February 23, 2011
It’s hard to explain to anyone who doesn’t travel a lot what our lives are like. We go days, weeks even, without seeing our kids and spouse. We drop in on friends when it’s convenient for us, like birds flittering down to land every once in a while to get grounded again. We have refrigerators that hold bottles of water and green masses of mold, and full sized bottles of shampoo confuse us.
We spend more time with colleagues and strangers of the opposite sex than we do our own spouse (no, not in that way, but at meetings, over dinners, seatmate times on a flight, co-commiserators over a delayed flight). You see the same people on the same flights, week after week, and know them better than you know your siblings.
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Posted by Carol Margolis under Pearls of Travel Fun, Television & Movies, Travel |
March 2, 2010
I loved the movie Up in the Air. George Clooney made business travel look so easy – maybe even glamorous – whisking through airports; arriving at his hotel with no check-in lines as the scene simply cuts to him relaxing in a hotel room.
Great movie but it was far from reality. Don’t get me wrong, I love traveling, but it is hardly easy. What are the downsides to traveling every week? Let me count the ways … Read more of this article »
Posted by Carol Margolis under Hotel Living, Relationships, Television & Movies, Travel |
December 14, 2009
On Saturday, I saw the movie, Up in the Air. Living away from home a couple hundred days a year myself, I wondered how Hollywood would glamorize jetting off from place to place. Wonder no more.
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Posted by Carol Margolis under Television & Movies |
November 7, 2009
For all the many years I have traveled (40+ weeks each year), I have relied on CNN to keep me up-to-date with the happenings of the world. No matter where I travel, CNN is like an old friend…always there for me and always reliable (sounds like my dog, also!). But seriously, most travelers I talk with say that they tune into CNN while on the road as their primary news source. While the city, state or country may change, the news show stays the same. For many of us, we like this reliability. Watching local news shows is great for traffic and weather reports, but it can be difficult to relate to the local news. Headline News (now HLN) is great for quick updates on the news that we can get before leaving our hotel rooms in the morning, and CNN International is there for us as we travel the globe.
Since I have been watching CNN for so many years, I was excited to take the tour of the CNN Headquarters in Atlanta today.
While I did not run into the real Larry King or Wolf Blitzer (just their cardboard look-alikes), 
it was great to see the studios where so many of their shows are broadcast from. And when CNN comes calling and has me, the Smart Woman Traveler, on their show, I am already familiar with their studios!
What was very interesting during the CNN tour was seeing several producers at their desks busy with Twitter and Facebook. Not once in our walk-through did we see any of them pick up their telephones. The system for discovering and reporting on the news has certainly changed with the influx of social media.
You can follow @CNN and @CNNBrk for breaking news on Twitter and the CNN Fan Page on Facebook.
And CNN, contact me at @smartwomentrav to schedule road warrior stories from the female perspective!
Posted by Carol Margolis under Television & Movies, Web/Tech |
May 28, 2009
If you haven’t seen a road warrior type of movie since Planes, Trains and Automobiles, then watch for the upcoming movie “Up in the Air” starring George Clooney. Based on the 2001 novel by Walter Kirn, Clooney plays Ryan Bingham who flies around the country firing people. Living a life of nameless hotel suites, salted almonds and rental cars, his main goal of acquiring one million frequent flyer miles is at risk when his company downsizes. Directed by Jason Reitman (Juno, Thank You For Smoking), Up in the Air is scheduled to be released later this year. Maybe we should all meet somewhere to watch this, and do our part to help the economy and achieve our own personal goals of more air miles!
Since we are about half-way through another mileage-earning 12 months, are you starting to monitor what your frequent flier mile accumulation has been for the year? No frequent flier wants to get to the end of the year and realize that they were just a few miles short of attaining status on an airline. That could mean you’ll be walking to the back of the bus (a.k.a. Coach) in the next year on a consistent basis. By the way, I use Mileport.com to monitor the balances in my frequent flyer and loyalty accounts with one easy-to-update screen.
What crazy flights have you taken in order to reach a mileage milestone level for status? I’ve read of travelers who fly to another continent and back in the same day just to pick up miles that they need. There are also travelers who say they do their best work in-flight, so they fly many long flights to get their work done while accumulating air miles. I tend to agree here on getting quality work done in-flight, but I haven’t yet bought an airline ticket just for the sake of working in my office chair in the sky. I have, however, been known to do a bit of Christmas shopping in order to cross the finish line on reaching a particular status with an airline. A few years back, I was a couple thousand miles short in the last few weeks of December and wasn’t going to be traveling for business over the holidays. So one Friday morning, I woke up early at home, grabbed a big empty duffle bag, drove to the airport and flew from Orlando to Minneapolis. Any good shopper in the U.S. knows that the Mall of America, our largest indoor mall, is in Minneapolis. And lucky for me, it met the number of miles I needed to reach status and I got all of my Christmas shopping done in one jammed-packed day before flying home that evening with a very full duffel bag. (Important note: There is a train to the Mall right from the airport, so there is no need to go outside in the cold weather – a great benefit for a Floridian and an easy way to get a bit of shopping done with a long layover.)
So while we await the release of George Clooney’s next movie “Up in the Air”, let us know what crazy things you have done (or would do) to reach your frequent flier goals. And if the movie just happens to come out in December as the year finishes up and we’re a bit short a few miles, we may just need to meet in some faraway city in order reach our status. That sounds like fun!
Hope to see you Up in the Air!
Posted by Carol Margolis under Television & Movies |
