J. Jason Lazarus Blog

I recently completed a weekend venture to Anchorage and had, pretty hastily, made reservations for a hotel about a day before our arrival.  After searching a couple of places online, I ended up settling on Priceline - for reasons unknown (my guess is my personal liking of their spokesperson, Will Shatner).  The price nipped me a bit in the rear - all total, over $400 for a two-day stay in Anchorage.  Understanding that Anchorage, of all towns, milks the fact that it can do rediculous overpricing duirng the summer, I’m pretty used to these prices even if I don’t like them.

After our six-hour drive down to Anchorage, I was met with a shocking revealation - the clerk at the front counter of the Hampton Inn, where we had booked our stay, presented me with a daily rate that was significantly different than what Priceline had quoted me.  Assuring me that it was their error, the clerk went further to tell me that the excess would be reimbursed once Priceline got their invoice - after all, I wasn’t paying Hampton directly - Priceline was doing it for me.

So what was the quoted daily charge for the room?  $147 according to Hampton - yet Priceline was charging me $179.  Priceline’s site even said they had worked on “slashing” fees - but according to Hampton, Fees per day made up only $18 of the bill while Priceline charged me $22/day.  So all in all, there was a pretty hefty $73 difference in charges.

I was, however, assured by their staff that a refund was in order and so I washed my concerns away - until this week when, after a week of being back, I hadn’t gotten my refund.  I called up Priceline - and apparently Hampton was in error for ever giving me a reciept in the first place for the amount charged.  The rate of $147/day is a “bulk” rate that discount travel companies like Priceline get - whilst individuals booking directly through Hampton still have to pay the $179/day.

I agreed, understood their captialistic intent and dealt with the fact that I just paid a company $73 for what I could’ve done myself - gone to the company’s direct website and purchased my rooms directly from them.  In fact, what frustrates me is that kicking the middleman out doesn’t manage to save you any cash and, in fact, this is one of the few industries surviving in the US that operate under such a ridiculous concept - kicking the middleman out doesn’t, in fact, help you at all.  Sure, they say sometimes they can give you a deal but in this case, I received no better deal than what I could’ve gotten off of the company’s website - now does this make me the idiot or them for being so greedy not to pass along any of their savings onto me?

So, all in all, consider this on for size - in this instance, Priceline made $73 off of me for a 2-day stay.  That’s $36 a day - which translates to being a 18% profit for them.  Forgive me for not being up on economics, but last time I remember discussing profit margins in a retail setting, 10% was outstanding - and that normally 5-7% was expected.  Sure, inital markup can be upwards to 40% without considering expenses (source) but Priceline isn’t your traditional retail store - it doesn’t need brick-and-mortar locations and thousands of employees - it needs customer service, IT’s and servers - not much else. I understand I’m not considering employee charges and other business overhead, but 18%?  Seriously?  On something that’s practically automated by now?  In my own opinion, this is a ripoff.  I’ll be going directly through the companies from now on if I see no dramatic difference in savings - stupid me for thinking Priceline would actually “pass along” the savings.

Lord, is it ever taking long to finish up this trip.  At this point, it’s been a month since we got back from the trip and I’m not even done talking about it - makes you really wonder what I’ve been doing for the last month, eh?

Well, the next morning of the trip we headed out early from Sequim toward the Ferry ride to Seattle.  Gathering that we were trying to get into Seattle a couple hours before rush hour and would reach the city, if we didn’t take the ferry, during the rush hour, we opted for the more leisurely ferry ride.  I have never been on such a large ferry and couldn’t believe myself when it started moving - mainly because I couldn’t even feel the motion until I noticed the horizon regressing.  Aidan had a blast on the boat and within 30 minutes or so, we had crossed the Sound and were barrelling head first to Seattle’s core.

Showing up extra early, my logical thought was to do what I had heard in one of those wonderful Travel Channel programs - “show up early to Pike’s Market”.  Apparently our two meanings of early wasn’t truly interchangable.  8 a.m. isn’t a good time to get anything but fresh fish at the Market but we nonetheless had a blast waiting it out a while to see what would open up next.  We decided to attempt to surprise Heather (Aidan’s Godmother, Deanna’s Best Friend) at her work with fresh flowers from the Market only to find out that she didn’t work the opening shift - she, nonetheless, appreciated the flowers once she did see them.

After calling Heather, we scoped out a few stores on the Piers including Ye Olde Curiosity Shoppe, a store full of sideshow attractions and zany gifts, as well as a Arcade.  Heading back up to the Market, we met Heather around Noonish, had a blast going through an even larger market and hit up a couple spice markets looking for specialty spices not available in Alaska and a German grocery.  Had some wonderful Cajun for lunch at a place just a block away from the Market - after that, Heather was off to work and we were off to the International District.

I’ll admit it, when it comes to the International District, I’ve been spoiled by San Fran’s Chinatown.  I could not find any enthusiasm for looking around for the sparsely-placed stores nor did we even explore the entire area.  Rather than starting off with a fairly confining area that forces vendors to diversify and “one up” those around them, it looks like Seattle set aside a massive parcel of land for a tiny handful of businesses - thus creating a whole bunch of parking lots for businesses that didn’t exist.  I did, however, get to scope out a retro gaming store while I was there - called Pink Godzilla - and bought a portable handheld 3rd-party NES.

Our night was spent driving up with Heather, after she got off work, to her home in Capitol Hill.  We did a bit of browsing in the district, as it was too late for anything to be open, and partook in Indian Food again (not that we were complaining a bit!).

The next day we spent waking up early and going to the Aquarium with Heather.  Just a short jaunt from the hotel that we were staying in, thankfully because of Heather’s deep employee discount at Hotel Alexsis, we had a blast at the Seattle Aquarium and our little man was taken back by many “oohs!” and “ahhs!” in quick succession.  I haven’t seen someone enjoy going to a Aquarium this much since I took Deanna to the San Francisco one!

That night, Heather demanded that we leave Aidan with her and for us to have a night out on the town - which was probably a good idea given that we were quite visably exhausted from trying to keep the little tyke entertained for the last 10 days.  I’ll admit, looking back at it, that we didn’t take full advantage of the night.  My hope was to check out the Fremont District of Seattle, find a couple of shops to go to, find a nice ethnic restaurant and have a movie at one of the classic theaters in the area.  What we ended up doing was, after both getting gussied up in our new diggs from Diva Dolls and Utiliklits, respectively, we found most of the shops closed, just too late to go to some shows and far too early for others - but we did find a ethnic restaurant - that I managed to dread finding for the next couple of days.  We found this awesome looking Thai restaurant with an “Adventurous Only” section on the menu - feeling as such, I not only ordered from that section of the menu but also challenged myself to eat fish - something that Deanna had been complaining about lately and something, for my health, I need to listen to.

When the fish came out with the head attached, I knew that I had done something wrong.  Tilapia isn’t the ugliest fish but it’s a far jaunt away from the most handsome one - staring at its mug for an hour while I yanked away paltry bits of meat from its boney recesses didn’t help with the current positioning of my stomach.  The fact that it was not only fish but also extremely (and uniquely) flavorable and spicy fish didn’t help either.  I usually like my spices - when I can figure out what, in fact, is spicy.  To quantify, picture a Oyster Sauce-laden ball of Horseradish with several Habaneros chopped into it.

This combination ruined the next day and a half.  Within mere minutes after finishing, my stomach began churning, forcing my desire to retreat back home to pick up Aidan - that is, after stopping by one of the nicest looking Irish-style neighborhood bars that I’ve ever seen - Dad Watson’s.

The next day we went on our way to the Zoo with Aidan, being that Heather had to work, and I felt the effects of my cuisene choice all day long.  Alright for the first hour or two, I managed to amble through the park - but soon enough I was on every other park bench, laying down for 20 minutes only to be upright for 10.  Aidan soon fell asleep, I soon felt even worse and we all decided that it was best to unfortunately leave early.  It didn’t help that it was about 95 degrees - that, above all else, probably caused our early parting and my sickness.

Scoping out a mall and finding out soon that I’m growing past the interest and allure a mall holds, we started heading down early evening to see Matt Toms, a old Nerland Hall friend of mine from ‘02-’03 - back when I was only dating Deanna.  We had a blast, even with my limit appetite and energy, eating at Olive Garden and browsing through yet another mall that had harshly fallen victim to the recession.  This whole idea of the recession is pretty foriegn to us Alaskans - it’s barely touched us and the only truly noticable effect, locally in Fairbanks, has been that lower-48 based chain stores have altered or shelved their plans on opening local branches - from Best Buy to Wal-mart, we’ve seen construction come to a standstill in Fairbanks - but nothing’s really closing.

Anyways - it was really good catching up with Matt and meeting his lovely wife and child.  Good to see I do, indeed, have friends in stable and healthy relationships!

The next day was spent meeting up with family at Pike Street Market.  Between having my parents show up late and us showing up too early with the rest of the family, we practically spent the entire day there.  We had African for lunch - which was a real treat - and did a bit of shopping.  I swear, out of all the cuisines that I’ve had in my travels, African has to be the most fulfilling, tasty and most longed-for cuisine - something I desperately wish for is that our local Ethiopian “restaurant” could get their crap together and open back up.  The evening was spent with meeting up with Heather and Josh, a previous student of mine, friend and German exchange student that used to go to UAF.  I parted from the group to go on the Underground Seattle Tour - which even as I was finally starting to recover from my bout with Tilapia, I enjoyed immensely.  I have never learned so much in so little time about a section of history that I to shoot about - if only I could’ve managed to find more accessable doors, wandered off tour and gotten “lost” in the underground, that would’ve made the trip complete.

That night we started packing up, headed to a Irish Pub for dinner after, unfortunately, finding out that Pike Brewing closed early on Sunday nights, and said our goodbyes - the next day was painfully filled with travel.  It was official, after this trip, we never fly during the day with Aidan without first-class seats.  It wasn’t that he was being a pest, he was simply frustrated at the prospect of having to sit in laps for five hours worth of flight and didn’t take too well to that - aside from that, he was, as always, a decently well-behaved boy.

The trip was… well… exhausting.  I now understand why I don’t envy my parents whenever they see any of those practically-forgotten relatives on the east coast because I soon remember that scheduling your vacation away to be able to bend at the whim of multiple groups of people isn’t fun at all.  Neither group did any more of a disservice to us than any other - and in fact their expectations were completely rational - being family, and family that hadn’t seen us in a while, they expected to see us - but the entirety of having all of them wanting to see us, practically all at the same time, didn’t jive well with the concept of relaxation.  Now I know that from now on we’ll schedule our times when we’re available to see any family rather than leaving it rather open to seem receptive - in the end, having demands of others on your own vacation isn’t that rude at all, I suppose!

Phew.  That’s done.  Now I can talk about everything else that’s been going on.  That’ll, most likely, be a short blog in comparison.

Much of the fourth day was spent cursing the weather.  I had intended to do quite a bit of photography on this trip and was consistantly finding that hindrances wanted to block my path at practically every turn.  I had been scoping out several Ghost Town related sites for Washington State - as well as several people’s Flickr sites, and I had found several places near Ritzville, just west of Spokane, may be perfect.  Driving down sad attempts at country roads, we ventured through three presumed “Ghost Towns” - Ralston, Benge & Paha.  In the end, Ralston had a couple (namely one or two) buildings that were abandoned, Benge had an interesting gas station that was locked up and Paha was the only one that could be considered a “Ghost Town”.  Between Benge and Paha, we stopped at a abandoned homestead that I had to crawl under a crudely made (yet obviously not put there to keep anyone out) barbed-wire fence - took some great photos there but had the landowner somewhat peturbedly stop by and ask us to leave, stating that the fence was the only “No Tresspassing” sign that she needed.  Yeah, I won’t argue with you over that even though I think that’s stupid.  Once we reached Paha, I managed to find the landowner with the majority of the buildings on their property - and in the rain I raced in and out of buildings being aerially attacked by killer pigeons.  Fun, but I’ve never had my heart race so much while I’m taking photos - no matter how sure you were that the coast was clear, another pigeon would come screaming at top speed out of some crack in the ceiling, barreling toward you with no regard for your life or theirs.  Dumbest birds on the planet yet somehow insanely frightening when they’re inches away from you going 20mph.

After spending about two hours taking photos (and having such a wonderfully patient wife and child in the car) we headed back toward Wenatchee to see Deanna’s sister one last time.  After a quick visit after picking up roses, we tried out the Wenatchee Mall.  Wow - waste of time - I’ll, quite literally, take the Bentley Mall over this mall anyday.  In less than 10 minutes at the mall, we were on our way back to Leavenworth to meetup with my parents.

Unfortunately they took quite a bit of time getting there - somehow it didn’t translate that Chewelah was over 200 miles away from Leavenworth and they might want to leave early in the day to get over there - they didn’t reach the town till about 6pm.  We did, however, manage to have a fun dinner with both sides of the family at a German Restaurant to end the evening.

We got up fairly early in the morning to start shopping with my parents - already have shopped a couple days ago with Deanna’s parents, we were trying to show off the town, once again, for my parents this time.  We had a bunch of fun, remeninced, had some Reinswurst (All Beef Brats, basically) and spent, probably, far too much money on sweets.  Leaving early in the afternoon, we started heading south toward Roslyn with the aspiration of staying the night there.

Why Roslyn?  Well, if you know anything about me, you know I’m a fan of Northern Exposure - and, of coarse, Roslyn is the fictional Alaskan village of Ciceley, Alaska.  I had this utopic view of the town, nestled in a perfect valley, full of quarky (yet warm and loving) people.  That was, unfortunately, quickly shattered when we arrived.  I don’t really think it was that reality set in - or anything like that - I think it was because it was 85 degrees in my fair Ciceley that drove me to frustration.  We took what pictures we could, saw several of the houses used in the series and did, indeed, have fun.  The turning point, probably, was at The Brick.  Going inside the family entrance (after all, it is a bar), I quickly learned that many of the building interiors were shot in a studio - and the Brick didn’t have much of the same homey feel as it did in the series.  Depressed and destraught, my idea for having a few at the pub later on that night seemed to not have the same flair as it did only minutes before - now I wasn’t going to be sitting in the same chair as Dr. Joel Fleischman - and somehow, that was a serious dose of bummage.  So, after a couple of ours, ego bruised, we limped toward the Olympic Peninsula to meet up with Deanna’s parents at a family friend’s house.

Toward Sequim we went - and boy, was it a long drive.  We barely got in early enough to do a meet-n-greet and we were off to bed.

The next day Deanna’s parents were kind enough to take Aidan off our hands for a bit.  I don’t usually say any bad words about my son, on this blog nor in public, but traveling as much as we had just done had definitely put a strain between all three of us.  I understand now with some hindsight what the problem was - being in the car for over 6-7 hours a day was making him very stir-crazy - while, quite oppositely, it was making us exhausted.  He wanted to play, we wanted to sleep.  Bad combo and nerves frayed on all three ends of this family.  The day wasn’t spent doing much except driving for the sake of driving.  Deanna, who was quoting my own recent “need” to go to Roslyn, wanted to go out toward Forks and La Push as they’re both well-known locales for a book series she had just finished - Twilight.

Yeah.  You won’t see me ever reading anything that Disneyifys vampirism.  Sorry, dear, I love you but I will never read those books.

I also had a tip that there may be some photo-worthy subject matter out in that direction - so having a day with a car with no toddler fussing in the background sounded like a great idea - and it was.  We had Indian for lunch in Port Angeles, went to a couple *shudder* Twilight-related stores, and headed toward Forks and La Push.  Didn’t find much - not much at all.  For as touristy as Forks is, it sure is an absolute dive of a little logging town.  La Push wasn’t much better but I did chirp off a few shots at the shore towards some fairly interesting rock outcroppings.  Turning around, we met up with the family for dinner at - of all things - a grain elevator that had been renovated into retail space - for a Mexican Restaurant!  Headed home, hung out for a while with Cindy, Mike and Danny (Deanna’s family friends - they took care of Leann during the last few years of her life).  Also, probably more important for our poor car, which was quickly filling up with the putrid smell of warm diapers, our family did diapers while we were gone on our trip - thanks again, so much!  Soon enough we had to get to bed - not only in a desperate attempt to keep Aidan on a decent schedule, but also because we were leaving early in the morning to drive (& float) toward Seattle.

I’m pretty proud of myself - heck, I’m almost done with this trip and it’s only been a month since we left for it - heck, even less than a month!