On the road again: Silicon Valley, day 6

Early morning wake-ups are my kryptonite.  When I know I have to wake up in the sixes, I sleep poorly, awaken many times throughout the night, and am always tired when I finally have to hit the shower.  The fact that I go to bed late doesn't help, of course, but the fact remains that single-digit wake-up calls ruin sleep for me.  I clearly need to work on this area.

Despite that, and despite the joy of hitting the 101 in the morning, everything went smoothly in my journey from hotel room to checkout to rental car to airport to check-in to gate.  Amazing.  I was so pleased by my steady and uneventful progress that when the woman in front of me in security blocked all passengers for several minutes while she fiddled with her just-screened belongings, I didn't say a word.

No upgrades were available for me today, but I was lucky enough to get an exit-row seat on the first leg, so I could work the whole flight.

After that flight, my connection time was long enough that I was able to stop into a nearby Red Mango and enjoy their delicious berry parfait.  I'm very lucky I don't have one of these franchises anywhere near my house. 

A lot of walking and a ride on the tram later, and I was at my gate.  We boarded only ten minutes late, fastened our seat belts, closed the door...and sat.  And sat.  And sat some more, as the pilot had maintenance investigate a potential problem.  The issue proved to be a flaw in the rudder, which I am quite pleased they found before we took off.  After an hour on the plane, though, we got off, sat around, and eventually headed to another gate where a new plane awaited us.  I was happy to have a new plane, of course, but the long delays were no fun. 

Eventually, though, they told us to board this sold-out plane, a process that had previously taken 40 minutes, and they told us that we had only 17 minutes to do it or the crew would "go illegal" and we'd lose this plane.  I wasn't at all sure we could do it, but we did, with two minutes to spare. 

We landed in RDU more than two hours later than the original schedule, but at least we made it.  I'm happy to be home for a whole three days.

Monday, I head to Austin. 

On the road again: Silicon Valley, day 5

The highlight of an otherwise work-filled day was a superb dinner at Chef David Kinch's Manresa.  As I blogged about dinner on Saturday night of the Cayman Cookout, my one experience with Kinch's food there left me unimpressed.

Dining at Manresa changed my impression entirely.

The meal was simply world-class.  Every single course was delicious, beautiful, and thoughtfully composed.  Each first bite of a dish brought smiles and moans of pleasure to all at the table, and each last bite left us craving more.  Even the dessert courses, frequently the great weaknesses of otherwise stellar restaurants, were perfect, delicious and complex and beautiful--and thematically in keeping with the emphasis of the rest of the dishes on local products and nature.

We were lucky to get a kitchen tour afterward and to speak briefly with Kincher.  He was gracious, unhappy himself with how that Cayman Cookout meal turned out, and great to talk with.

I cannot recommend Manresa too much.  I already look forward to the next time I have the privilege of eating there.

On the road again: Silicon Valley, day 4

Today's travel stupidity comes to you courtesy of...me.  Yes, this morning I met my colleagues, headed out of the hotel to the self-park garage, and completely failed to find my rental car.  Because we were in a hurry, we took the car one of my colleagues had, but, boy, did I feel stupid.

We did easily find the car when we arrived back at the hotel after our last meeting of the day.

Apropos only of travel, I walked once into Sam the Record Man on Yonge Street in Toronto on a cold winter night, heard this song from Outskirts, their debut CD, bought the CD, and began my long love of Blue Rodeo. 



The audio here isn't great, but so it goes; for that, you have to buy the CD.  You should own it anyway. 

On the road again: Silicon Valley, day 3

I've decided that because I cannot comment on the big things that occur on these work trips, almost all of which involve, well, work, I will instead periodically rant on the little annoying shit that gets in my face as I travel.

Such as hotel bandwidth.  I know that business hotels deal every single day with hordes of bandwidth-hungry businesspeople, but I don't care.  Those same hotels charge each of us a bloody fortune for our rooms, and then on top of that they typically levy another annoying fee (in today's case, $12.99 per day) for the privilege of connecting to the InterTubes.  For that sum, about a quarter of most folks' monthly Internet access plans, one gets bandwidth circa 2002, enough to do your email (slowly) and browse the Web (slower still), but not enough to move around big files or generally enjoy the Web as you do at home.  Hotels, we want our bandwidth!

Such as bathroom details.  I appreciate that this lovely Marriott might not want me to have to see my spare roll of toilet paper, but surely this room's designers could have found somewhere to put it that was actually in the bathroom.  But no, not these folks.  Instead, they put it on top of the closet, which you can reach only by leaving the bathroom and stepping into the entryway.  Great thinking, that bit.

Such as housekeeping staff who cannot recognize their hotel's "Do Not Disturb" signs.  That must be the problem, because why else would they knock at random times to see if you might want your room cleaned--even though that sign is hanging on your door?

Such as drivers on the 101 who despite the law, despite the traffic, despite all good sense, weave in their lanes and endanger our lives as they look down at their phones and text.  I want a front-mounted paintball gun that fires a shaped charge that upon impact with the offending vehicle spells out DANGEROUS DRIVER. 

Ah, the joys of business travel. 

On the road again: Silicon Valley, day 2

I spent most of today either sleeping, working, or changing locations.  I have to confess, though, to watching the Super Bowl commercials--well, all but the first hour of them--as I worked.  From what I saw, this year's crop was not one of the better ones, though of course the spots I missed might have been the true stars.  I unavoidably caught some of the game, which seemed to be a good one, despite the long power outage just after the second half began.  I've never been a football fan, though, so I could not get but so involved. 

Tomorrow, I begin my second week visiting clients on the road, and the second week in a row away from home.  It's not my favorite way to live, but it's hard to complain about getting to stay in a nice hotel in a (comparatively) warm and sunny place.

So I won't.

On the road again: Portland, day 5 / Silicon Valley, day 1

As much as I travel, you'd think I would never be surprised by how much time travel takes.  Yet, on days like today, I am.  The relatively short hop from PDX to SFO and from one hotel to another ended up consuming more than six hours, much of which was unproductive time.  Worse, I had to get up early on a Saturday. 

Dinner tonight helped, though, because it was a delicious meal at what I consider to be San Francisco's best restaurant, Benu.  Chef Corey Lee's tasting menu delivers bite after bite of wonderful, complex, tasty flavors.  I recommend Benu highly.

I'd write more, but it's quite late and I want one long night of sleep before the crush of the week descends on me, so this will have to serve. 

On the road again: Silicon Valley, day 5

All of my daylight hours today went to travel.  I left the hotel at 6:15 a.m. in the rainy darkness, and I arrived in Raleigh at 6:15 p.m. in the cool darkness.  In between, I saw daylight only through airplane and airport windows and, twice at DFW, directly through small openings in the seal between the jetway and the plane.  An odd way to pass a day.

In between, I sat in exit-row seats--good for leg room and working--but not on the aisle, which meant that by the end of the day my shoulders and back were sore from curling inward to try to avoid invading the space of my seatmates.  That part sucks.

The best parts of this trip were that both planes offered bandwidth and the first was early enough that I had time to enjoy a delicious Red Mango parfait at DFW. 

Now, to catch up on the mail and bills and other life that happened on this coast while I was on the other one. 

On the road again: Silicon Valley, day 4

Work and driving between meetings ate almost all of today.  Lunch was a half hour at a small but busy taqueria in Palo Alto.  Dinner was a pleasant couple of hours with Gina's daughter, son-in-law, and their kids in Oakland.  All else was work.

Some days are like that.

Some days you get to stick your fingers in the ocean.  Some days you work.

On the road again: Silicon Valley, day 1

I slept very little and rather poorly last night, so when today's first flight failed to deliver on the bandwidth it promised, I mostly dozed and twisted and turned in my oh-so-comfy exit row slice of space.  I'm sure if I was under five feet tall and less than 100 pounds in weight, with shoulders no more than a foot wide, that my seat would have been luxurious; alas, I am none of those things.

We had to rush between gates at DFW, but we were able to make the second flight in the half hour we had for the task.  This plane's in-flight bandwidth setup was actually working, so I worked pretty much the whole time.  That's a good thing, because it meant I wasn't as far behind when I landed as I would have been.

As is my habit when staying at this particular hotel, I drove by a nearby Safeway to pick up some Coke Zero and pretzels for the room.  The Safeway was no longer there, though construction was well along on the replacement bigger store.  Fortunately, a nearby Walgreens offered the same merchandise, albeit at a higher price.

Dinner tonight was at Max's, where once again I ate the patty melt and sent a photo of it to Elizabeth, a woman who loves a good patty melt as much as I do.  I'm sure she appreciated the photo.

Most of the rest of the evening went to work.

Tomorrow, meetings I can't discuss!

On the road again: a long trip, day 9Silicon Valley, day 4CONtraflow, New Orleans, day 1

I'm never going to like a morning that starts with me rolling into the shower at four a.m., so today did not have a happy start for me. Two flights with a two-hour layover between them yielded about eight hours of head pain from almost complete ear congestion. Now, though, my ears are nearly back to normal, which is a treat.

DFW did bring the joy of the Red Mango parfait, three hundred delicious calories that brighten any day.

Unfortunately, DFW also treated us to a royal clusterfuck as the airport authority closed the Skytrains for a while. Walking from where we were to where we needed to be was possible but would have meant trudging for several miles--which is exactly what we started to do. We then encountered the aforementioned Red Mango, however, and could not pass it by. By the time we had enjoyed our treats, the trains were up and running.

We hit the rental car here at high rush hour, so the twenty-five-minute drive from the airport took more like a hundred minutes, none of them fun.

Now that I'm at the con hotel, though, all is well. Pre-con dinner with the con team was fun, the hotel is fine, the bandwidth (free) is better than what fancier hotels charge high daily fees to use, and my work is almost done.

Sleep awaits, and I cannot wait to greet it.

Oh, yeah: how great is this?


Insanely great, that's how great.

On the road again: a long trip, day 8Silicon Valley, day 3

Today was work, work, and more work. Not much I can say about it.

My health continues to improve, though at a snail's pace. I'm fighting the coughing fits and slowly gaining ground, though tonight's minimal sleep will not help. (I hate getting up at four a.m.)

Because I have so little on which I can report aside from this blasted sickness, and because I'm bored to tears of that, I'm going to talk briefly again about PTSD sufferers in general and Dave in particular.

I've written many times before--and will no doubt write many times again--about the huge cost that trauma of certain types exacts from its victims. Veterans and abused kids are the particular groups I cover most often, because of my personal ties to and strong feelings about them--and because I am one of them.

At the risk of detracting from its mention in Dave's upcoming newsletter, the latest issue of which he was kind enough to let me read in advance of its general mailing, check out this photo of Dave, here a few years back from Viet Nam and slowly rebuilding himself from the rubble that experience made of him. I've known Dave since around 1982 and been his close friend since about 1985, and I can tell you that he looked better when I met him and has continued to improve.

This photo, though, is not of a man who fell apart. It's not of someone who committed acts of violence, or who fell into a bottle. The man in this picture had graduated from Duke Law School, was still married, was recently a father and an Assistant Town Attorney for Chapel Hill. He was writing.

This man was succeeding.

Still is.

This picture, though, captures in a perfect and wrenching instant the huge price Dave paid.

We cannot pay back Dave or any vet for his or her service; it doesn't work that way. We can, however, treat returning vets better, treat PTSD sufferers of all stripes better, and work diligently to avoid the need to subject more men and women to those experiences.

That, we can do, and we should.

On the road again: a long trip, day 7Silicon Valley, day 2

In retrospect, I should have seen it coming. Decongestants, aspirin, and antibiotics all share one side effect: upset stomach. Add no food for a long time, then a fatty dinner, blend in the sickness you're trying to beat, and the result is a thirty-minute attack of wracking coughs at two in the morning. Wow, did that suck. I had forgotten just how much exercise you could get from coughing. I can't recommend it, however.

That's how the day began. The rest of the day went to work, about 17 hours of it, some of it live client meetings, some phone meetings, and a bunch of driving up and down the 101.

Room service dinner was a treat by the time I could manage it.

I'm way past sick of being sick. I am healing, but not fast enough for my taste.

While eating dinner, I saw on the Colbert Report a performance of a song from The Goat Rodeo Sessions. Everyone needs this album. Check out this Web exclusive video at Colbert Nation. Very cool stuff.

On the road again: a long trip, day 6World Fantasy Con, San Diego, day 6Silicon Valley, day 1

As you can tell from the overly long title, today was a travel day.

I awoke in San Diego feeling awful but definitely a tad better than the day before. Progress. After so much work I made us late, we did the pack/check-out/taxi/check-in/security tango and found our little commuter jet for LAX.

That flight was so short it barely had time to become unpleasant, which was quite nice. Unfortunately, a coughing spell hit me not long after boarding, so I had about half an hour of wracking pain.

LAX passed in a rush from plane to gate to shuttle to gate to plane, which was boarding when we reached it. Fortunately, a first-class upgrade had come through, so I was able to get plenty to drink and stave off the coughing during the slightly longer flight to SFO. I unfortunately could not fight the effects of a faster than normal landing process, so I emerged from the plane half deaf from the pressure in my head.

Go, decongestants, go!

After reversing the earlier dance, with a stop at a Safeway for crucial room supplies (water, Coke Zero, soft pretzels), I spent the rest of the day working.

Dinner was take-out from a nearby Max's. Mine was, of course, the traditional patty melt.

I passed exhausted a few hours ago, so I'm crashing. Ignore the timestamp of this post, for it is a lie.

Tomorrow, I have meetings, so I hope to be feeling a very great deal better.