. While in general I think it’s a fine place to be anytime of year and I enjoy the mellowness of the summer city weekends, I’ll be heading up to my in-laws’ cabin in the Adirondacks. I’m hoping the mountains and woods might offer a little relief from the heat which the unfortunate air conditioning situation in our apartment does not.

The Adirondacks have become one of the most popular nature getaways for New Yorkers. Even though the Catskills and the Poconos are closer (and now cheaper), the Adirondacks has seemingly surpassed them in numbers of New York expatriates.

I travel a lot, and when I fly into LaGuardia I usually book a car service to pick me up rather than wait in the taxi lines, which can be quite long, especially in the evenings or when there is bad weather. I usually use LimoRes (formerly Crown Limo), despite the bad service I’ve had from them before, but after the last few trips in which they attempted to charge me a waiting charge when they shouldn’t have, I’m shopping for a new car service to use, or suggestions on how to avoid rip-offs from supposedly legitimate car service companies in New York City.

Last night, we arrived from Toronto on AA flight #1084. Originally scheduled to land at 7:15, we encountered a 2-hour delay both on the ground in YYZ and in the air circling over La Guardia. We did not land until 9:11 PM and I was out of the terminal and on the phone with LimoRes at 9:18 to inform them I was ready to be picked up. This is well within the 45-minute grace period for international flights that LimoRes publishes on its website, which states that they check the time of arrival with the airline and dispatch the cars accordingly. We entered the vehicle at 9:27 PM, still well within the grace period. However, upon arrival at my apartment at 9:45, still within the grace period and only 34 minutes after we landed, the driver presented me with my bill, with a $16 charge for 16 minutes of waiting time included. The problem? LimoRes told the driver that we arrived at 8:40 PM. (more…)

If you compare the number of people that are homeless in NYC v. Mumbai, the latter wins by millions. If you compare the number of slums - like straight up slums with tin foil and cardboard for roofs, again, Mumbai is the winner. The same goes for the number of vehicles on the roads, the different types of pollution sources and the amount of public transportation available. Mumbai, if looked at from a straight up infrastructure and numbers basis, should be a thousand times dirtier than New York City.

But after landing at Sahara international airport on May 2nd this time around, I’ve found that Mumbai is much cleaner now than it ever was before. They have implemented several garbage cans along the roads for cleanups. I even saw a NYC-styled garbage truck which for some reason got me really happy and homesick for a brief second.

India’s cleaning up everywhere. Mumbai seems to be one of the primary cities taking this initiative personally. There are several hundreds of billboards around the city reminding Mumbaikers to keep their city clean. I actually partook in one of these projects today. My friend has a graphic design studio here and she uses old CD-Roms to write anti-littering campaigns. Then she sticks them on the back of rickshaw drivers’ seats so that each rider can have the message delivered. I posted one of these today. It was awesome.

Mumbai’s done an excellent job in cleaning up and the smell that I once associated with this heavily populated city is also leaving slowly. It seems as though it’s time to move here, but then again real estate in Mumbai is the 5th most expensive in the world.

Yesterday, American Airlines grounded hundreds of planes so that they could make some changes in wiring configuration to comply with FAA regulations. They started grounding planes mid-day, all of them from the McDonnell-Douglas Super 80 series, a descendant of the DC-9. According to the admittedly mixed reports, they have grounded all or nearly all of the MD-80s, which number 300 planes in American’s fleet. American flies many of these planes through La Guardia, mainly because the planes serve short and mid-range destinations from there (no cross-country flights). A quick glance at their flight schedules (and the frightening amount of knowledge I have compiled from flying upwards of 400,000 miles on American in the past 3 years alone) tells me that the bulk of their flights operated through La Guardia are MD-80s. They also operate several routes with MD-80s from Newark. This midday grounding has left thousands of passengers stranded around the country, many of them in La Guardia or trying to get home to La Guardia. This will likely continue to affect New York area airports for days since many connecting flights into and out of the New York area on American are served by MD-80s or are connecting through Chicago or Dallas, which are AA’s two hubs and are being heavily affected by the cancellations as well. Update: They have canceled 850 flights today.

American has not stated how long the groundings will last. They’ve said that there was no immediate safety concern, and that they were grounding the planes to comply with FAA regulations. The issue is with the bundling of wires that are located in the aircraft’s rear wheel well. In the MD-80, the engine and wing are located near the rear of the aircraft, and the engines and fuel tanks are very close to the rear wheels. The FAA’s concern is that improperly bundled wires could spark and ignite a fire from fuel or fuel fumes, leading to loss of control of the aircraft from a fire or electrical failure. Sounds like a safety concern to me.
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NYC is your favorite city, right? Well, now you can let everyone know why. Travel + Leisure magazine is running a survey for America’s favorite cities. The survey allows you to rank things like how good the city is for travel, culture, nightlife, etc. Let’s kick L.A.’s butt by taking the survey and making sure our city gets the awesome props it deserves. The survey takes only a few minutes to complete.

Gridskipper has a great list of stuff that is left out of tourist guide books. If you are visiting our city anytime soon, you may want to read these.

1. Don’t Just Stand There, Ask for Directions.
When I see tourists looking lost or confused, I have the urge to come to their aid and set them on the right path. It’s as though it hurts me personally if they have a bad New York experience. Almost every New Yorker is happy to help tourists with directions and show off their city knowledge, even if it means consulting with other New Yorkers and making up stuff.

2. Fear Not the Subway.
Everybody complains about the subway, but it really works well overall, and you should use it with alacrity. On crowded trains, remove your big-ass backpack and hold it to your side. Learn the difference between local and express trains, and beware the empty subway car on an otherwise crowded train — it’s empty for a (smelly) reason.

3. Wear Black.
If you’re looking to blend in, just wear black. That’s it. Oh, and for the love of God, ditch the fanny pack, sports jersey, shorts, Tevas, and Greek-letter sweatshirt, but you knew that already.

To get the entire scoop on all 18 points head over to Gridskipper

So the MTA fares are going up — once again!!! This is not a surprise.

But what IS a surprise, are the numbers of people interviewed on the street for the different news reports. I was left to wonder who are these people who went on camera to say “Well…..I would hope this [fare hike] will mean better service….” Of course, the MTA says we can look forward to more service on the dreaded L line, among its promises.

But if you have been through many fare hikes over many decades [I won’t age myself], you have to be thinking that the interviewees who think fare hikes=better service are either:
a) very young
b) recently relocated here
c) clueless
d) smoking some good stuff
or
e) all, or any combination of, the above

I’m currently in Las Vegas and though I didn’t ask for it, they put me up in a room that has a view of the New York, New York hotel. I thought it was kind of nice to have a “home” away from home.

Two weeks ago I wrote on this blog about a tragic accident involving children riding in a taxi in NYC. Sadly, a child was thrown out of a cab from the back seat. The child was on his mother’s lap, but there is no law mandating a child seat in a taxi. Realizing that it was difficult for a parent to carry a car seat for taxi travel, I put the issue out there, and wondered how to get car seats into livery cars.

Well, I am happy to learn that there is a company in NYC. They advertise “child safety seats professionally installed in every vehicle” BINGO!!! Check out the website http://www.kidcarny.com

Hey, I applaud anyone who sees a niche and runs with it!!!

This week we saw a tragic story. Not being a mom myself, I am interested in feedback from parents on this. A family was traveling in a livery cab, when the vehicle was involved in an accident, sending a young child flying out onto the street.

If it were a private car, we could say “that mom was careless and not obeying the law by not having that child in a belted-in child car seat”. But there are no such regulations for children traveling in taxis and livery cabs, and passengers in back seats are never required to wear seat belts. So in “closing-the-barn-door-after-the-horse-escapes” fashion, the question has arisen as to whether we should impose child-car-seat regulations for taxis and livery cabs. I am interested to find out if there are mothers out there who really do carry car seats with them, when traveling with kids. I would think the majority of these rides are short-distance hops, but an accident can happen anytime and anywhere, and even while standing still.

I am curious to hear from parents, grandparents, and other caregivers of young children who regularly travel in taxis and livery cabs.

l a cab or livery service vehicle