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I spent about 3O minutes speaking with a lead flight attendant for Delta Airlines. The major air names, American, Delta, United and U.S Airways charge $25 for a first checked bag.
The decision to charge has proved costly.
Passengers are stuffing more in their carry-on bags.
Fewer carry on bags now fit in the overhead compartments.
The bags that don’t fit have to be stowed for free in the luggage hold below.
There’s been an increase of lost bags because the temporary tagged bags are not fully integrated into the tracking system.
People don’t want their bags stowed below. They brought a carry-on for a reason.
Flight attendants are not paid a single cent until the plane moves away from the blocks. The increase in front end hassles is wearing thin on employees.
Finally, the process is delaying flights. Planes are not pushing back on time creating inevitable connection problems.
To say the antenna atop the John Hancock building are stout is like saying water is wet. One is 30 stories tall, the other 25. Radio and TV stations across Chicago have a dish on one of these towers. Do not ask how I made it on the roof and asking me about climbing the first 50 feet of the tower is off the table completely. What’s good for me ain’t necessarily good for the weak minded.
Swan dive
Sunrise over Lake Michigan around 6:00 a.m. on October 15, 2013. Not sure I’ve ever seen anything like it.
The need for speed. The world champion marathon runner clocked in at 2 hours 3 minutes and 42 seconds. The world champion wheelchair marathon racer made it over the finish line in 1 hour and 18 minutes. Smokin’
Brown ones and round ones, short, stout, square and tall, and then there’s the Hancock, greater than all. A building. So what. It can stir child’s spirit, ambitious, aspire, inspire and make people a half mile away remember wonder. I love it because it’s a beacon and an archive of what and who we used to be. Decisions were made years at a time, not on the two year pathetic cycle of congressional races that forces decent men and women to continually posture and search for the worst in others. The Hancock was a huge gamble. So Skidmore huddled a mini Manhattan project. American guts, calculated gamblers and thousands of workers no better or worse than anyone else. The 22-year-old guys that walked those beams with swagger in ’67, ’68 and “69 are the only ones left from the project. They worked for 35 or 40 or maybe 26 years. What they share in common is the knowledge they helped build that building. Each of them talks as if they own it. And they do. At least part of it. They remember a 10 hours shift and afterward talk in the construction yard and glimpses of Bruce Graham and a hug from Fazlur Kahn, the humble and brilliant architect from the portion of Pakistan that eventually became Bangladesh. What could be more American than a migrant helping to shape the country. The John Hancock topped off in 1969.
A few weeks later, Apollo 11 touched down on the moon and Neil Armstrong talked about a giant step. There were a few of those giants steps in 1969 and the John Hancock is one of them.
Happy birthday to Grace Slick and to Dr. Timothy Leary who would have been 93 this year.
It’s tough to improve upon power at sea provided by the wind. Be it 1492 or 2013 a wind stretched sail just plain feels good.
Ralph Braseth Dot Calm 