This is my 108th blog here, and my last. I’ve been providing your weekend reading for the last 13 months, and if I’ve given you anything to think about, enlighten you, or make you smile, I’m glad.

A couple of months ago I was reading the farewell blog of a writer for Techcrunch who was moving on to greener pastures, and he did a great roundup of the favorite tech sites he’d covered during his tenure. I thought about doing something like that, but I’ve already explained how I’d answer the question “What’s Your Favorite Place?” And I told my favorite travel anecdote in my very first blog.

Looking back over the last year, I suppose I wish I’d used this bully pulpit to discuss a bit more the issues that handicapped travelers face. I addressed it early on, in The Elephant Parade, but like most handicapped travelers it’s actually such a small part of who we are overall that it just doesn’t usually pop into mind.

In my experience, kudos need to go to American airports in general for dealing with travelers who need wheelchairs. This is often people like me who can walk, but can’t walk far. Unlike me, they are often elderly. At most U.S. airports, porters who most often handle luggage are also the ones who push the chairs. Since this is America, capitalism rules, and like waiters the good ones–which in my experience is most of them–work hard for a good tip. The airports where I’ve felt the most like left luggage are those run by the British Airport Authority in the U.K., and I had a good four hours in Gatwick recently to explore why. It seems to be a budgetary issue; the B.A.A. hires subcontractors and there are simply nowhere near enough porters, or chairs. I’ve been left sitting on planes, in gates, and in various hallways for up to an hour while they scramble to find someone to push–at Heathrow, at Gatwick, at Manchester. This is no particular airline’s fault, but there’s also not much we can do except to complain (nicely) and write letters to both the airlines and the B.A.A. Plus, if England isn’t your destination, I can strongly suggest that if you need a wheelchair, find another country in which to change planes.

I hate to leave you on a down note, so I’m going to leave you with some nice pictures instead. I recently stayed at the Jan III Sobienski Hotel in Warsaw, which will be the subject of the review in the July 30 edition of eFlyer, and here are some images from that trip.

Bon voyage, and au revoir,

- Mary Hunt, editor (through July 30), eFlyer

I’m always scanning the travel news, and this week I came across two items that I’d have to call “Extreme Adventure Travel.”

One of them was about a group of Danish tourists visiting the glaciers in Uummannaq, on Greenland’s western coast. While they were taking pictures, some big chunks of ice fell of the glaciers into the water, creating a wave so big that two of the tourists drowned.

My condolences to the two men’s families, but–hello! Global warming anyone? Seeing the glaciers before they disappear could be a noble adventure, but wasn’t the proximity to open water a clue? I mean, I live in Florida on the Gulf coast and after Katrina most of us keep life vests just in case. Adventure travel usually means a certain amount of risk; we can’t just run around the planet without taking some care.

And talk about a noble effort: I just read an article about tourism to Afghanistan’s Grand Canyon, which comprises that country’s first national park. It takes “eight bone-shaking hours” to drive there from Kabul, but it’s a popular picnic spot for Afghanis, and you can even tour the lake by swan boat for $8. The views are breathtaking, as is the serenity - which is notable because there are so few people. That’s attributed to the “deteriorating security situation in the surrounding provinces.” As the author says, “This beautiful and peaceful part of a violent country has huge potential to make Afghanistan a lot of money, but only when the majority of foreign visitors here aren’t carrying guns.”

That’s an understatement. There’s a big difference between being an intrepid traveler and being a foolish one. If there’s an advantage to our foreign policy of recent years, it’s that news coverage has conveyed the fact that the world is not an especially safe place right alongside the fact that Americans aren’t totally welcome and beloved everywhere. Caution is warranted, and adventure requires a certain amount of common sense.

I applaud the fact that people don’t let their fears get in the way of their travels. By all means, go off the beaten path. But before you go to a war zone, or a place in the process of being reclaimed by the sea, think about going in a context where you can be an instrument of change rather than another strain on the infrastructure. As the saying goes, “If you’re not part of the solution, you’re part of the problem.”

- Mary Hunt, editor, eFlyer

If you’re on an airline mailing list, chances are you received an email from a CEO last week. The heads of AirTran, Alaska Airlines, American Airlines, Continental Airlines, Delta Air Lines, Hawaiian Airlines, JetBlue, Midwest Airlines, Northwest Airlines, Southwest, United and US Airways jointly sent out “An open letter to All Airline Customers” decrying the high price of fuel and pinning it on unnecessary speculation in the commodity.

Congress held hearings on the same subject. However, most economists agree that it is global demand, and not speculation, that is driving up fuel costs, in combination with the weakness of the U.S. dollar, which happens to be the currency in which oil is denominated.

The real purpose of the letter seems to be a valid one, nonetheless: To remind travelers that airlines aren’t to blame for higher airfares. The airline industry is one of the few that simply can’t pass on increased costs to its customers. The price of airfare has gone up less than the cost of a quart of milk, percentagewise, and when you think of how much more fuel it takes to fly an airplane than to run a milk truck, you know that the airlines are taking it on the chin.

That’s because price resistance is a fact of life with leisure travelers. I’ve said this before: When fares aren’t low, people look for vacations closer to home. So if your business depends on air travel, other than stopping all that speculating in oil that you’ve been doing (LOL), what you can really do is fly for your vacation this summer. And not with your airline miles, either.

- Mary Hunt, editor, eFlyer

More passengers, less unnecessary weight: That’s the latest mantra of fuel-conscious airlines. In possibly the most noticeable weight-cut yet, US Airways has announced that it will remove the inflight entertainment systems from 200 aircraft flying domestic routes. The current systems weigh nearly 500 pounds. The airline promises to test a new, lighter seat-back system, but there is no timetable for movies’ return.

Infectious Greed blogger Paul Kedrosky, who writes about “Technology, Finance and the Money Culture,” dug up some more examples:

“Fascinating data points from an ATA document on how airlines are trying to slim down to save weight and stay in business given jet fuel at record levels:

• One airline saved over 17 gallons/year per pound of weight per airplane after shedding inflight phones, ovens, excess potable water, and some galley equipment on an older fleet
• In removing seatback phones from its MD-80s and B737-400s, another airline shed 200 pounds per airplane, translating into 3,400+ gallons saved annually
• Alaska Airlines indicated in March 2004 that removing just five magazines per aircraft could save $10,000 per year in fuel; also, the airline has reduced the weight of catering supplies
• Air Canada considered stripping primer and paint from its 767s to save 360 lbs. per plane
• JetBlue and US Airways and others have moved toward a paperless cockpit
• By removing six seats, JetBlue reduced A320 weight by approximately 904 pounds
• Airlines have been able to remove ovens, trash compactors, or even entire galleys, due to the elimination of hot meals on selected flights; others are using lighter seats; they have also removed magazine racks and replaced hard cabin dividers with curtains
• AirTran ordered carbon fiber Recaro seats for its 737-700s to shave 19.4 pounds per row, resulting in estimated fuel savings of $2,000 per year per aircraft
• Alaska’s new beverage cart, at 20 lbs. lighter, could save $500,000 in annual fuel costs
• Some airlines flush lavatories during extended ground delays to minimize takeoff weight

Imagine how much we could save without passengers, or, heck, without flying at all!”

A while back I blogged about faux airline Derrie-Air that proposed to charge passengers by the pound. However, not to disagree with Paul (who just left for vacation–have a great one, Paul! Did you fly?), but the airlines are actually doing the best they can to contain costs by packing in more passengers, not less, cutting down on flights with low load factors. There was one item this week that he’d like, however: a note that a British airline may be flying faux flights, i.e. flights with no passengers, periodically this summer just to hang onto its slots in and out of Heathrow–so I guess maybe he has a point!

- Mary Hunt, editor, eFlyer

I jinxed myself.

Last week, while still abroad, I blogged about my good seats on my various flights between Tampa and Warsaw. So of course, I had the opposite experience on my way back.

I had a coach ticket, so I can’t complain that I didn’t get to upgrade on the transatlantic leg; I’d paid on the way over to get a good night’s sleep and wouldn’t have paid on the way back anyway. But on the Atlanta-Tampa leg, I thought I was once again in luck. This time, I even had a bulkhead window seat, and there was again a nice young businessman in the aisle seat.

However, at the last minute the middle seat was filled (and I do mean filled) by a very sweet but VERY large gentleman who had to be at least 400 pounds. Let me put it this way: if he put on a little more weight he could have passed for a Samoan sumo wrestler.

He was a gentle giant who’d clearly been in this position before. He manually compressed his bottom to fit between the armrests, which couldn’t have been very comfortable. And he spent a lot of the flight with his arms wrapped around himself trying to contain himself into his seat. There was no way around, however, the fact that his shoulders were almost the width of two seats, extending halfway into mine and halfway into the aisle seat.

I spent the flight hugging the window- because if I tried to sit up straight, I was unavoidably “hugging” him. I joked with the flight attendants (in the kitchen, not in front of him!) about wanting a half-seat discount and they smiled empathetically and gave me a free drink.

It was a pretty short flight, only a little over an hour in the air. I hope that for his own sake the large man either upgrades or buys two coach seats for longer flights. But I had forgotten to knock wood when I wrote last week about having an empty middle seat, so I have no one but myself to blame.

- Mary Hunt, editor, eFlyer