Combat Landing

Like most people, I complain about my job. I complain about our customers, management, IT (especially IT), the general ratio of work to pay, and pretty much everything else that come to mind.

In reality though, my job is pretty damn cool. One of the cool things about it is that I get to work in, on, or near various airplanes from time to time. Sometimes, I even get to fly in them as we test our software, and that's always an adventure.

As routine as air travel has become, flying on these airplanes for work reminds me of how truly remarkable it is every time one one of these metal beasts lunges into the air at hundreds of miles an hour. On these work flights, my job is usually to sit and observe and not touch anything. I do get to wear a cool headset, though. One that blocks out the roar of the propellors but lets you listen in on the chatter between the pilots and the tower and crew on the plane. It sounds kind of like the trucker talk you'd hear on the Dukes of Hazzard, just a lot more sophisticated -- and, as a side note, they really do say, "Roger" and "Copy" quite a bit.

On this last flight, they had installed satellite internet on the plane and were testing it out. For some reason, they thought it was important to see how far they could bank the plane before they would lose the connection. I lost my connection with reality at about 50 degrees of bank. It didn't help when they swung it around to bank at 50 degrees the other way. The only thing keeping me from throwing up was my intense fear of throwing up.

The fear intensified when I heard the pilots talking about doing a "combat landing." In a typical landing, the plane slowly decends and makes a couple of nice gradual turns to line up with the runway. In a combat landing (well, this one at least) the plane flies over the tip of the runway at a ninety degree angle to the way it should land. To the untrained eye, this might look like the plane is trying to land on some random airport building. But, as the plane crosses the tip of the runway, they immediately throw it into a steep bank and make a tight 270 degree turn. At the end of the turn, the plane levels out, and it should be going a lot slower and be lined right up with with runway for a landing. Of course, I didn't know any of this before they did it. At the time, all I was aware of was being really low to the ground and the wing tip pointed straight down.

I survived though, breakfast and honor still intact. Commercial air travel doesn't seem all the bad, now that I think about it.

Land of enchantment...

I just rolled into the house from a week of work travel and a weekend of vacation. Strange how you can not have a care in the world, and the next, you're surrounded by piles of bills and laundry, simultaneously trying to find something for dinner while contemplating the week ahead. Sigh.

I spent the week in Roswell, New Mexico. Yes, the alien place. And no, my visit was completely terrestrial. Even so, there is something a bit off about the place in general. There are only two flights there daily, and the nearest town of any notable size (Albuquerque, Lubbock, or El Paso) is more than 3 hours drive away via US highway. With a population of about 45,000, this is the kind of community that really feels the effect of a down economy. People do what they can to get by. Little restaurants spring up everywhere, long established business get shuttered. Everything seems tainted by the malaise of disaffection.

I've seen a lot of these places in my travels. I thought I knew what to expect. Roswell was something else, though. I was struck by it the moment the airport was visible on the horizon. The airport was covered in commercial aircraft, parked wingtip to wingtip. Dozens and dozens of DC-10s, A-300s, 737s, and even a huge contingent of colossal 747s sat in the dry desert wind, doing nothing, and airline ghost town. Over the next few days as I worked around the airfield, I never really got used to seeing all those hulking birds parked around the runway, like used cars waiting for buyers.

I had high hopes that a week in Roswell would be a nice escape from the fickle Utah spring weather. In some ways it was, as the sun was out everyday, but the nights were bitterly cold, and my spring jacket wasn't nearly insulating enough for 40 degree weather at 8:00 am. Finally, on Friday, I even broke down and bought some hand lotion for the last 24 hours of my time there, because my hands simply couldn't handle the dryness anymore.

Roswell strikes me as fundamentally an agricultural community. From above, you can see that the town is surrounded by large green circles of crops, marking quite a contrast against the beige desert floor. The town itself is stretched out along the single main street, like something out of American Graffiti. On the outskirts you have the modern accoutrements of modern civilization, Subway, McDonald's, Walgreens, but as you near the city center, the stop lights are 200 feet apart, and the streets are lined with classic buildings, which you imagine were once soda fountains and barbershops, but are know struggling to be eclectic boutiques and coffee shops.

This is where Roswell takes another turn for the odd, since a disturbing number of these stores have alien paraphernalia hanging in the windows. On Friday, with my work completed, I walked a few blocks of main street and stuck my head in most of the shops. Most were simply trying to lure people, and the aliens painted on the windows had nothing to do with the incense or indian jewelry inside. Others were clearly local people trying to capitalize of the dumb tourists looking for a silly memento to send home. A few places, though, were clearly run by true believers. In one store, I picked up a few shirts for my little nephews, and the proprietor was quick to suggest that I pick up a recently published children's book about UFOs, so that I would be able to explain to them all about aliens.

It wasn't all weird though. Roswell had some surprisingly great food. Though the places were really run down, the food and the service was excellent. As you may have heard, New Mexico is known for it's chiles. I had green chile enchiladas and a relleno one day, and liked it so much that I had red chile enchiladas with another relleno the next. And in perhaps the biggest surprise of the trip, I had really excellent chicken saltimbocca that rivaled anything I've had in SLC.

All in all, it was probably one of the more interesting trips I've had. Roswell has a lot of personality. I still don't understand why they call it the land of enchantment, though.

Aloha

I am 1500 miles into a 3000 mile journey, at 35,000 feet somewhere over the inky blackness of the Pacific. There’s a baby crying a few rows ahead, which I can clearly hear through my less than capable noise canceling headphones. I’m tempted to offer it a xanax, but I have no idea how to how to dose psychoactive medications for toddlers.

I’m also in a race against time…the über laptop I am using for this composition destroys batteries as quickly as this flight is draining my will. A five hour delay will do that to you.

I’ll spare you the cattle analogies, but at 5:00 PM, 250 of us found ourselves in herded onto 767 at LAX waiting to take off. The airplane never moved. Instead, a platoon of mechanics started to disassemble the right engine. Nothing too serious, we were told, just a diagnostic failure. Still, parts of your aircraft on the tarmac is, at best, disconcerting. The flight crew was not unsympathetic, but not terribly informed. They did their best to keep the masses appeased while coming up with various ways of explaining that the thing is broken and they don’t know when it might be fixed. Here’s the timeline:

• 5:30 pm. on the ground beverage service: 12 oz plastic cup with far too much of that magic hollow ice and not enough ginger-ale. The irony of participating in this ritual while buckled into a multi-million dollar stationary object is not lost on me.
• 6:00 pm: free movies on the seat back cinema. We are informed that they have identified the broken doodad, but it doesn’t actually appear to be broken, and they don’t know why it keeps saying that it’s broken. Apparently it looks fine to them.
• 6:30 pm: they let us off the plane. Are they admitting defeat? Doo-dad is still reporting broken. They’re going to be turning the power off and on in the aircraft; this is strangely reminiscent of me rebooting my computer when it stops behaving. So if you want to watch the first 5 minutes of Yes Man over and over, you’re welcome to stay aboard.
• 7:00 pm: food vouchers for dinner. Want to know what you can get in the LAX terminal for 7 bucks? I got an ice cream cone. A lot of other people got drunk-ish. My traveling companion bought his food BEFORE the vouchers were offered. Delta seems unconcerned about his seven dollars.
• 7:30 pm: they do finally admit defeat, and report that we’re changing planes. Everyone that’s left on the plane exits, bringing their luggage, while those of us without our luggage wait to get back on. When everyone is off, we line up in shifts to go into the empty airplane and get our stuff. This is at least 20 times slower than the initial boarding process.
  
• 8:00 pm: stuff retrieved, new gate located. We realize that we are now going to arrive in Hawaii at midnight or later. Rental car places closes at 1:00 AM. Disaster looms. There is a large woman seated across from us who whips out her book of Sudoku and stares at it with a ferocity that might set it aflame. She is slightly cross-eyed. It’s all we can do to not laugh.
• 8:30 pm: located seat near new gate with the all important wall outlet. I plug in the laptop, and promptly fill every USB port to charge our techno junk. One blackberry, one cell phone, one iPod, all sprawled out in the terminal, while I yearn for an open WiFi hotspot.
• 9:00 pm: our plane lands. A flotilla of empty wheelchairs arrives at the gate. Disembarking passengers seem slightly confused as to why they’re being hustled off the plane. (Again, cattle metaphor omitted.)
• 9:30 pm: we board the plane, looking at our watches and finding it rather difficult to compensate for flight time and time zones in our calculations. Are we going to arrive at 3? Or is it 11? Apparently we need to repeat 2nd grade. The pilot reports our landing time as right at 1, so it looks like we’ll make it. This is an odd sensation – worrying that the plane leave on time rather than hoping that it leaves late so that I'm on it.
  
• 9:50 pm: Plane leaves LAX. Passengers clap and cheer. A little over dramatic, really. It's not like we cured cancer or anything.
  
• 1:00 am: The rental car shuttle picks us up. A huge Hawaiian rumbles to the door. He kindly shakes his head and says, “You know, normally we close at 1:00.” He repeats this at least twice more before dropping us off at the rental counter.
  

Welcome to Hawaii.

My father, a Jedi?

Jedi's are known to eschew technology.

Okay, this post really is the conclusion to the "Chronicles of San Diego", since it gestated while while I was there, but it's a fresh news cycle now, and I'm not above intimating that my father has supernatural powers in an attempt to garner readership. The truth is that if my father has the Force, he's probably not a Jedi, but a Sith like Darth Vader. Not the kind of Sith that chokes people or shoots lighting from his fingertips, since that's just not his nature, but the comic henchman type Sith, one who uses the Force to make the toast pop before its done or loosen that particular bolt in your 2000 Honda Accord every few weeks so that there's an intermittent and unlocatable rattle at freeway speeds.

To understand why he's like Darth Vader, just sleep in the same room with him. I had this chance as he tagged along at the tail end of my week in San Diego. His sisters live in SoCal, so it made perfect sense. I was happy to have the company, but there was one thing I forgot about him, and that is that when he sleeps, he looks and sounds like our favorite Sith lord, thanks to one of these:

Disclaimer: I'm about to make fun of a relatively serious medical condition. Get over it.

My dad has sleep apnea, which is why he wears a mask similar to the one above. Sleep apnea is where you basically forget to breath while you sleep. While this combination of no breathing and sleep is normally characteristic of a medical condition called "death", a victim of sleep apnea only stops breathing for a short period of time -- basically just long enough for the brain to realize that "death" might actually occur if the lungs fail to resume their normal function. The brain then wakes the person up enough to start breathing again, resulting in, needless to say, really horrible sleep. (In some of the worst cases, a sleep apnea sufferer may stop breathing for up to a minute and wake up 30 or more times an hour.)

The mask and apparatus is known as a CPAP, or continuous-positive-airway-pressure machine. The mask is attached to an air pump, which forces air down your throat so you keep breathing. In layman's terms, it's like running a shop-vac in reverse and sticking the hose in your mouth. Fortunately, it's not quite that loud, more like a dust buster drowning in deep shag.

Looking at the sleep apnea mask, it's pretty easy to see why Darth Vader had his encased in a black enamel shroud. It's much more intimidating that way. Your average CPAP user *might* be able to pass for some sort of fighter pilot, if not for the flannel pajamas and characteristically non-fighter pilot type build. (Sleep apnea is MUCH more common in people of a particular size.)

When my dad first brought the CPAP home, and my fits of laughter died down, I actually gave it a try. It's kind of like wearing an octupus, in a not too unpleasant way, and the air being forced down your throat does actually ease breathing. This is all great, until you open your mouth, at which point all the air being pumped up your nose flies out this new exit and turns your nasal passages into a sort of booger wind-tunnel.

Sharing a room with dad using the CPAP is interesting to say the least. The machine, for the most part, produces pretty much white noise, but the person tethered to the machine will inevitably do sleep type things like roll over, swallow, mumble, etc, which now produce all sorts of interesting gurgles and whistles, much like the geothermally active areas of Yellowstone park. That said, the CPAP is definitely worth it. My father sleeps so much better, and has tons more energy as a consequence. And, now that we know my dad has sleep apnea, it explains all those nights when I would come upstairs and find his 6 foot tall body scrunched into the 4 foot wide loveseat, snoring away.

I wonder if he found a home remedy for his undiagnosed condition. Still, I think he prefers the CPAP to the flower print loveseat. I think he's relatively proud of the cachet this little medical device gives him, even if the TSA always assumes that the hose/pump apparatus is nearly as likely to blow up an airplane as my laptop. The first time I took him to San Diego, in fact, he tried on the CPAP in the middle of the day to show my aunts how it worked. They laughed nearly as hard as I did. Go Darth Dad. And leave my Accord alone.

The Chronicles of San Diego, Part II

Business travel is frequently vexing because you spend so much time alone when the work day is over. It's hard not feel like a social pariah when you walk into a restaurant and say, "Table for one." Consequently, it's tempting to take get carryout or take delivery in your room every night, but your waistline will definitely suffer. Truth be told, the only perk of company travel is dining on the company dime, so you ought to enjoy it even if you travel alone.

Nearly every part of the country has some regional cuisine that is done really well, so there's no reason to suffer through the generic chain food, regardless of where you are. Inevitably, company meetings and such will be at Chili's or some other place you've been a million times, so don't eat there unless you really feel the need to eat something you've already eaten before.

Still, it can be hard to travel and eat alone. Here's what I do:

• Use the web. Type in your current location and see what local restaurants are well rated. There are gems in most places. I had amazing shrimp in Sunnyvale and excellent lamb chops in Harlem because I did a little searching.
  
• Order a beverage. I don't drink, but I always order a beverage of some kind. This automatically ups your check just a little bit and gives your server an excuse to visit your table. You'll inevitably get better service.
• Don't be afraid to sit at the bar, even if you don't drink. I usually get great service from the bar, and there are almost always TVs or music or something that is much less alienating than sitting in a booth by yourself.
  
• Stretch out the meal. When you dine alone, you'll notice that your food arrives much faster, and you finish quicker because there's no one to talk to. Even at a really nice restaurant, you can be in and out in well under an hour, and then you'll inevitably feel unsatisfied. Besides making a deliberate attempt to slow down, I frequently order a soup or an appetizer with dinner, just because it makes the meal more of an experience.
• Ask about the specials. Unless you're at the Cheesecake Factory, the specials are usually actually special. They're the freshest ingredients, chef's specialty, or whatever. Your server will definitely know what most people order.
  
• Get used to the alone-ness. Relish it. Once you go to a movie by yourself, you'll wonder why you ever try to corral a group of people to try and go to a movie. Dining alone can be the same way.
  

This week in San Diego has been a culinary masterpiece. I come here often enough that I have some of my favorite haunts. First is Point Loma Seafoods: a fresh fish market that also serves lunch. They have AMAZING chowder. Warning: they only take cash. Second is Phil's: Texas style BBQ, great blues. Beef ribs that would satisfy Fred Flinstone. Warning: closed on Mondays. This time, I also visited the Chart House at Dana Point, and it was simply amazing -- great view.

The Chonicles of San Diego, Pt1

Once again, I find myself on a work trip. When people ask me about what's new in life, the thing that usually comes to mind is my latest or upcoming travel, because so many people seem interested in the novelty of getting paid to travel. Sometimes I think people assume that it's exotic and exciting; lots of power suits and power lunches and really intense motivational speeches in high rise buildings. I hate to dash any illusions you might have, but right now I'm sitting in a mostly empty office in jeans and a t-shirt, blogging.

Still, I thought it would be fun to chronicle this trip on the blog. I'm going to see if I can come up with at least one good story for every day that I'm here.

I landed in San Diego at 11:30 this afternoon. I swear that we taxied FOREVER. It made me wonder if the airport is really like a big mall parking lot on Saturday, and the pilot tooling around in his 737 looking for a spot that's close to the food court but still doesn't make him walk through the lingerie section of JCPenny. In my mind I can hear the co-pilot yell, "Look! You passed a perfectly good spot right back there! We can WALK."


Still, the day has been good thus far. I enjoyed lunch at Point Loma Seafoods; a seared Ahi sandwhich and bowl of claw chowder. I'm sure we'll talk about food later, so I'll leave it at that. The highlight of the day, though, was this guy panhandling in the median of the street. He was walking up and down past the cars waiting to turn left. He held a sign that said: "BET YOU CAN'T HIT ME WITH A QUARTER."


How's that for a challenge?

Upgrades

I complain alot about traveling. Not the fact that I travel, but the process of traveling itself. Everyone knows what I'm talking about, right? Terrible airlines, being poked and prodded by security, unbelievably lame rental cars, middle seats, unintelligible drivers,

So, somehow, somewhere, I must have done something right, because this trip has been surreal in it's splendor.

Here's the evidence:

1) Flight leaves at 11:00 AM. Can you get a more perfect time than that? You don't have to wake up early to make the flight, the airport is wonderfully empty, and you still arrive late enough in the day that no one expects you to go work.
2) Plane not close to full. I got my OWN ROW. I sat in the middle so I could see all three TVs. One tuned to the PGA championship, one for random flipping, and one for the news.
3) Rental car: Dodge charger! (If you've heard my rant about the PT cruiser, enough said.)
4) Hotel upgrades. I arrive at the hotel just having achieved "Gold" status. They tell me that they've upgraded my room. I'm in a wing of the hotel I've never stayed in the before. I open the door, and I realize that I have a 3 room suite. No, I am not making this up. I have two king beds in two separate rooms, two bathrooms, and three total TVs. I feel almost guilty about it.

So, there you go.

Karma?

What I learned back east...

It's good to be back -- back from visiting the east coast for work. It was a whirlwind tour, involving 6 different airports, 4 different hotel rooms, and 2 different rental cars (neither of which were PT cruisers!) After a trip like this, there are two things I like to do:

1. Sleep a ton. Seriously. My clock gets SO messed up when I travel. I'm already a huge night owl, so it doesn't take much for me to slip entirely into the schedule where I sleep all day and work at night. I woke up today at 2 PM.
2. Reflect on what I learned this trip. That part follows:

What I learned:

1. Cleaning before you go on a trip is totally worth it. When I got home late last night, it was so wonderful to walk into a clean room with a freshly made bed and no piles of laundry around. I think this is because when you travel, every time you step into your hotel room, that's how it looks... Now, if I could just train my roommates to clean up after themselves...
2. Connecticut feels like a Norman Rockwell painting -- farmhouses in lush green fields separated by towering but still welcoming forest. I could totally live there. It was quaint and rustic, but still only 2 hours from Boston and 2 hours from NY, and they still had really great high speed internet.
3. DC traffic has to be the worst traffic EVER. On my way out of town, I decided to drop by the national cathedral (see item 4). I was near the new Nationals stadium just south of the Capitol. Google tells me that the distance I covered was 7.6 miles, but it took the better part of an hour. (And no, this wasn't rush hour or anything, it was 10:00 am!) DC is this hideous mess of one way streets and roundabouts. I'm sure that L'Enfant designed it this way because the all lines made cool shapes on the paper. I'm also convinced that our Senators and Congresspeople arrive in DC full of hope and ready to work, but are completely embittered and partisan after their first week because they spend 50% of their time in a car.
4. The national cathedral is AMAZING. The 6th largest cathedral in the world, and it took 80 years to complete. The craftsmanship is exquisite. One thing I did find very interesting is the names of the benefactors that were carved into various places around the cathedral. I worry that this might have started the insane sponsorship craze that we see today. Someone we went from, "This alcove dedicated in holiness by Frank and Deborah Sneddlesmith," to "INVESCO field" instead of Mile High stadium. C'mon people. Isn't God going to know that you funded this pillar, or paid for this pew? Why does everyone else need to know too?

Well, I'm tired again all of the sudden. To much thinking about work, I guess.

Soledad

Last night, I ate dinner at the San Diego harbor in a restaurant perched at the end of pier that extended over the sullen pacific. I enjoyed fresh tilapia with mango salsa while watching the crimson sunset coax sail boats back to their slips. Afterwards, I took a leisurely drive up the coast to Mt. Soledad, where I enjoyed an amazing view of the San Diego temple, La Jolla, and the pacific coastline stretching into the inky horizon.


As you might suspect, it was a spectacular evening...perfect in nearly every way...except that I was with 3 other dudes from work.

This, my friends, is the irony of the business trip.

The Right Stuff

I've always been fascinated by aviation. There's something about the combination of technology, science, and extreme velocity that is enamoring. Take, for example, the SR-71 in the picture below. Built more than 40 years ago, it was designed to fly in excess of Mach 3 (that's three times the speed of sound) and more than 15 miles up (twice that of your average passenger jet.) There were more than 4000 recorded attempts to shoot this aircraft down, and what did the pilot do to avoid the missile? He simply pushed the throttle all the way forward to outrun it. This plane earned a speed record by flying from Los Angeles to New York in 68 minutes. How is that not unbelievable cool??

Last week, I saw the actual SR-71 that set the record. It's at the Air and Space Museum near Dulles in Washinton DC. I was there with the family, and I'm sure I was boring them to death with all the minute details that I find so fascinating. (Like the fact that the aircraft leaked fuel while on the ground...)

What's even more amazing about the SR-71 and every modern aircraft is that it has been only about 100 years since the Wright brothers made their first flights. Since then, every single challenge to flight has been summarily conquered through persistence and innovation. We now fly faster, farther, and higher than people ever thought possible. The amazing growth of flight is a towering testament to the power of unbridled human ingenuity.

When you contrast this, the storied history of flight, with the current state of commercial aviation, the mediocrity of the airline travel becomes readily apparent. I had a lot of time to think about it as I waited and waited and waited in Reagan National airport yesterday. I also thought about it as I literally ran through the cavernous Minneapolis airport so as to not miss my connection to SLC.

What's the deal? We can put men on the moon and fly across the globe in hours, but we can't get a single 757 to the airport on time. Nor can we make coach seats wide enough so that I don't have to touch knees and elbows with the guy next to me. And why, oh why, can't I have a WHOLE can of soda? And who thought of the "hub?" What a terrible idea. It may work for buses and packages, but not for people traveling cross country. Buses are a lot cheaper than planes, so you can have a lot of them to compensate for schedule problems, and well, people are not packages, people actually complain when they are left overnight in some intermediate location.

And I could go on, as could most traveler. I know I'm not the first to complain about air travel, nor will I be the last. It just makes me sad that something as miraculous and majestic as flight has been reduced to ferrying grumpy people around the country. It's no wonder that the smaller innovative airlines are the only ones really doing well in this market. The big guys seem to be circling the wagons, trying to merge and cut costs and pack more people into planes, but every cost cutting and money saving initiative seems to only further ruin the experience.

Frankly, I'm to the point were I'm willing to choose a marginally more expensive flight if I know that the service is going to be better. And, if there are others like me, then the major airlines better be quaking in their boots. Until they wake up, I'm going to keep dreaming of flying cross country in my SR-71.

The Curse of the PT Cruiser

While filling out my expense report for my most recent trip, I counted the number of times that I'd been to San Diego in the last few months. It was some ridiculous number like 6 or 7. Every time I've traveled to San Diego, I've been cursed with driving a PT Cruiser. Ungh. I'll take anything else. Give me your Malibus, your Impalas, your G6s, just NO MORE PT cruisers.

I'm so sick of driving that little car. The buttons are all in the wrong place, it doesn't get good gas mileage even though it's so small, it turns like an elephant, and sometimes the headlights stay on even after you turn them off. And to top it off, nothing screams "Look, I'm from out of town!" like driving a PT Cruiser in San Diego.

Two trips ago, I was standing behind this guys in the rental car line. He completed his paperwork, took the keys, and went out into the parking lot. He was back in about two seconds. He said, "There's no way I'm driving that." What was the car? A canary yellow PT cruiser. I totally agree with him, too. The car is effeminate enough without being pastel.

At the rental counter this last time, the lady said, "Well, I have a Corolla and a PT Cruiser." I got all excited and said, "I'll take the Corolla!" But when she punched it in, she frowned, motioned to the guy to my right, and said "Sorry, looks like he got it."

Agh! Like the Miami Dolphins, I remain winless.

San Diego, Redux

This week, I found myself again in San Diego for work. Nearly everything was an the opposite of my previous adventure there. Instead of hot, dry, Santa Ana's and temperatures in the 90s, there was a slow cold sea breeze that brought the fog and mist ashore and kept things in the mid 60s.

Items of note on this trip:

• Sometimes less is best. Normally when I travel I stay at moderately priced business class hotels. Because of the firefighting effort most cheaper places were booked, so my reservation was at a very nice hotel: travertine floors, 24 hour concierge service, 4 star restaurant, full sports club and spa, and valet parking service. All wonderful things, but the internet is 10 bucks a day, the bottles of water in the room are 2 dollars each, the gym is 10 dollars a day, and there's no continental breakfast -- all things that are included when you stay at the less expensive place. Can someone please explain to me how a hotel that charges MORE offers LESS complimentary service?

• San Diego is beautiful. The night of my arrival, I took the 5 north to my hotel. Traffic was light, the scent of the ocean was palatable and a beautiful sunset stretched out to my left along the coastline. At the same time, rising from the trees and mist, was the striking San Diego temple.

• While wandering the halls of my employer's main facility (I work in small satellite office in another state), I passed someone straining under the weight of an old-school 17 inch computer monitor. As I turned to look, I realized that it was the company president. I was instantly impressed. How can you not like a company like mine, where everyone pulls their own weight?

• While waiting for my flight home, I sat a row behind a young Marine on his way home from deployment. He was wearing his dress blues. I was thrilled to see so many people come up to him with a smile, to shake his hand and thank him for his service. It is great to see that, even with an unpopular war and an unpopular President, patriotism still runs deep.

San Diego!

Right now I'm in San Diego, and I love it. It's 72 degrees in the day, 60 at night, and I don't have any yard work to do when I here.

I flew in to give a product demo to some higher-ups in the company. What was supposed to be a simple demo between me, my manager, and the program manager morphed into a major event. Other program managers were invited, then the vice president, and then the president -- all for what I hoped would be a low-key, informal demo. For a relatively green employee, this was a daunting assignment -- to sit in a conference room with ALL your superiors to showcase the product that you've been working on for the past few months. To make it slightly more awkward, it's even a product in which I only reluctantly involved myself initially.

So, here I am, in this darkened conference room cast in gray hues by the projector lamp, giving a spiel to all these people, many of whom are twice my age and twice my experience. Everything seems to be going well as a get started, but about 5 minutes in, I look over and see the President, head on his chest, eyes closed. My heart totally skips a beat, and I stumble a little, but soldier on. Everyone else seems pretty interested, with a lot of questions, and even the president asks a few in his moments of alertness, but every once in a while I notice out of the corner of my eye that he seems to have dozed off again.

When it's all over, everyone seems really pleased and surprised that the product has turned out so well and so far under budget. It's actually quite a coup, but I still have mixed feelings because of my narcoleptic supreme leader. My concerns are assuaged, however, when I run into my manager a few hours later, and he explains that, in fact, the Prez falls asleep in nearly every meeting and product demo they do. My sigh of relief was probably audible when I heard that.

I can handle a over-tired company president. At least he's not Ron Burgundy.

Stay classy, San Diego.

Foiled again by air travel...

I've traveled a fair amount for work in the last couple of years. I thought I was pretty savvy. I know how to get through security quickly, when to use the sky cap, where to find the outlets to charge my laptop, when to book flights when they're cheaper, etc. But, today, I was totally flummoxed by our modern air travel system.

My flight left early. Let me say that again... MY FLIGHT LEFT EARLY. When does that ever happen? Like a lot of business travelers, I have the timing down perfect so that I don't waste too much time sitting in the air terminal . But, to have someone just up and decide to leave early, well, that's unheard of! What do you tell your boss when you miss your flight? That they decided the plane was full enough and just decided to go? Yeah, like he/she is ever going to believe that. Luckily, I made my flight anyway. The ticket agent warned me that the plane was leaving early (information that would have been useful YESTERDAY.)

But even though I made my flight, the airline had even more in store for me. My weakness, you see, is that I hate carry-on. Yes, I know it's faster and there's less chance of losing a bag, but it's so nice to be able to just slip into your seat without heaving something into the overhead bin, and then risk getting crushed when you have to pull it out again. And, in all my travels, I have NEVER lost a bag. So, I usually tempt fate and check it, like I did this morning. The problem came when I arrived at the destination and went to the baggage carousel -- and waited, and waited, and waited. There was an announcement over the PA saying that our bags were at a different carousel, so a whole bunch of us stampeded over there to wait some more. Then, bags arrived, but from a totally different flight. It was now nearly an hour since we landed, and I went back to the original carousel. It was then that I noticed all this luggage lined up against the wall, with people from my plane looking scouring for their luggage. So, I did the same. And surprise surprise, I found my luggage! Against the wall, nowhere near either designated carousel.

Was this some kind of cruel arline joke? Or did our luggage somehow leave early, too?

Cankles?

I have a cankle (calf + ankle = cankle). It happened about 1000 yards from the campground at Havasupai. I was 10 miles into a 10.5 mile hike through a canyon on the southern rim of the Grand Canyon with 40 pounds of camping gear on my back, when I took one wrong step and rolled my left ankle. The irony is dizzying. Sometimes I think my cankle is mocking me.



Once your laughter has subsided, check out my album of Havasupai photos. Even considering the cankle, it was one of the most amazing places I have ever been.

He's back!

I made it back from New York and Washington DC late last night. It was an amazing trip, exhausting in so many ways, but so fulfilling in so many others. There are many stories to tell and pictures to post, but I do, unfortunately, have to be back to work tomorrow, so I'll make it a quick one.

The capstone of my trip was the flight home. Normally air travel is just a necessary evil, fraught with turbulence, delays, and bored flight attendants. These are typical of flying, but there is one thing, unequivocally, that every traveler fears, and that is sitting next to a baby or small child. It's even worse than sitting next to an obese person who, by they're very nature, continually overflows into your personal space. (They have the right to travel too, don't they? And aren't we all victims of ever shrinking airplane seats?) At least adults understand that their ears will pop, the plane will bump and jostle occasionally, and disturbing noises will emit from the surroundings. To a baby, it must be like slow torture.

But I digress... As I boarded my flight from Dulles to Denver, I first noticed (once I passed the palace of first class) that I was sitting in the center seat, so I would enjoy neither window nor aisle. And when I got to my row, I actually walked right past it, because, in disbelief, I noticed the window seat adjacent to mine was already occupied by a woman and a baby. As I stowed my carry-on, I honestly muttered something mildly profane under my breath. I wondered what I could have done to anger the travel gods to deserve such a fate. Perhaps this was punishment for never turning off my iPod during takeoffs and landings.

But, believe it or not, I'm a pretty amiable guy, and after about an hour into the flight, with the little guy soundly asleep, I asked the woman how old the the child was. This was the only non-offensive question I could think of, as I was hoping the woman would talk a little bit about herself. Normally, I'm not an in-flight talker (there's nothing worse that being trapped in an enclosed space with someone who won't shut up) but, my curiosity was piqued because the baby was very black and the woman very white, and the woman was traveling alone.

The woman then explained something absolutely remarkable. Less than 24 hours previous, the little guy had been in Ethiopia, where the woman had picked him up from an orphanage and was bringing him back to his adoptive family in the United States. It was at this point that I realized I was sitting next to a miracle, a triumph of humanity -- not only by the social worker and the boy's new parents, but by the child himself -- who survived conditions that would be unimaginable to most of the people in the US.

Staring at the sleeping boy, marveling at his tiny hands, all I could think of was the amazing life he had a ahead of him in his new country. I felt an overpowering sense of hope and pride, knowing that there is so much good in people, and that these parents, who would take in this beautiful baby from overseas, were my countrymen. When I thought of this young boy in the context of all the monuments and memorials I had seen over the past week, I stirred with solemn recognition of the true American spirit that had made this boy's journey possible. Despite whatever discontent and political strife that afflicts us today, it's wonderful to live in a place with that offers such hope.

Eating alone...

Why is it so awkward to eat alone in a restaurant? Not only is it somewhat uncomfortable to ask for a table for one, at some places it means that you're resigned to crappy service or sitting at the bar. Perhaps the worst part is when your server assumes your solitude is involuntary and takes it upon him or herself to be your friend for the evening. No, I promise I'm not lonely, I'm just out here on business, and your in front of the TV during a bowl game.

These vagabond shoes...

I'm in NY right now. It's pretty amazing. As I've contemplated how to chronicle this trip, I was thinking that it should be a culinary journey. Eating is one of those things that all humans do, and it's a very important, if not essential, part of many cultures. (It's really too bad that we invented fast food here in the US.) Anyway, here is a view of my travels, as seen from my stomach....

2 am, Wednesday: A bag of Blue chips (from "real blue potatoes", as the bag proclaims) and two bottles of water, I'm on the JetBlue red-eye from SLC to JFK. The guy to my right was snoring, and the girl on my left kept fidgeting.

6 am, Wednesday: A banana and bottle of water, in the JFK airport near the baggage carousel. I grabbed this quick bite before catching my shuttle. The shuttle itself was a real trip and this 2 dollar banana kept me awake on the hour and half trip through Queens and uptown.

10 am, Wednesday: Not having slept for 10 hours, I was really out of it, so I did something I almost never do, which is to eat at McDonald's. (Yeah, I know, stop booing.) What can I say, McGriddles are strangely good. They are also loaded with carbs, because afterwards, I was able to fall asleep in a very uncomfortable chair in the hotel lobby while lots of people came out of the elevator on their way out.

1 pm, Wednesday: Bagel w/cream cheese and a bottle of Coke, Natural History Museum. I was really enjoying the museum, but I knew I needed to eat. I also knew that I didn't want to waste money on museum cafeteria food. It also had to be quick, because I had a 1:30 showing in the planetarium. I love planetariums. I'll bet the invention of planetariums and LSD were coincidental.

6 p, Wednesday: pepperoni slice at Perfecto Pizzeria, 1 block from our dingy hotel. You can't go to New York with an authentic slice that's so big you have have to fold it in half lengthwise. This would be the first time I noted something quite common in New York: that there is no relation between the ethnicity of the food and the ethnicity of the people serving the food. I know I shouldn't be surprised by this, but it kind of shatters the illusion of a "pizan" flinging dough in the air in the back.

Later Wednesday night: having been awake for 24 hours straight, I pretty much collapsed in a heap in bed, so no dessert tonight

10 am, Thursday: western omelet on a roll, fresh squeezed orange juice at the Sunrise Deli in Times square. I was behind three ladies that ordered "egg white omelets with spinach and tomatoes, but no cheese". These omelets are not the neatly folded things I'm used to at Denny's. Still, not bad. I also found it very interesting that the cashier new immediately that I was out of town, and in contrast to the three ladies, needed him to slow down and lay off the accent a little.

2 pm, Thursday: pizza pretzel, Battery Park. We were on our way back to the subway from taking the ferry out to Liberty and Ellis islands. Both sites were amazing, especially for someone whose family immigrated to the US shortly after WWII. But the pretzel was less impressive ... thankfully I only had a bite of the pretzel. We thought about eating on the island, but the sloshing on the ferry ride back was a little bit of a concern.

4 pm, Thursday: roast beef and roasted peppers on a roll. This was a great sandwich from another deli in times square. I just love that the thinly sliced roast beef is still nice and pink while being piled an inch thick.

8 pm, Thursday: Reese's pieces and half a bag of Twizzler's, the Marquise Theatre in Times Square, before the show. It seemed a little low class to eat something as pedestrian as candy at a Broadway show, but so does drinking wine out of a plastic glass.

11 pm, Thursday: buffalo chicken wings and French onion soup, Junior's at times square. After a great show, I enjoyed a great bowl of soup, with a really potent sourdough/rye crouton on the top. (I'm always on the lookout for a good bowl of onion soup.) The chicken wings were also good, and we had some great NY-style cheesecake to finish things off. At this point, I would like to make a point for all those in Utah. Cheesecake is a relatively SOLID dessert; not a semi-sour pudding-like substance poured into a graham-cracker crust pie tin.

11 am, Friday: Greek omelet, hash-browns and white toast from a bakery down the street. The thought of feta cheese in a breakfast foot was a little disconcerting, but this omelet was actually quite good. Ironically, they didn't have any sourdough toast in the bakery, only white toast. About this time, sleet started to fall, and got more ferocious as we wandered to the natural history museum and then to the Met.

3 pm, Friday: kosher hot dog with mustard and sauerkraut, and a salted pretzel with cheese dip, in Grand Central station. Even mundane state fair food seems more exotic several stories below ground. This high calorie, high fat food was perfect to get us to Rockefeller center through the sleet that now layered the sidewalks.

8 pm, Friday: Crab-cakes, braised lamp shank, and chocolate tort. This was just amazing Italian in the Sicilian style, and only a block from our place. This time the great Italian cuisine was served by very gracious and courteous Indian gentlemen, which is just another example of the food idiosyncrasies in NY. This meal was a great end to another amazing day. We seriously debated ordering into our hotel room to avoid the sleet, but it was completely worth it.