Can anyone tell me what is worse than having "new truck" fever? Well, I can tell you and that is "new phone" fever and I have had it for some time now.
Since I needed some relief for that affliction, we went to Best Buy and got me a new Apple iPhone 5S. I did consider replacing my old Samsung Stratosphere with another one of Samsung's products but since Joyce and I both have Mac's, the iPhone just made sense. And, I can tell you I am glad I did too.
I selected the 16g version but they didn't have one of those in stock so they gave me the 32g one for the same price. Then, Best Buy had a promotion going on, so I got $50 off the price of the phone and then $20 off any accessories. To go along with the phone, I also scored me a Mophie Juice Pack which is a really cool device that gives me about 80% more battery life.
Is there a learning curve to using the iPhone over an Android OS phone? Yep, there is but not near as steep as I thought it would be. The phone operates much like my Apple iPad so I was able to get up and running in no time.
One of the best features of this phone is my personal assistant, Seri. I can ask her to make a call for me, help with writing an email or text message and a host of other things. I can say, "Tell Jim that the beer is cold." and Seri will text him for me. Since the iPhone doesn't have a speed dial feature, I now make calls using Miss Serri with, "Call Mom" and boom, she is off and running doing that for me. Yes, a lot of other phones have something like Seri but…, well, it's cooler on the iPhone.
The Blue Angels have been flying twice a day for the past week, practicing there new show routine. Everyday they add a new maneuver or two and it is getting very exciting to see. Y'all may have seen the thing where they all go vertical and peal off into what is called a fountain. Well, you should see the new variation to that where they do the same thing but from horizontal flight! Amazing to say the least.
The Blues will put on their first show of the season here in El Centro on March 15th so if your anywhere close to this area, come on out!
03/11/2014
On March 1 we drove over to Navy North Island to spend the night before catching an airplane to North Carolina for our visit with Justin and Adrian. One of the advantages to staying there is that it's close to the San Diego airport and we can leave the truck parked there for free.
After a good nights rest, we were up early and caught a cab to the airport. I am not going to go into details about our experience with the gate attendants for United Airlines right now, but suffice it to say the ones we dealt with need to go back to school and learn some customer service skills. More on United Airlines later.
After a rushed stop in Houston we flew on to Raleigh, NC where Justin and Adrian met us at the airport. We had not seen Justin in about two years which is way too long for us.
The first day there we just relaxed and enjoyed being with them again.
As you probably know, Justin is a company commander in the 3rd Special Forces Group (Airbone) at Fort Bragg, NC. On day two of our visit, we had an opportunity to meet two of his soldiers, both his outgoing and incoming First Sergeant's. The outgoing one is leaving soon to attend graduate school in Monterey, CA. Justin told me that only a few enlisted folks get selected for that and it's pretty much restricted to Special Forces soldiers.
After a great lunch in downtown Fayetteville, we headed over to visit the Airborne and Special Operations Museum. Joyce and I had toured the museum before but they have a temporary exhibit now, "The Battle of Mogadishu" that we wanted to see.
The next day we drove over to Pinehurst, NC, the "Cradle of American Golf". There are several nice little shops in the village so we spent some time walking around and popping into a few of them. One that we stopped in is the Green Gate Olive Oils store where we sampled several of their delicious oils. Then we found the Old Sport & Gallery, which is all about golf. I could have spent hours in this great little place.
All of that shopping made us thirsty so we stopped in Dugan's Pub for a pint or two. After an hour or so of strolling around, we went to the Too Blonde Tavern for dinner. Outstanding!
On Saturday morning, we had to say goodbye and catch an airplane to Houston for our planned cruise. We got a very restful nights sleep at the Westin Oaks at the Galleria Hotel.
The next morning we decided to have breakfast at The Cheesecake Factory in the Galleria Mall. While waiting for the doors to open, we met "Big" Sam and Dori-Marie Adams, who thanked Joyce and I for our service in the Air Force. After a wonderful breakfast, and to our surprise, the waiter told us that Big Sam and had paid our bill. Fortunately, they had not left the restaurant so we were able to thank them personally for their generosity. You can rest assured that Joyce and I will pass that wonderful gesture on to a deserving military person soon.
We were supposed to meet Chuck and Sue Svendsen who had booked this cruise but when they got to Eugene for their flight to Houston, United Express (United Airlines) cancelled the flight for a mechanical problem. The airline offered to fly them down to Grand Cayman three days later, making several stops on the way down. They opted to cancel their trip all together so as you can imagine, Joyce and I were pretty sad about that.
Our cruise on Royal Caribbean's beautiful Navigator of the Seas, to Jamaica, Grand Cayman and Cozumel was great. The weather was beautiful during the whole cruise and the seas were almost flat most of the way. We had an inside stateroom with a virtual balcony which we liked. Read about that on the ship's web page.
After cruising for two days, we made our first stop in Falmouth, Jamaica. Since we didn't have an excursion planned here, we just walked around the port area for a while and got back on the ship spending the rest of the day relaxing by the Solarium pool.
Our next stop was in Grand Cayman. After finding the library and checking our emails, we took an excursion to go swim with the Stingrays. We have been on a number of excursion's in the past but we have to say that this one is right up at the top of the list. We were allowed to pet these wonderful creatures and both of us even got a kiss.
Anther night of cruising brought us to Cozumel, Mexico, a beautiful resort island off the coast off Mexico's eastern Yucatán Peninsula. Joyce and I have been here a few times so we just found an internet café, had a cold drink and did the email thing. On the way back to the ship we got a few t-shirts and Joyce got a new silver chain.
Another night and day of sailing got us back to Houston and our flight back to San Diego.
Before going to the airport, we took a short tour of the Houston NASA facility.
Getting out of Houston proved to be a hassle with United Airlines...again. A maintenance delay caused us to have an airplane change so we were almost four hours late getting back to San Diego.
Without going into too much detail and taking the risk of boring the heck out of you, I want to tell you about our experience flying with United and United Express Airlines, who we will avoid at all costs in the future.
Back in January we had to change our flight reservations due to my leg problem. United (or so we thought at the time) charged us a $400 fee to do that. During the telephone conversation, the agent told us that we would be able to get that fee refunded if we took a letter from my doctor to San Diego and see any gate agent. We did that but the person we spoke with was very rude and told us she didn't have the time to deal with our problem. Joyce tried to explain that we were told to bring the letter to the airport but she didn't care about that.
We then came back to El Centro and I wrote a letter to United and enclosed the letter from my doctor.
In San Diego we were treated like criminals by one of the gate attendants when we wanted to take one of our bags on board. The attendant very rudely told us that it was too large and it had to be checked. Yes, it was less than one inch too large but there were several folks in line ahead of us that had bags much bigger than ours who were allowed to board the plane. When we pointed that out to the attendant he just told us that "that is the way it is". What an ass!
During our stop in Houston, we only had about fifteen minutes to make our connection due to being late pushing back and taking off in San Diego. We asked the flight attendant to please get our gate number for us but she just pushed us off. Southwest always has helped us out with connections and does so gladly. It appeared to us that United could have cared less and just wanted to get us off their airplane.
When we returned to El Centro from the cruise, we had a letter from United telling us that they couldn't process our request for a change fee refund until we had completed our travels. There was a phone number provided to call.
When Joyce called the next day, the agent said that we needed to resubmit all the paperwork again. Joyce then asked to speak to a supervisor but after being on hold for several minutes, the same agent came back and to her that United never charged a change fee in the first place. It was in fact charged by our travel agency, military MWR.
After calling the travel agency, who in turn talked to United, we were told that United miraculously found our paperwork and was going to process our claim for a "possible" refund.
We then called American Express and they opened a fraud investigation. They also told us to sit back, relax and they would take care of all this for us. Now that is what we call great customer service.
"And the story never ends."
Barry & Joyce
