Check on car seats before you travel, and ask ridiculous questions like, "do you wash them?"
When you ask about whether a car rental company offers car seats, "Yes we do" is not good enough. In some states (like Oregon), companies will not generally offer car seats at the rental office. California does, but watch out...rentals can be questionable back-door-of-the-thrift-store contraptions that are often VERY used car seats that are barely legal (if at all) and filthy. And I don't mean moderately dirty. I mean stinky, sticky, and uncleaned ever since they were pumped out of the plastic factory 15 years ago.
Ask about the age and condition of the seats, if they have the latch system, if they are clean, and so forth. Some rental companies do a much better job than others, and it pays to ask a few questions.
Example: We flew to Coos Bay/North Bend, OR, not realizing that the rental agencies do not offer car seats. So we were stuck at the airport until I could figure out a way to get to Walmart (not our first choice, but effectively the only game in town) to buy a car seat. The saving grace of that adventure was that the employee was so helpful that he offered to first let us borrow an extra seat that he and his wife had, and then when that didn't work out (his manager threatened to fire him if he did, citing lawsuit reasons), he offered to drive me to Walmart and back.
The worst car seat mistake so far? Advantage car rentals "at" LAX. (WARNING: DO NOT RENT FROM ADVANTAGE AT LAX - despite what their listings say, they do NOT have a desk at the terminal - it is 20 minutes away, and the night time shuttles are infrequent at best). The infant seats had no bases to attach to the car (except 1 that I found by digging through the piles in the storage room myself), the seats were covered in sticky oozy putrescence, and each seat offered a unique olfactory experience, namely urine mixed with a few unidentified scatological aromas. In addition, the attendant was completely helpless, uninterested, and was coughing all over the transaction. I didn't anticipate any of that when I chose them because they "have a desk in the terminal (LIE LIE LIE)." Their price? $5 bucks each per day. I would gladly have paid more for a clean one.
Sunday, January 28, 2007
Sunday, January 21, 2007
Travel Details #1: Keep it light in the loafers
Keep it simple. The fewer, smaller carry-ons the better. OH, and get over it: DVD players are manna from Panasonic.
It can be tempting to want to pack everything you think that your children might point their brains at, but generally we've found that with packing, the simpler the better. Its that whole holistic approach theory - If your stress level is lower because a) you have less to keep track of, b) you have two hands free to wrangle the squirrelly 2-foot part-time conversationalist/acoustical test engineer, and c) you are generally more physically comfortable because you didn't sweat as much trying to get to the terminal, odds are your child will be a little less tightly wound too.
Our best example of this: A family almost identical to ours that we sat next to going to Paris. They had a single, small backpack between two parents and an infant - just enough supplies for the flight - no more, no less. No coats, no laptops, just a baby and a pack. They slept much of the way, and when we landed at CDG in the winter, they simply unpacked their coats from the top of their larger checked suitcase, and that was that. Of course, it was a direct flight from their home airport so the chance of lost baggage was slim, but they were much better off having kept it simple.
The one exception to lightness of bags: Buy and haul a portable DVD player (gasp). Yes, you heard my self-righteousness just get tossed out the pressurized cabin door like a pair of ill-fitting 80's parachute pants. The days are gone of naively saying, "When I have kids I will never be one of those parents who use a DVD player to keep my children occupied." It is modern technology that has solved the problem of how to keep your kids from varying degrees of screaming for hours on end. Embrace it. Give in. Parental sin? maybe. Sanity preservative? Definitely. You and your co-flyers will thank you, or at least not wish you ill faring in the stories they tell about you for the rest of the week. (See, honey? Sometimes, as with the Twinkie, preservatives are good for you.)
It can be tempting to want to pack everything you think that your children might point their brains at, but generally we've found that with packing, the simpler the better. Its that whole holistic approach theory - If your stress level is lower because a) you have less to keep track of, b) you have two hands free to wrangle the squirrelly 2-foot part-time conversationalist/acoustical test engineer, and c) you are generally more physically comfortable because you didn't sweat as much trying to get to the terminal, odds are your child will be a little less tightly wound too.
Our best example of this: A family almost identical to ours that we sat next to going to Paris. They had a single, small backpack between two parents and an infant - just enough supplies for the flight - no more, no less. No coats, no laptops, just a baby and a pack. They slept much of the way, and when we landed at CDG in the winter, they simply unpacked their coats from the top of their larger checked suitcase, and that was that. Of course, it was a direct flight from their home airport so the chance of lost baggage was slim, but they were much better off having kept it simple.
The one exception to lightness of bags: Buy and haul a portable DVD player (gasp). Yes, you heard my self-righteousness just get tossed out the pressurized cabin door like a pair of ill-fitting 80's parachute pants. The days are gone of naively saying, "When I have kids I will never be one of those parents who use a DVD player to keep my children occupied." It is modern technology that has solved the problem of how to keep your kids from varying degrees of screaming for hours on end. Embrace it. Give in. Parental sin? maybe. Sanity preservative? Definitely. You and your co-flyers will thank you, or at least not wish you ill faring in the stories they tell about you for the rest of the week. (See, honey? Sometimes, as with the Twinkie, preservatives are good for you.)
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