travel rant

Update on the KC models: As noted below, two were on time, ready to shoot, and I'm quite happy with the experience in general. Both drove out from the St. Louis area, four hours each way, one spent the night in a hotel to be ready for a morning shoot. Certainly can't ask for more than that.

One other model cancelled well in advance, and I expected her to; a seven-hour drive each way was simply not realistic for her, and we offered her the chance to opt out well before she actually decided to take it.

The fourth one is the puzzle. She's the only one who lives right in town, short easy drive for her. She went missing for a week before the shoot, didn't respond to several e-mails, never confirmed, so we assumed she was out (I should note that I never actually had contact with this model myself, my photographer friend and collaborator handled this one). Apparently, she reappeared late the night before the shoot, e-mailed my friend with a message to call her and let her know where to meet. My friend didn't see the e-mail til after the shoot, it came in after she'd already gone to bed, and of course she had to leave early in the morning to make the shoot. I'm told it was suggested after the shoot that she consider messaging me and trying to set up a quick downtown shoot around the conference, but I never heard from her, so never had to make that decision.

So two went to considerable effort to shoot; one blew an easy opportunity. Go figure.

I'm not crazy about Kansas City in general, although admittedly I haven't seen very much of it. Downtown seems nice enough, good mix of older buildings with character and gentrification. But get much away from the city center, and it's poorly designed roads with poor signage, and what I've encountered of the people has been fairly mediocre so far. The airport wasn't impressive, either.

I flew out of Kansas City this evening, the flight left an hour late. Partly weather, with some rain; but half the delay was just inefficiency by all involved. We got to Denver just a few minutes after my connecting flight had left, and the customer service rep was not one of the more helpful or intelligent ones I've ever encountered. The only other SFO flight was way over booked, they'd automatically put me on a next-morning flight, but they weren't willing to cover a hotel. So instead I caught a flight to Las Vegas leaving 15 minutes from when I left the counter, and I'm in Vegas now.

The terminal is tacky, worn, outdated, with gambling machines, lights, and noise everywhere. It's a crazy, sprawling airport, geared to take money from waiting passengers, not to move people efficiently. I can't wait to get out of here. It's a midnight flight, into SFO around 1:30 am. No idea if my bag will get there before me or after me, but it won't be on the same plane.

The Denver layout is equally crazy, if new and clean and tidy... but it's a half-mile hike from one end to the other. Having worked with a few airport planners in my day, I know it doesn't need to be like this. Having met one of the guys who did final design on Denver, I'm not surprised it functions poorly in the real world.

So I'm sitting in Vegas, a place that for me symbolizes much of what's wrong with our twisted, short-term thinking, materialistic culture, wondering where we as a society went wrong. Maybe it's just that it's been a long day and I'm tired and cranky, but there's something wrong here. We, as a society, are falling so far short of what could be.