We just got back from a multi-purpose two week trip up the east coast, hitting North Carolina, DC, Philadelphia, New York, and Boston. We got to see some of Danielle's Haitian side of the family, some of whom we hadn't seen in several years so that was wonderful. We also got to be with her father for his birthday in North Carolina.
The real impetus for the trip, however, was for Danielle to check out some of the law schools she's applied/gotten in to and for us to get a feel for the different cities we might be moving to. Decision time won't actually come until April and she's of course still waiting to hear back from a bunch of places. Our fact finding trip was really useful though, and DC and Boston are probably tops on the list of potential destinations at the moment.
On our way back from Boston we flew Virgin America for the first time. Danielle has broken up with American Airlines and vows never to fly them again once she finishes her miles, plus Virgin's gotten great press and ratings so we thought we'd try it out. For a 6-hour direct flight from Boston to LAX, it was really quite pleasant (which is high praise for air travel). Check in was a breeze, the seats had lots of leg room, and the on board entertainment options were pretty good. One of my favorite features were that after the initial beverage service you could order another drink through the seat-back screen in front of you, and it was delivered really fast. There were also some games that could be played using a remote that pulled of the armrest, though the games were freeware and weren't necessarily easy to use with no mouse (Virgin intelligently disabled on screen touch clicking in games due to the potential to annoy the person in the seat, but the games hadn't been redesigned to work easily just with the remote).
The big hit of the entertainment options plane-wide though was definitely the ability to watch live tv for free (on demand movies were like $8!). Most of the time I wouldn't care about tv (the 25 year old tv we inherited from my parents only played dvds until it finally kicked the bucket a few months ago). However, our flight overlapped perfectly with the Superbowl, and even though I had watched maybe 10 minutes of football in the preceding 12 months, the Superbowl is the Superbowl. During exciting moments in the second half there would be spontaneous cheers throughout the plane, which mostly didn't annoy Danielle (who doesn't understand American football). It was a kind of bizarre experience really, as half the plane was watching and it was a shared experience, yet each person was watching their own individual screen and not talking to any of the others.
One other useful thing we learned: we'll probably move on Virgin America. Each passenger can bring up to 10 fifty-pound bags for $20 per bag. Sure, it'll require a rented van at both ends of the trip, but there's no other way to move that much volume/weight across the country for that cost, let alone at that speed! Those moving pods take a week and cost three to ten times as much. Good to know.
