Diversion Safes/Airport Improvements/A Good U.S. Train State
Nomadico issue #93
A weekly newsletter with four quick bites, edited by Tim Leffel, author of A Better Life for Half the Price and The World’s Cheapest Destinations. See past editions here, where your like-minded friends can subscribe and join you.
A Place to Stash Your Valuables
A shout-out to team member Mark Frauenfelder who highlighted “diversion safes” in Recomendo. Most of them are meant to be stash places that look like ordinary objects in your home, but I’ve seen small ones that can come along in your travels and probably be more effective than a hotel safe, such as this fake sunscreen container that’s wide enough for credit cards. You can create a DIY solution too though: I’ve stashed valuables in an empty playing card box, a travel backgammon set, and a cheap plastic soap holder—right in plain sight.
Big Airport Improvements in the USA
I was surprised at how much better LaGuardia Airport in NYC was looking when I was there in January and apparently other ones that have been in the dumps are getting an upgrade. Thanks to the infrastructure bill that the current administration pushed through last year, a billion dollars is getting doled out to 100+ airports to cover improvements and modernization, from control towers to access roads to better security gates. See more here.
A Surprisingly Good State for Trains
Speaking of infrastructure, while the USA is rightly derided for its polluting dependency on cars and roads, there are a few clusters where train travel options are good. These include the Northeast between Boston and D.C, and a route that goes all the way from San Diego to Vancouver (and beyond with Via Rail). Surprising to most is that Florida’s largest cities and tourist destinations are all connected by train now, via Amtrak, Tri-Rail, and Brightline. See the details on Florida’s train connections.
Remote Work is Bad for Burglars
Business office building owners haven’t been the only ones crying about the remote work trend: apparently house burglars in the UK are having a tougher time finding targets with so many fewer houses being empty all day. This Guardian article says the big drop in home burglaries in the UK since 2019 is at least half due to more people being home. “A 9.5 percentage point rise in home working gets you a 4% fall in ransacked homes.”
02/29/24
