Over the holidays I had the pleasure of doing some personal travel and one of our stops was San Francisco.   We did a bit of site seeing and we did take in the vineyard country and I can sadly say that despite finding some really great wines, I did not bring any back.  Why?   Well because you can’t carry on any liquid more than 3 oz.  I guess the TSA is too stupid to differentiate wine from explosives but that doesn’t matter anyway.  We also found some great honey but didn’t buy any to bring back for family, friends, or ourselves because of the airline restrictions.   I know we could have checked the items in luggage but that’s a whole other sad story about items being mishandled, broken, or stolen in the process which is why I rarely check bags except for long term duration flights.

It doesn’t stop there though, we found some great hand crafted knives that my son would have loved to have since he’s a scout but we passed on that too because we figured the TSA would confiscate this “dangerous” weapon.   Why not order online?  Well that’s what we generally do but some states restrict wine sales across state lines but the real problem for us is having to have someone home to sign for the wine when it gets there which is a difficult thing to do with my constant travel and my wife’s other daily activities.   Lately, thefts of deliveries has been up in the area as well and I would rather not have those items stolen so if something isn’t confiscated by some government bureaucrat, it’s getting stolen by some petty thief and then we expect to grow this economy?

On the flip side, I went to an electronics store to buy some old rabbit ears antennae since I’m dropping my cable subscription this week and found some interesting ones that didn’t look like rabbit ears at all.   The electronics retail price was $49.99 and I used Amazon’s price check app on my iPhone 4s and saw it on Amazon.com for half the price and pay no sales tax to boot!  So I clicked and ordered it online and will get it in a couple of days at my door and saved $25.00 in the process.    I am convinced that retail is dying a slow painful death and most of it will be gone soon which is probably why Sears and Kmart are shuttering stores, the retail model doesn’t make any sense anymore.    We went this weekend to Bed, Bath & Beyond to buy an outdoor table cover for some patio furniture and the sales clerk told us to look online as they didn’t carry  that in the store.  WTF?   What’s the point of going to the shop at all if it’s all online?

With 80 million boomers heading for smaller homes, wheelchairs, and lower consumption of goods, how will this economy survive?