It’s the “Red Velvet” jar that got them into trouble a week later. When they tried to clear security at the Las Vegas airport, the jar got seized for violating the 3-1-1 rule. “This wasn’t your everyday, run-of-the-mill cupcake,” wrote TSA blogger Robert Burns. “Unlike a thin layer of icing that resides on the top of most cupcakes, this cupcake had a thick layer of icing inside a jar.”

via TSA defends cupcake confiscation – CNN.com.

Okay, so it’s the amount of frosting on the cupcake that matters. SO what would be the difference between one cupcake with a lot of frosting, and say, 12 cupcakes with 1/12 of the frosting each?

What if five people brought five individual cupcakes onto the plane? Could the five of those combined not have enough explosive frosting to blow up the plane?

The liquids rule never has and never will make any sense. Any five-year old can figure that out.

The TSA says travelers can bring cakes, pies and cupcakes through the security checkpoint, but should expect that they might get some additional screening.

via TSA defends cupcake confiscation from Mass. woman – Boston.com.

This would be funny if it weren’t so tragically stupid. The fact that most people will read this article and think “Yeah, I guess whatever makes us safer,” is proof that we don’t deserve to continue much longer as a species.

Hundreds of passengers traveling from India to Britain were stranded when their Comtel airline flight stopped for fuel in Austria over the weekend. The charter service asked them to kick in more than 20,000 pounds ($31,000) to fund the rest of the flight to Birmingham, England.

via Airline passengers asked for extra cash for fuel.

This is obviously an exception, not the general rule. It was a chartered flight, not a typical commercial airline. But it is the extreme example of a growing problem with commerce in general these days.

The whole notion that price trumps everything needs to go away. It’s our own fault. When Wal-Mart came to town, we were all far too willing to give up customer service, sustainability, and an all around good shopping experience to save 50 cents. As a result, companies learned the lesson that being cheapest was the be-all-and-end-all of success. Literally nothing else mattered to people.

And we’ve been suffering for it ever since.

Once they dropped prices as far as humanly possible by laying off workers, cutting corners on benefits, and shipping products in from China, companies had little choice but to start giving the “appearance” of cost savings, by hiding fees and extra charges behind every corner of the experience.

And it’s no different in the airline industry. Do a flight search on Kayak, or wherever, and you get quoted a price on the first page, but by the time you’ve checked out it’s a different story. So price comparison becomes a major hassle, as you need to get all the way to the last “buy” button page before you know how much something is actually going to cost. And even that is far from guaranteed, as they’ll probably tack on some more fees down the line. So much for convenience.

What we need is a simple rule: tell me how much it’s going to cost. Period. All-inclusive. If you can’t afford to offer cheap prices, then don’t. Put the cost of bags, food, and yes, gas, into the cost of your ticket. We may all have a heart attack the first time we see your adjusted prices, but at least we won’t hate you for trying to trick us.

And customers, in the meantime. Stop always trying to nickel and dime yourself on everything you buy. I know times are tough, but what you’re saving in dollars you’re paying for far too dearly in quality of life. And so are your neighbors.

A few surprises for what became the final day of this little trip to Portland. At a rest stop on the way south from Eugene, I checked the road conditions one last time, and realized that the I-5 was clear of any snow hazards. So we were able to visit Ashland and head down the middle of the state, after all.

Ashland is famous for its Shakespeare Festival, of course. Since we were there off season, I didn’t expect it to be tremendously lively. But we did manage to find a nice spot to grab a quick lunch, and to walk along Main Street a bit.

Even had some ice cream, despite the 38-degree weather.

So that’s what we did. Ended the trip a day early with no regrets. Got to see both the coast and the beautiful mountains along I-5. Drove 1,401.4 miles in five days. Not a bad way to end the year.

Left Portland today to get a slight jump on our big journey back to San Francisco. Having only spent two days in the city, I can nevertheless say that we got a clear feel for the place, and the reaction was very much positive.

Not a bad meal the whole time we were there. Managed to stumble upon a coffee tasting, in which the proprietor offered an amazing amount of knowledge about the process of selecting as well as trading and auctioning coffee worldwide. Got to see a film at the Living Room theatre, which is a nice place to have a drink, some light dinner, and some indie film.

Powell’s book store, of course, is a must see. Absolutely overwhelming in its size. The rain let up for a bit this afternoon, too, which was a nice break.

Would I recommend Portland for a weekend trip? Sure. Not sure there’s enough to make me want to live there, though.

Right now, we’ve stopped for the night in an amazing little bed and breakfast in Eugene. Cuts our road time tomorrow down by about two hours or so, and gives us a very quiet and dark place to rest.

Unfortunately, as I feared, it looks like the mountain pass along the 5 is going to be too snowy the rest of the week, so no Ashland, Crater Lake, Shasta, or Lassen for us this trip. We’ll have to do all that in the spring or summer.

So it’s back to the coast tomorrow through Crescent City, Eureka, etc. Still debating whether or not to stay in Healdsburg New Year’s Eve.

Connectivity hasn’t been too much of a problem on this trip. Lots of free WiFi in Oregon. And decent 3G AT&T signal in the cities, at least. And the iPad/iPhone haven’t left me wishing I had a laptop at all. Though I’m going out of my way to avoid doing any serious work on this trip.

The timing of our little trip left us in a hotel in Valencia, CA on Christmas Eve. As such, we were left with few Christmas Eve dinner options. Remembering the song, I suggested we go out for Chinese. Thanks to excellent 3G coverage and Yelp, we found Grand Panda in Santa Clarita.

The Mojave National Preserve is an amazing place. We only had time to explore a small part of the park (Hole in the Wall) but just that little portion was fantastic. I highly recommend this park to anyone who is in Southern California. It’s only a few hours from Los Angeles. From highway 40, it doesn’t look like much, but trust me, once you get inside the park, you immediately understand why it was protected.

When you’re traveling 1,400 miles, it’s easy to speed past gems like this one. I’m glad we didn’t this time.

Wanted to go for a morning nature hike before leaving Grand Canyon yesterday. But two things kept us back. 1) It was still pitch dark until about 8 a.m. 2) It was -5 degrees outside.

It’s been a while since I’ve felt -5. Great reminder of why I live in San Francisco. That sort of temperature is just wrong.

My Nikon, being a few years old, doesn’t give me a way to get my photos to the iPhone. Or the cloud. Or anywhere, really, without going to the laptop first. That’s another minor issue with not bringing the laptop on this trip. But I can live with that. I’m sure someone will come up with an accessory—a card reader, or something—for the iPhone soon. In the meantime, I want to edit down the photos to twenty or so before posting them, anyway. Speaking of Grand Canyon photos, I took quite a few today, but not nearly enough to fill one of the 8GB cards I bought. Guess I could have just gotten one of those instead of two. But that’s okay. I can always use the other somewhere else. I highly recommend the Grand Canyon in winter. It’s a little risky, with the snow, and all. But it’s so beautiful. We completely lucked out and got here the day after a snow storm. So the roads were all fine. With the exception of the hotel parking lot, which doesn’t look like it was plowed well at all. Fairly surprising and disappointing, if you ask me. Tomorrow, onward to California.

Throughout Phoenix, good 3G. Twenty minutes north of Phoenix all the way to Flagstaff? Same as in New Mexico. Phone says I have full bars of edge, but instead I really have nothing. This time, MotionX seems to have done its caching better, because the lack of signal didn’t cause it to go wacko as often. I think what’s happening with that is actually a loss of GPS accuracy, which results in MotionX thinking it needs to remap the trip, which then leads to it realizing it doesn’t have a network connection, which leads to an error message.

I can’t blame bad GPS signal on AT&T, so I guess that one is Apple’s fault. In Flagstaff, I went back to 3G briefly. Then, all the way north of Flagstaff and into Grand Canyon Village, I get either weak Edge or nothing at all. Even here in the hotel, just a few seconds south of the entrance to the park, I get absolutely nothing. Thank goodness for free WiFi. Tomorrow we’ll see what happens between here and LA.

It was close to the hotel, and it was open early. And other than the doorknob, which is placed in such a way as to guarantee injury for a lefty like me, it was great.

Well, we made it from El Paso to Phoenix, as planned. I ended up getting a tape deck adapter for the iPhone, after all, which has helped a lot. On the playlist: Kaki King, James Taylor, Led Zep, and Police. A lot of songs I haven’t listened to in ages.

AT&T? Totally dead through most of New Mexico and Arizona. Bouncing in and out of Edge signal. When I finally bounce back to 3G in Tucson? Slowest 3G ever. This had a large impact on my GPS via MotionX, obviously. I don’t blame the app, though. AT&T is failing me on this trip big time already. Tucson? I’ll try to be nice, but it was simply not a good experience. Parking on University Blvd. was totally lame. The town was dead, thanks to the school being on winter break. I don’t know. Let’s just say I wasn’t impressed. 3G held up through to Phoenix tonight, luckily. Got me to the hotel with no issues. Hotel itself? No wireless in the room, though wired Internet is provided. Bar closed at 10. LAME. Luckily, bar down the street is open until 2 and serves Smithwick’s. Problem solved. Tomorrow, Grand Canyon, if the snow doesn’t become a problem.