Cheap and Slow or Expensive and Fast?

April 26th, 2008, 2 Comments »

As regular readers know, I do a fair bit of travel, both for business and leisure. I spend a lot of time en route–on planes, in trains and in automobiles (mostly taxis and airport shuttles).

In my experience, when I want to get from Point A to Point B, there’s usually at least two ways. There’s the cheap, slow way, or the more expensive, faster method. And you know what? The expensive route is almost always about 2.5 to 3 times as expensive as the cheap route. Consider some examples:

Cheap and Slow     Expensive and Fast
Ferry & bus from
Vancouver to Victoria 		$40 $120 Seaplane from Vancouver to Victoria
Airporter to Victoria Airport from home $16 $40 Taxi to Victoria Airport from home
Ferry plus bus to Tofino from Vancouver $60 $188 Seaplane to Tofino from Vancouver

That’s hardly a large data set, and I’m no economist, but it’s a pattern I see over and over again. I remember similar ratios around renting a car or hiring a driver in Morocco, or flying versus the ferry among the Greek isles.

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Grocery Shopping in Morocco

January 14th, 2008, 3 Comments »

I just got back from Essaouira’s souk, where the locals shop. I bought:

  • 6 eggs.
  • A whole chicken breast (meaning, uh, all the white meat on the bird). The butcher pulled it from his refrigeration unit–a box of water.
  • A mango, 6 plums and 4 apples.
  • Some carrots, an onion and a green pepper.
  • Some couscous.
  • A couple baguettes.

All for 75 dirhams, or just under CAN $10. A little cheaper than Urban Fare, methinks.

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Northern Voice Registration is Open

December 19th, 2007, No Comments »

Registration for the fourth annual Loose Moose festival of social media fun is now open. Travis provides some pricing details:

You can attend one day for $40, or come to both days for only $60. That’s an amazing deal: it’s just the price of a single cup of coffee that also costs $60!

I’m really proud of the fact that we’ve been able to keep the conference ridiculously cheap. Four years ago, the one-day conference cost $20 in advance or $30 at the door.

There’s some exciting new stuff planned for this year. I’ll let the other–far more active–organizers announce all of that, and then I’ll post about it here.

I’m also pleased not to be the guy wrangling the registration process this year. Three years of that was enough.

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