Highlights and notes from trip to Argentina 2013

My family went on a 2 week trip to Argentina over winter break and I thought I would post some notes and pics here.

We flew from Sacramento to Mendoza, via Dallas and Santiago.  We flew on American Airlines which was mostly a complete disaster.  We booked flights in Summer and chose American Airlines because they had "extra leg room seats" for the long Dallas to Santiago flight that one could pay for.  As someone with circulatory problems that was important to me so we chose American and bought these tickets and all seemed good.

But alas it was not to be.  I got an email from American saying our flight was changed and when I called them they said that the timing of the flights was changed and that was it.  Alas they did not tell me our extra leg room seats no longer existed as they had also changed the airplane.  I did not find this out for months.

I called American and posted to Twitter and tried everything I could think of to get seats with more leg room (e.g., bulkhead seats).  And I was told by the American Airlines agent on the phone and the @americanair twitter account that American would contact me on the weekend before we left to arrange for bulkhead seats.  But alas no call.  And then on the day of our flight I got a call and by that point the agent said "sorry - bulkhead seats are not available for your whole group."  Thanks a f$*#@ lot American.

Anyway - rather than belabor this here I have made a Storify of some of the Tweets relating to our trip including the conversations with American Airlines.  See below for more detail on this.

Anyway - overall the trip was good even with the continuing trouble with American Airlines and Lan Airlines.

 We went to five places on the trip.

1.  Hotel Mendoza in Downtown Mendoza
2.  Barreal #1
3. Barreal #2
4. Portrerillos
5. Lares de Chacras on the outskirts of Mendoza 

And here are some of the better pics with some notes from the trip

Hotel Mendoza

Barreal #1

Parque Leoncito

Some more around Barreal

Parque Leoncito trip JAE and MIB

More around Barreal

Barreal #2

MIB, Alicia and Analia horseback riding

More around Barreal #2

Potrerillos

Lares de Chacras

Long trip home

Yolo Basin Notes Jan 5, 2014

Another good outing at Yolo Basin Wetlands today.

Went this AM around 11 or so.  Spent about two hours there, driving around, hiking and birdwatching.  Here are some of the pics I took while there.

Interesting scene here - a Northern Harrier was chasing an American Bittern that had a crawfish in its mouth.

New post on ICIS blog about Google Scholar

I have a new post on the ICIS blog about Google Scholar that may be of interest: ICIS: Innovating Communication in Scholarship - Some additional details of my discussion w/ reporter John Bohannon for his Science story on Google Scholar.  The post gives some detail about the discussions I have with John Bohannon in relation to his story that ran in Science today on Google Scholar.