La Salle Explorers

[innocentbystander]

Lucy does a damn good job describing what cruise life is for crew. Here is haw they handled it for her when covid-19 started to ravage the industry one year ago today.



We are all too old and too fat to work on ships now, but I really feel sorry for the young people (or kids) who want to work on ships. They aren't sailing. Florida is still shut down for cruising. The kids are all scrambling for contracts.

[Saint]

lol

do you not like shrimp at all? I mean, it doesn't seem that strange to me - other than you know when the shrimp smell like a prostitutes vagina after a bachelor party.

I love shrimp (although I nearly gave it up after a hot afternoon smelling it as bait on Logan's skiff at Oregon Inlet) but I just can't mix seafood and eggs at all.

[eCat]

I'm working with the Asian group at an event which kicked off at 9:30am their time, which is 9:30 PM our time, so about 11:00pm they went to a guy in our Hong Kong office. The smog was so bad you could barely see the building across the street from his window. I got a taste of that when I was India. You'd walk out of your hotel room in the morning and your eyes and throat would burn for like 10 minutes until you got used to it.

I'd hate living in that mess. I'm glad we got that relatively under control here in the U.S. . Now if we can just get our nuclear waste water reservoirs from collapsing, we'd be in good shape.

[Jungle Rat]

Why are we keeping it?

[hedge]

I've heard of this book (good title) but didn't really know what it was about. Might have to order a copy...

"In Death on the Installment Plan, Ferdinand, Céline's alter ego, is a doctor in Paris, treating the poor who seldom pay him but take every advantage of his availability. The action is not continuous but goes back in time to earlier memories and often moves into fantasy, especially in Ferdinand's sexual escapades; the style becomes deliberately rougher and sentences disintegrate to catch the flavour of the teeming world of everyday Parisian tragedies, struggles to make a living, illness, venereal disease, and the sordid stories of families whose destiny is governed by their own stupidity, malice, lust and greed."

You could easily substitute West Virginia for Parisian in that last sentence. Or hell, anywhere...

[Jungle Rat]

Just include the bible belt and cover all bases.

[eCat]

I bought the first tickets with a combination of points and cash, and when I canceled them I was supposed to get a refund for the cash but Delta refused and gave me a credit with a free transfer fee. So I go to reschedule and I can't use the points for the same flight a year later and ended up spending an additional $700. Then about 3 months later I get an email saying that Delta was told by the federal government they are required to give refunds, but it was already so convoluted as to what my refund would be I just gave up. On top of that our original flight got canceled and they gave us essentially a redeye to return.

Then when the second cruise got canceled, instead of trying again we just decided to take an alternative vacation, since you can't buy airline tickets more than a year out anyways. I'll probably get burned when it comes time to buy tickets again, but I'm so fed up with the experience I'd just as soon wait and see what my options are with other airlines. Maybe we can drive to Dayton or Columbus to get better options.

and right on cue, Delta moved me to another flight, but did not move my wife so we are now on returning flights 12 hours apart from our vacation. I paid extra to have seats together.

I fucking hate airlines.

[Jungle Rat]

Biden fucks ecat once again.

[eCat]

Delta was actually pretty accommodating to me when I called. Other than the 50 minute wait on the call, we resolved the flight in about 10 minutes. Now I have a better flight for both of us at no extra cost.

[innocentbystander]

Any of you guys own any kind of rental house, townhouse, or condo in San Diego? If you do, I might want to rent it in August. If you guys have something, we can use this portal instead of VRBO or Air BnB and you can save yourself the commission.

[Jungle Rat]

Let me check.

[innocentbystander]

Masks are no longer required outdoors at Disney World.

Live shows also return.



Outstanding. We can take our kids and grandkids to Disney now and they can actually get a "vacation" from their masks.

Parks will also be increasing beyond 35% in the next couple days.

[hedge]

Disney is for losers..

[Jungle Rat]

No shit.

[Dave23]

I walked around Costco Saturday without a mask. It felt odd.

The crowd was about 60:40 maskless:masked.

[Jungle Rat]

Did you have your walking shoes on?

[Dave23]

Doesn’t matter what shoes I wear there, I’m walking out with a backache.

Getting old sucks.

I wore my Dudes...they’re the only shoes I’ve worn the past few years...

[Jungle Rat]

https://god.dailydot.com/airbnb-custome ... 2iBTYFZq6c

[eCat]

I own 3 pair of New Balance shoes

nothing says old like New Balance

I also have 3 pair of croc canvas shoes. Once you get those broken in they are awesome.

[innocentbystander]

As a result of the pandemic, the amount of AirBnB stock has declined by 50% worldwide. Makes perfect sense when you think about it. These are not corporations that just file for bankruptcy protections on the debt they used to built their Marriot or Motel-6 properties. These are just ordinary people who own homes, condos, townhouses, and they have to make mortgage payments. Covid-19 hits, no one is traveling in 2020. But you still need to make a mortgage payment. AirBnB is not cutting you a check to leave your condo in their portal open to a market that will not use it.

So, you take it off AirBnB, find a renter, and rent it out to a tenant with an apartment lease. Now you can make your mortgage payments.

Multiply that by half of all the AirBnB units that disappeared since March of 2020, and you can see why the price on AirBnB has gone up so much. There is only half the stock. And this will not be increasing all that fast because the OTHER HALF that took their units off the market, they have signed leases with tenants.

I think the complaint here is simple: people who are vacationing and used AirBnB for years are pissed off with the price being so high because the supply of units in the portal is so low. Yes, they should go back to hotels and motels until the supply in the portal increases which will bring down the AirBnB cost OR bring UP the AirBnB service. In May of 2020 it was a buyers market. Today, it is a sellers market. This is just a supply and demand issue.