Kauai IV: "Is it the Scam Cart?"

I'm afraid that Hawaiian Airlines has joined the dark side.

Their food has been substandard for a few years, but I gave them a pass as they're the only US airline that still does food for their peasantry. (And today's chicken & rice dinner wasn't bad.) However, I hadn't realized that last week's lack of an inflight movie was a sign of their continued descent into darkness. It became more obvious at Honolulu this afternoon when they kept coming onto the PA to exhort (extort?) people into renting tablet computers if they wanted to watch any movies during their flight. Again and again they reminded us that it'd be the only entertainment available from them. (And we could rent them for just $17.)

This new love for evil was also obvious in what K. called "The Scam Cart". I noticed it on the flight in, when they quickly wheeled around a cart of snacks for sale before they brought out the breakfast meal. In other words, they wanted to get people to give them money for food because they were hungry … before they bought the real food around. It all seemed even scummier today, on the flight home, when they also pointed out you could buy a bottle of water for just $3.50, in advance of the drink service. They're preying on peoples' needs to make them pay for what they'll be giving away shortly thereafter.

"Gift blanket sets" were also available for $10.

(On the way out of the plane we saw what were presumably free blanket sets scattered around the First Class section like so much debris.)

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Our flight was an hour too long today. Usually it arrives just after 9pm, but today it arrived after 10pm.

The problem was a long air detour to avoid turbulence. Presumably the same winds that buffeted the Hawaiian islands most of the time we were there.

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The public transit woes continued at the new Oakland Air Tram, which is clearly not ready for prime time.

First up, it drops from every 10 minute service to every 20 minute service at 10pm, which is ridiculous for the Oakland Airport which still has planes coming at that time. And our plane was so late, that's when we ended up traveling.

Second, when our tram finally arrived, 19.5 minutes after we got to the platform, we were told it was out of service. It sat there for a minute, a "friendly" BART person walked up to the platform, scowling, entered the train, exited it, and then left without saying a word. Then the train pulled out. Another 20 minutes went by and another train showed up. The platform messages were still saying that it was out of service, but by this time we just figured the non-communicative BART people hadn't changed the message, so the ~50-70 of us jumped in and successfully made it to BART (albeit, with standing room only).

Hopefully the kinks are gone by next year, because as of this moment, night time tram usage sucks. If Oakland Airport was trying to compete with SF Airport for convenience of public transport, they failed horribly.

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We made it home successfully. The vacation rocked despite today's hijinks.

We have desperate cats, despite a daily cat sitter, and one of K's friends also kindly stopping in several times. Lucy is hitting the floor at everything, like she used to after our first few trips. Callisto is wandering the house whining and being smelly.

Apparently we were missed.

Letter to State Senator Hancock

I am requesting that you OPPOSE SB192, the Bike Helmet law recently introduced by Senator Liu. Though I am sympathetic to the loss of the Senator's nephew a decade ago in a bike accident, I feel that her bill demonstrates a deep ignorance of the underlying issues.

Recent studies suggest that bike helmets reduce head injuries by 10-40%. However, there are numerous problems with helmet laws. Here are just a few:

* An experiment by Ian Walker showed that cars act more aggressively toward bicyclists with helmets.
* Australian studies based on their own 1990 helmet law suggested that bike ridership dropped 20-30% afterward.
* Helmet laws are particularly problematic when paired with bike share programs just now emerging in the state.

I'm personally a semi-serious bicyclist. I bike about 40-50 miles a week for transportation and for recreation. I choose to wear a helmet when I do.

However, I also want to encourage the casual cyclist, and they're the exact folks who'd be discouraged by this new law. Part of this is a selfless desire to see other people enjoy my recreation. However, part of it is pure selfishness: the biggest protection for bicyclists ISN'T helmets, but instead the number of bicyclists on the road, as has been shown by numerous studies.

To offer some specific numbers: bicycle trips in California have doubled in the last 10 years, but the number of accidents has only increased by 10%. In other words, I'm something like 40% less likely to get in an accident now than in 2005, in large part due to the increase in cyclists. That already protects me as much as my helmet could, and Liu wants to take that away.

If you want to protect bicyclists, please instead push state money toward protected bikeways, like the wonderful one going in on Oakland's Telegraph next month.

Thank you!

Shannon Appelcline

PS: 48% of head injuries occur in cars, as opposed to 1% on bikes. A car helmet requirement would save many more lives, but is more obviously ridiculous.