A Week of Potential Travel Weirdness; the Prescott Preserve Hits a Big Roadblock–Coachella Valley Independent’s Indy Digest: Dec. 19, 2022

Indy Digest: Dec. 19, 2022

It’s the week leading up to Christmas—and that means a lot of people are traveling.

Two things: First: Consider this a friendly reminder that if you’re flying out of the Palm Springs International Airport, the good folks there are recommending that you give yourself plenty of time to get to the gate: 2 1/2 hours if checking luggage, and 90 minutes if you aren’t.

Second: Beware of weirdness.

I flew from Palm Springs to Reno yesterday, and it was one of the strangest trips I’ve taken in quite sometime, thanks largely to Southwest Airlines. It wasn’t a bad trip; it was just weird.

I was scheduled to fly from Palm Springs to Las Vegas, and then from Las Vegas to Reno. I checked the flight status regularly throughout the day, and it kept changing. At one point, it showed the flight to Vegas as being on time. And then it showed it being a half-hour late. Then it went back to being on time. It vacillated all day, and it wound up being about a half-hour late.

If you’ve flown Southwest out of Palm Springs, chances are you’ve flown out of Gate 9—because, apparently, that’s the only gate Southwest is signed up to use at PSP. However, our flight’s delay meant there were two flights lined up to be at the same gate at the same time. Therefore, Southwest got permission to use Gate 7—which was available because an Air Canada flight out of Vancouver was running late—but because Southwest is not set up to use that gate, all of us passengers had to stand in line to get printed boarding passes, so they could track who was getting on the plane. Fortunately, there were only 60 people on the flight, so that process unfolded quickly.

After all that, we wound up getting into Las Vegas only 10 minutes late.

Meanwhile, the reported status of the flight to Reno was being spastic as well. The Southwest app showed it going from on time, to a half-hour late, to an hour late, to almost on time—all in the course of less than an hour.

It was at this point I began to suspect whoever was in charge of flight statues at Southwest was on some really powerful psychedelics.

Anyway, the inbound plane arrived just a little late; people got off the plane; and then everyone sat around for a while for no apparent reason. Finally, we boarded the plane and took off about a half-hour late.

The plane was scheduled to arrive in Reno around 9:25 p.m., and we ended up arriving at 9:45 or so—20 minutes late. The woman sitting next to me called the person who was supposed to pick her up—and he was quite startled to learn the plane had just pulled into the gate, because the Southwest app and website were saying we weren’t supposed to arrive for another hour.

I pulled up the flight status on the app, and sure enough, it showed that our ETA was at 10:43 p.m. I took a screen shot for posterity.

Yep. Some REALLY powerful psychedelics.

—Jimmy Boegle

More News

• The Oswit Land Trust’s efforts to turn the Mesquite Golf and Country Club into the Prescott Preserve have hit a huge snag. The Palm Springs Post reports: “A Riverside County Superior Court judge late last week agreed that a lawsuit filed by a homeowners association has merit, granting a preliminary injunction to temporarily prevent the conversion of the golf course into a nature preserve. In a 677-page civil suit filed in August, attorneys for the Mesquite Country Club Condominium Homeowners Association (HOA) claim a lease agreement with the previous owner of the 180-acre golf course adjacent to their homes, which dates back to 1984, must now be honored by Oswit Land Trust (OLT), which was gifted the land in July. On Friday, Judge Carol Greene wrote that she believes ‘the Association has shown a likelihood of success’ with the lawsuit. Greene denied OLT’s motion to dismiss the suit, as well as a motion by the former owner to strike portions of the lawsuit, writing that OLT, ‘may not develop the Golf Course in any substantial way without the Association’s prior approval.’”

• Palm Springs wastewater testing results are showing encouraging signs that the latest COVID-19 spike may have peaked. From the Dec. 12 report: “The average number of copies (per liter) recorded at the city’s wastewater treatment plant decreased for the second week in a row. The average of 768,903 copies (per liter) from the previous week went down to an average of 602,726 copies/L for December 12 and 13, 2022.”

• Related: More evidence is in showing that the updated COVID-19 booster shots are doing a lot of good. NBC News reports: “The updated COVID booster shot is proving to be effective at keeping people—especially older adults—out of the hospital, according to two new studies published Friday by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Both studies looked at the impact the updated COVID booster shot has had since it was first recommended by the CDC on Sept. 1. The booster targets the omicron subvariants BA.4 and BA.5 as well as the original coronavirus strain. The first study estimated that the boosters are more than 80% effective at preventing hospitalizations in adults ages 65 and up. … According to the latest CDC data, just 35.7% of adults 65 and older have received the booster. Among all adults, the percentage falls to 16%.”

• Also, alas, related: More evidence is in showing that “conservative” views on health-related matters can be dangerous. From The Washington Post: “As the coronavirus pandemic approaches its third full winter, two studies reveal an uncomfortable truth: The toxicity of partisan politics is fueling an overall increase in mortality rates for working-age Americans. In one study, researchers concluded that people living in more conservative parts of the United States disproportionately bore the burden of illness and death linked to COVID-19. The other, which looked at health outcomes more broadly, found that the more conservative a state’s policies, the shorter the lives of working-age people. The reasons are many, but, increasingly, it is state—and not just federal—policies that have begun to shape the economic, family, environmental and behavioral circumstances that affect people’s well-being. Some states have expanded their social safety nets, raising minimum wages and offering earned income tax credits while using excise taxes to discourage behaviors—such as smoking—that have deleterious health consequences. Other states have moved in the opposite direction.”

• We don’t always mention the really big national stories of the day in this space, but given how truly historic this could end up being (or not), I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention what the House Jan. 6 panel did today. The Associated Press says: “The House Jan. 6 committee urged the Justice Department on Monday to bring criminal charges against Donald Trump for the violent 2021 Capitol insurrection, calling for accountability for the former president and ‘a time of reflection and reckoning.’ After one of the most exhaustive and aggressive congressional probes in memory, the panel’s seven Democrats and two Republicans are recommending criminal charges against Trump and associates who helped him launch a wide-ranging pressure campaign to try to overturn his 2020 election loss. The panel also released a lengthy summary of its final report, with findings that Trump engaged in a ‘multi-part conspiracy’ to thwart the will of voters. At a final meeting Monday, the committee alleged violations of four criminal statutes by Trump, in both the run-up to the riot and during the insurrection itself, as it recommended the former president for prosecution to the Justice Department. Among the charges they recommend for prosecution is aiding an insurrection—an effort to hold him directly accountable for his supporters who stormed the Capitol that day.”

• OK, I’m calling it: The Twitter mess has become the most inept corporate takeover in history, as well as the craziest. For the latest news, as of this writing, we’ll turn to The New York Times: “Elon Musk has stayed silent on whether he will remain the head of Twitter. The billionaire had asked his Twitter users on Sunday whether he should step down as the leader of the social media site. More than 17 million votes were cast and delivered a clear verdict: 57.5 percent said he should quit, in a Twitter ‘poll’ that closed after 12 hours on Monday. Mr. Musk had said he would abide by the results of the vote. But hours after the vote closed, there was no acknowledgment from Mr. Musk on Twitter. If he follows through, Mr. Musk will be handing over the reins of the company that he bought for $44 billion in late October. The turbulent weeks since then have been marked by mass layoffs at the company, falling advertising sales, executive resignations and the suspensions of various high-profile user accounts for infractions of newly invented policy. On Sunday, Twitter announced a policy to prevent users from sharing links and user names from other social platforms, like Instagram, Facebook and Mastodon, and then apparently curtailed the same policy.”

• And finally … let’s take a moment and be thankful that we don’t have to deal with hippopotamuses in California. CNN says: “A hippo has attacked a 2-year-old boy in Uganda, swallowing half of his body before spitting him out, a statement from the Uganda Police Force said on Friday. … The boy, named by Ugandan police as Iga Paul, had been playing at his home in Rwenjubu cell, Lake Katwe. ‘It took the bravery of a one Chrispas Bagonza, who was nearby, to save the victim after he stoned the hippo and scared it, causing it to release the victim from its mouth,’ a spokesperson for Uganda Police Force said in the statement.”

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