When coming back from the Bay Area have you ever sat in traffic on 80 or 680 waiting to pay your bridge toll, gazing enviously at the folks zipping past you in the FasTrak lanes?

Well then, why don’t you just sign up for FasTrak?

Here’s what you need to know about getting a FasTrak account.

- You don’t need to live in the Bay Area
- There is no minimum usage required
- It doesn’t cost a penny to get FasTrak

A few days ago while riding Amtrak from Sacramento to Oakland I overheard a group of business colleagues talking about where to get a good beer in San Francisco. I butted in and offered them some easy to get to (using BART) beer drinking joints in the East Bay.

That conversation was the germ of this post about finding good suds in Oakland and Berkeley.

In the course of research, I came across a fun and useful website that lists places to ease your thirst throughout the BART system: BeerByBART.com. (I kid you not.)

Happy beer swilling!

Maybe the next time you need a lift to an airport you should rent a car instead of taking a shuttle.

I am a believer in using the Chico airport as much as possible and one of my fondest hopes for transportation in the area is to see additional air service in Chico.

But that may be a long way off. In the meantime the reality is that most people use the Sacramento airport as their main domestic departure point. And in the case of international travel many others start their trip from San Francisco.

The advantages of using a rental car to get to another airport from Chico can include both cost and flexibility.

How many of you have found yourselves in a situation similar to this?

- You booked flights from Chico to San Diego on United.com
- You booked a car rental at Hertz.com.
- You booked a hotel through Marriott.com

The result is a digital (or printed) sheaf of e-mail confirmations with data about your trip.

Wouldn’t it be nice if you could easily consolidate all three separate pieces into one electronic itinerary?

You can.

Here’s a another travel website (with blog and e-mail newsletter) I enjoy. It encompasses aspects of travel in many forms: airlines, lodging, car rentals, travel agents, and so on.

The website is Elliott.org.

You may, in fact, already be familiar with a part of the website.

Christopher Elliott, the man behind Elliott.org writes a syndicated column called The Troubleshooter that appears in the travel section of many newspapers. He also is quoted in the media often in regard to issues of the day involving the travel industry.

As The Troubleshooter, Elliott is the St. Christopher of travel woes. Readers bring their impossible-to-fix problems to him and he in turn works his network of contacts to see if he can rectify the situation or at least explain to the unfortunate why it happened and how to avoid it in the future.