Sensitive teachers offered a more equalizing assignment: "What I Learned on my Vacation." For them, I had the chance to expound on my epiphany related to the behavior of jellyfish whilst my neighbor frittered her flowing curlicues on styles of miniskirts in Paris and go-go boots in London.

Back-to-school hasn't been part of my life for decades, but the echo of those long-finished essays remains with me each vacation trip. Returning home, I find the teacher in me asking the same question: What did I learn on my Vacation?

In August, my father, my son and I flew to Reno then drove into northeastern California and Oregon. I learned a lot, some of it in surprising places. As my "essay," I offer the following revelations:

Having once been a seasoned-but-neurotic business traveler, I formerly approached packing for a flight with mild anxiety. Now I approach it with unmitigated panic. I was certain that if my manicure set didn't get me arrested, the baggie of powdered milk I needed for my coffee would. I left the manicure set at home, but somehow forgot about the nail clippers, metal nail file and metal cuticle tool in my carry-on makeup kit, something I didn't discover until I unpacked in California. My theory on nail clippers is that you can't carry them in your pocket, but security won't dig them out of a tightly-packed makeup bag.

Although I moved through security without a hitch, my 84-year-old father was selected to undergo "the search and the wand." The Security and Delta Airlines personnel were polite and indulgent with my son and me as we tried to control our mirth while waiting for security to finish with Dad.

The Reno trip and my son's and father's subsequent flight to Chicago revealed that both Orbitz and Travelocity may, wittingly or unwittingly, slip some unfortunate surprises into their flight packages. Our flight to Reno connected in Salt Lake City, but also included a layover in Austin, something not mentioned on the flight description or itinerary. The flight to Chicago indicated that breakfast was served, but only the first class passengers got food.

On Travelocity, I was hobbled by the lack of an option to reserve two rooms at a time or one room for two non-consecutive nights, both of which I needed to do. I did manage to get all four reservations, but it took four separate operations and I ended up with each reservation designated as a separate itinerary.

Something mentioned in flight information on Travelocity but to which I didn't give proper respect was connection times. I learned the hard way that St. Louis is not the only airport infamous for short connection times and long distances to walk. Thirty minutes was scarcely enough time to make a connection in Salt Lake City, especially with my Dad's trick knee and lack of airport assistance. We tried to use the tram but some officious Delta employee who was supposed to help travelers make connections instead barred my dad from getting on a tram, forcing us to walk/run the quarter-mile distance between gates with bags trailing.

This incident did teach us, however, that George McGovern was wrong about Delta employees. In a recent Wall Street Journal editorial Mr. McGovern complains that rigid Delta employees won't allow travelers on a plane within 30 minutes prior to flight time (citing security reasons.) We made our connection to Delta Sky West with only 13 minutes to spare and were welcomed cordially by gate employees and flight personnel.

Travelocity did do a fine job finding a rental car. The least expensive quote was from Advantage where $134/week got us a cool new Chrysler PT with unlimited mileage. The PT wasn't as comfortable and didn't handle quite as well as my Honda minivan, but the direction indicator above the rear-view mirror was a lifesaver when navigating unfamiliar highways. It would have been nice, however, if Advantage had offered us a map to guide us back when returning the car.

Other revelations worth mentioning:

• There are no ten-cent slots in Reno. Bring nickels, quarters or bills. 
  
  
• Text messaging on a cell phone is very handy on the road, but you can't send text messages on roam.  It works only on a digital signal.
  
  
• You can't call it a pilgrimage to Mount Shasta if you can't see the mountain. Smoke from wildfires in the drought-plagued northwest allowed not even a glimpse of the snow-capped mountain that used to afford a breath-taking view from our kitchen window.

My cousin described the problem that they were having with the Palm V. The Hotsync operation worked flawlessly, but on the Palm itself they could not indicate which file they wanted to open or update. Since I'm a known Palm addict, he asked if I could come over and take a look at the setup.

Since I have no experience with the Macintosh, I doubted that I could help, but it never hurts to look. After about five minutes with the Palm, I understood that the Macintosh had little or nothing to do with the problem.

The Palm's screen calibration was off thus preventing users from accessing the files needed to keep records. Since the screen calibration was haywire, the device refused to present drop-down menus from any screen. It also prevented me from accessing the menu options that might have allowed me to fix the problem conservatively.

My recent bad experiences with the Handspring Prism and the Palm M100 had showed me the scary road to recovery for a problem such as this (See "A Trip to Palm Heaven and Hell" in the July 2002 issue of PC Alamode.) It is called a "Hard Reset" and sometimes involves a paper clip and a lot of nerve. This operation should never be attempted without performing a hotsync operation first.

If you work at it, you can screw off a portion of your Palm stylus, revealing a small, somewhat blunt pick that you can insert in the  "reset" hole on the back of the Palm device. If you can't unscrew the stylus, an unbent paper clip works as well. The first step is simply to insert the clip or piece of stylus and press. This is a soft reset, and gets the device going again if it has minor problems.

Our soft reset improved nothing so we advanced to the "hard reset." This operation works like the previous one, except that you hold down the Power button while you insert the paper clip or stylus piece. A hard reset is a clumsy operation because at this point you probably have the device face down, and may not realize that a dialog appears on the screen. It asks, "Erase All Data? Yes No." To continue, you tap "Yes" with your stylus. Remember that if you have not answered "Yes" to a question like this, you have not performed a hard reset.

A few seconds after you answer "Yes," the Palm Welcome screen comes up, and you go through the calibration process by touching various spots on the screen as directed by the dialog. Our hard reset was successful in returning the operating system to its factory settings and allowed us to access our drop-down menus. However, the database files and all other data were erased.

A hotsync operation restored all data and installed programs except the databases used by Filemaker. After a few false starts we learned that you must have each file open in Filemaker and sharing options set before it will download to the Palm.

The sharing options were already set for each file, thanks to my cousin's predecessor, so the most time-consuming operation was finding and opening all twenty-five files that needed to be downloaded. Once we opened the files, another hotsync operation loaded all the files on the Palm in about five minutes' time (this was a serial connection — a USB connection like the one on my Palm M130 would have been much faster.)

What most impressed me about our recent adventure with the Palm is how easy it was to diagnose and fix a problem. If I was impressed before with this simple, elegant operating system, I am doubly impressed now that I have seen how easily it travels in both PC and Macintosh worlds.