September 1, 2008
And now for a fabulous guest post from the ex-general counsel at Expedia, Mark Britton. I wish I had known about his site, Avvo, before I experienced my Traffic Court Tribulations!
Being the ex-general counsel at Expedia and now running Avvo and its free legal advice Q&A forum, I get a lot of questions about travel-particularly travelers’ rights and responsibilities. As a parent of three rambunctious little boys, I offer this post to help traveling parents everywhere. On that note, I am reminded of one of Expedia’s great early ads which said something like, “Whoever said getting there is half the fun has never gotten there with a screaming two year old.”
So, in that spirit, here are some nuggets of knowledge for your next child-laden trip:
1. Traveling with kids doesn’t give you special legal rights. A lot of people assume that because they are traveling with kids they have special rights and preferences granted by the Federal Aviation Administration or some higher authority. The reality is that your rights-with or without children-are largely whatever the airline chooses to give you. Don’t think you can be involuntarily bumped with children? Oh yes, you can. Outraged that the airline denied you early boarding with your pokey young children? Tough beans. Not able to avoid your child’s tantrums by letting her run up and down the airline aisle? It’s the flight staff’s call.
2. Add 30-60 minutes to get to your gate. Let’s face it, kids take their time. That dead cockroach en route to your gate may be disgusting to you, but it absolutely requires closer inspection by a five-year-old. I learned long ago that rather than trying to whip your kids into an adult pace, allowing more time to get to your gate preserves family harmony. Just going through security is stressful for a kid-take it slow and make it fun.
3. Reserve the allowed seats for your kids. One place that the feds do get involved is where your children may sit on a plane. They may not sit in an exit row, and if they are in a car seat, they must sit by the window. So don’t think you will book your young child in an exit row and the airline will have to live with it-they won’t. The flight attendants will move you-I see it happen all the time. Also, don’t book two aisle seats-one for you and your car-seated kid. Just take it for granted that your child will be sitting by the window and you will be sitting in the middle by the big hairy guy who hogs the armrest.
4. No need to smuggle your baby food. Keep in mind that while you are not allowed to take liquids on a plane, you may take liquid-based baby food. Many people don’t know this, and so they attempt to come up with creative ways to smuggle on formula or the always-popular peas and carrots. Stow your criminal tendencies, and simply declare the baby food. You can take up to one-day’s supply on board, but I have found that TSA personnel are always very sympathetic and accommodating when it comes to food for your infant.
5. Kids can get the boot too. Finally, keep in mind that an airline can deny you boarding-or even ask you to deplane-if your kids are disorderly, abusive or violent. This goes for adults too, but people are always surprised that it pertains to kids.
I could go on and on (bring a DVD player with headphones, seat your child behind a parent, etc.). However, I think I have already exceeded my word limit. Of course, if you have any more legally related travel questions, we are always here to answer all of your questions. You can go directly to our free legal advice Q&A forum to ask your personal legal questions- anonymously if desired-and real attorneys will answer them.
Travel sanely.
Mark Britton
Founder & CEO
Avvo, Inc.
August 12, 2008
While out on vacation for almost 11 days, I had to check emails. I can’t fathom not checking emails at all and coming home to thousands of emails. I think I would have cried…not that I don’t already feel like crying over the mental draining-ness (not a word I know) of keeping up with day to day emails. Currently, I actively check 3 different email accounts.
I know that tons of busy business people get overwhelmed by email and some have even stopped responding altogether to email, but I haven’t reached that point yet. Companies like NutShell Mail (I met the founders at SXSW here in Austin earlier this year) attempt to solve it by having all of your emails going to one place. Right now when I’m home two of my email addresses download into one Outlook and the third to another set up of Outlook on a different desktop at my day job. When I’m on the road, I have to log in to 3 different webmail accounts. Fortunately, I’m not on the road that often.
What I found interesting is that I ended up probably deleting about 40% of the email I received (which included newsletters, news updates, blog feeds, friend updates, etc.) while I was gone. I’m still deleting some even though I’m fairly caught up because if I tried to read them, I wouldn’t get to anything else! It’s making me wonder if I should even be getting those emails and instead rely on the ‘if it’s really big news, I’ll hear about it from someone’ belief.
The risk of doing this is looking stupid if something big has happened (especially in your market) and you unknowingly wear a blank stare when someone exclaims ‘Did you hear about xyz?!”
I guess one always has to take calculated risks in life. In my current life situation, I have to take the risk that I might not be in-the-know in exchange for paying attention to the rest of my life.
How do the rest of you cope with email overload…or do you?
February 10, 2008
I babble about business, babies, and parenthood on this blog, so those of you who come here to read my posts on entrepreneurship but do not have babies, please forward this post to your friends and family who do have babies. For those who have babies and dabble in business, these tips might be right up your alley. If you have babies and have no interest in business, then send it on to the folks you know who are knee-deep in business and encourage them to have a baby! :-) To see other great baby tips, check out the baby tips category.
Maryam Ghaemmaghami Scoble was kind enough to let me re-publish her January 30, 3007 tips on traveling with baby that she said was inspired after I asked her if she would write a guest baby tip for my blog. She also sent me an adorable picture of her looking at baby Milan. Maryam has been working as an event planner since 1995 and is now taking time off to be with her newborn son. Maryam’s husband, Robert Scoble, is none other than the “Scobleizer” a strong presence in the blogging community. Maryam spends her free time blogging about living, loving, and working with geeks as well as life, love, and everything else. If you are new to the blogosphere, you might not have heard that she and Robert had a baby, but they did and now she has great tips to share!
Traveling with Baby? Here are fifteen things I’ve learned.
I honestly thought that my days of traveling adventure would be over once our baby was born. Not so! Barely four months old, Milan has accompanied us without much fuss to Paris, London and Vegas, traveling via Trains, Planes, and even on a bus. We are headed to Geneva next.
If you are traveling with child I highly recommend checking out My Traveling Buddy website.
Baby Center has a great checklist on things to take with you while traveling with child.
My advice based on my own experience:
1) Don’t pack too many little bags and suitcases. You will leave things behind or else won’t be able to carry all of them together. While it was easier before to have smaller, lighter suitcases, you now need to try and consolidate as much as possible. Remember in addition to the suitcases, you also have to push the stroller and you only have two hands 
I used to pack a suitcase, a carry on and a bag for each of us and it worked perfectly before, but now one of us has to push the stroller while the other carries everything on the cart. My heart goes out to single parents!
2) Don’t forget the baby Bjorn or other form of baby carrier with you. You need to check in your stroller and sometimes have to walk long distances before claiming it back after you get off the plane. You can check in the stroller right where you check in to get on the flight, but you won’t get it back when you land until you walk all the way to baggage claim. In London, we had to walk far and long, and wait quite a while before getting our stroller back. Thank God, I packed a baby carrier with me.
3) Don’t forget the bottle washer and soap. It’s hard to wash bottles without the bottle washer and the soap at the hotels or airports might be too fragrant for the baby. I had to send Robert out to search for a bottle washer in Vegas and I had a hard time finding a perfume free soap in beautiful Paris, home to many famous perfumes.
4) If you are using formula, make a bottle ready before going through security screening. They won’t let you carry a bottle of water but they would let you carry the milk through. The bottle would be safe for an hour and two and you are not forced to run around and look for bottled water in the airport. The security officer in the Vegas airport told me that I could get out of line, mix my formula with water and go through again if I wanted to. I didn’t want to wait in line again, but next time, I will just make the formula ahead of time.
5) Check in early for your flight so you can make sure your baby has a bassinet on board. You can’t reserve one on the phone and if too many babies are traveling on board, you may lose out to those who checked in before you. We were late to check in for our flight to London and couldn’t get a bassinet as there were twenty other babies traveling on board. We got smart on the way back and checked in early
6) Make sure your baby is sucking on a pacifier or a bottle during take off and landing. The air pressure won’t hurt their ears as much. We were feeding Milan while the plane was taking off and landing and he fell asleep each time without crying.
7) If traveling by train find out where the bathroom with diaper changing table is located and book your cabin close to that. I had to walk through over ten cabins while the train was moving with a baby that badly needed a change, all the while worrying if we were going to reach the station soon.
8)Pack enough formula and diapers. Babies sometimes show allergic reaction to different brands of diapers. It’s also very hard to find the same brand of formula while traveling abroad and babies stomach often react to new brands.We ran out of formula in Paris and I couldn’t even read the instructions on the formula I bought and had to trust the reluctant pharmacist advice. Luckily Milan liked the new formula and it worked fine for us. Next time, I will pack extra formula though.
9) Having a travel system based car seat and stroller (we use Graco) works best because you can use the car seat in the cabs, buses, trains and cars, and then place the seat easily in the stroller when walking around. The stroller folds easily and is light to carry around. You can also use it as a cart to carry stuff around.
10) If you have older children I suggest running them through the airport to let them exert some of that extra energy so that they are good and tired and ready to sleep in flight. Planning travel during their sleep time is also a good idea.
11) With older children taking some cheap new toys and coloring materials helps keep them occupied during flight. When Patrick was younger, I always bought him a bunch of magazines so he could read them during the flight and of course he had his trusty hand held game players.
12) Remember that there are different rules for traveling with babies domestically vs. internationally. For example, babies traveling on your lap can fly for free on United inside the US but you have to purchase a ticket for them while traveling abroad. It usually comes to about 10% of your adult fare plus taxes, etc.
13) You need a valid passport for children traveling abroad with you, even if your child is only four months old like ours.
14) Before traveling make sure to check with your pediatrician about any medical issues you need to be aware of. Traveling with babies under three months is not recommended and some airlines won’t even allow a new born to fly. Depending on the country you are traveling to, your baby may need to get special vaccinations. I packed over the counter gas-relief medicine and baby Tylenol with us just in case.
15) Last but not least, check the weather and pack accordingly for your child. It was raining hard in London and Paris and we looked around for a long time before we were able to find a waterproof plastic cover for Milan’s stroller.
Bon Voyage and Happy travels!
______
If you like this tip, you might be interested in our other recent guest baby tips:
Throw A Baby Kegger For Your Buddy by Clay Nichols at DadLabs
Keeping a Baby Food Journal by Neena at A Mom’s Life at NeenMachine.com
Increasing Milk Supply by Carole Hayes at Alias Tex
Note to new readers: these tips are based on our experiences, as well as those of our friends and readers. Please always consult with your doctor before implementing any tip that might impact the health of your baby. If you have a tip you’d like to submit please send an email to blogger at babblesoft dot com. Please check the ‘baby tips’ category to make sure your tip (in some form or fashion) hasn’t already been posted. If it has been, feel free to comment on that post and support the tip. We also welcome respectful challenges to the tips because as is noted in our inaugural baby tip ‘everything is relative!’ We will, of course, give anyone who submits a tip we publish credit and lotsa link love!
Posted by Aruni
10:30 am •
baby tips,
travel •
July 29, 2007
I’m going to begin my musings with describing my travel to/from/within NY. I flew Delta Connection (run by Shuttle America) direct from Austin to JFK. I was in the very last row on a seat that didn’t recline. Whenever the pilot or flight attendant said something over the loudspeaker all of us in the back row jumped with surprise and covered our ears because it was so loud. The plane seemed new and the first one that I can recall flying on with two seats on either side of the aisle….Embraer 170. One of the flight attendants looked like he really would rather be somewhere else.
There was a baby on board who was very unhappy and it seemed like no matter what the parents did, the baby was determined to be unhappy. I helped them out by giving them something I had in my purse, but I’m not even sure they knew it came from me because I asked the people in the row in front of me to pass it up…it seemed to calm him down a bit. It gave me an idea for a future Baby Tip by Babble Soft that I’ll post about soon.
The thing I found most unusual was that for a 4 hour flight over lunch time they had no meal service. They had a few snacks but by the end of the flight they had run out of the Sun Chips and they had run out of Ginger ale! I don’t drink ginger ale but some of the women sitting across the aisle from us did.
So once at JFK, I was of course starving. Seeing only a Burger King with a huge line and a non-descript Pizza place, I decided to wait until I got to my cousin’s place. I made my way to the Air Train and was helped by a nice MTA employee named Mohammed. He helped me buy my $5 Air Train ticket and when I told him I would be here for about a week, he advised me to by the unlimited week long $24 Metrocard. On Wednesday after the conference was over, I realized I probably only needed a $14 card. I think he assumed I was a tourist and was going to use the subway a lot, but I only used it to/from the airport and the conference. Anyway, his intentions were good and he was extremely helpful.
From the Air Train I took the A train towards Brooklyn. An Asian woman let me look at her map and once I got out at the appropriate stop an African American woman could tell I looked clueless asked me if I needed help and pointed me to the right exit. [I mention the races of the people who helped me primarily because I was attending a Multi Cultural Women’s conference, and I will elaborate more on the race topic in future posts.]
Contrary to what people usually say about New Yorkers being cold/rude, I experienced the opposite. Stereotypes are quick to surface and not so easy to change. I always find it funny when people ask me if I have a cowboy hat or cowboy boots and if I know JR just because I live in Texas. For the record, I do not currently own a cowboy hat or cowboy boots and I don’t know JR.
The subway is so convenient and full of life. It’s a sea of humanity all crowded into a bunch of little tubes. I am always amazed at how many different kinds of people are on the subway.
I’m typing this post on my return trip on the same type of aircraft. Our flight was supposed to depart at 5:25 pm but we did not actually take off until 9:30 pm. We sat on the tarmac waiting to get into the line to get on the runway for over 3 ½ hours. They told us that one runway was closed down but they didn’t say why. They allowed us to turn our phones on and when I called my husband he said all they said was there were delays due to weather and I can assure you there was no inclement weather….a few clouds in the sky but that’s it. Personally, I think there was some security issue going on because later the attendant said the reason was that for planes flying SW they have to fly over Robinsville 6 and that was shut down and that it would be up in 30 minutes. Huh??!?? I was scratching my head over that one. [Found out later from a friend who works at NASA and another friend who flies planes that Robinsville 6 does exist so it wasn't a conspiracy after all!] So 15 minutes later we were taking off. The flight attendant is funny and cheesy at the same time. If he was trying to distract us from thoughts of imminent doom, he did a good job.
Since they were showing off their signature drinks, I decided to try their $5 Passion Fruit Mojito with a splash of OJ while waiting. Many others on the flight also enjoyed a drink. My guess is that they made more money on drinks on this trip than normal. So far I’ve had some non-descript Biscoff biscuits and a bag of Sun Chips for snacks. Thank goodness I had that horrible $11 tuna salad sandwich with soggy fries in the airport before I got on the plane. 
Now it’s almost 11 pm NY time so I think I’ll attempt to read a book and lull myself to sleep. Oops just hit a patch of turbulence they said would last 20 or so minutes so no book for me. I miss my family.
Update: I arrived in Austin around midnight that night and realized the next day that I left the book I mentioned above in the seatback in front of me. I have called lost and found twice and left two messages but still have not heard back.
Advertisement:
Do you travel from New York to the West coast often and don’t know where to get the best food? Check out this online yellow pages site to find great locations in Seattle,
Denver, and many more! Click here to find great Seattle restaurants and
Denver restaurants today!
July 21, 2007
I’m going on a trip ‘on my favorite rocket ship!’ Well not really a rocket ship but on my not-so-favorite cramped plane. I am attending the Working Mother Magazine Conference on Multicultural Companies in NYC next week. I was planning to go anyway to help my cousin with her new baby and wasn’t sure I would even get into the conference but after I booked the tickets, they emailed me to let me know I could attend on a scholarship basis. Yay! 
I’m looking forward to meeting some amazing women at the conference but most of all I’m looking forward to meeting my new little nephew!
With all the recent press about flying with kids, I’m kind of glad my kids are staying behind with their Dad!
So, as you may have guessed, posting will be light next week unless I have a brainstorm of ideas that I can write about and schedule for future posting.
Aruni
