Well-known folk with whom I've ridden planes, and even spoken to: Mike Singletary, Fred Francis, Leslie Visser, Barry Sanders, Senator Alan Simpson, and Louis Farrakhan.
 

Travelling with Ed or on my own for business the last few years, I've been in Brazil, Cedar Rapids, Des Moines, Sioux City, Omaha, Toronto, Ottawa, Quebec, Calgary, Vancouver, New York, Baltimore, Newark, San Francisco, Oakland, Kansas City, Topeka, St. Louis, Los Angeles, Carbondale, Indy,  Minneapolis/St. Paul, Madison WI, La Crosse, Milwaukee, U of I, Detroit, Grand Rapids, Cleveland, Columbus, Cincinatti, Akron, Cape Girardeau, Raytown MO (some famous ballplayer is from there, but I'll be damned if I remember who), Dallas, Houston, San Antonio, Austin, Lexington, Boston, Phoenix, Oklahoma City, Tulsa, and a whole bunch of little noplaces that nobody in their right mind would ever visit. I've been forced to eat things that would make a goat puke. That phrase, "would make a goat puke," is actually put on the menus where Ed comes from. It is meant as a good thing.

THE HEARTLAND

ILLINOIS

Feb 2000: At O'Hare, I'm heading for Ohio once again.  WHY are these people at the next gate still sitting waiting for their ridiculously delayed flight to MILWAUKEE?  Rent a car, you'll be there in well under two hours.  Are they goofy? 
 
 

Because life inherently has no meaning, Ed and I used to fly on puddle-jumpers all the time. These usually bear plates on the side which read something like "Mambo Airways (Express)." The "Express" part usually means it's a plane which the airline doesn't even own, and which must be started with a hand-crank. The name of the airline has been licensed by some rinky-dink carrier operating out of a P.O. box or the back of a van, and their one maintenance guy only works there because his status as a registered sex offender prevents him from working in grade schools, and he thinks a socket wrench is something you change light bulbs with. 

On a 1996 trip through southern Illinois, I kept pestering Ed for the itinerary, which listed our accomodations for the night. He told me, "We're staying at the Marion, in Carbondale."The Marriott, I asked. "No, the Marion," he insisted.  When he finally dug out the itinerary, I found we were staying at the Holiday Inn IN Marion, NEAR Carbondale, next to the federal prison where they're keeping John Gotti and Manuel Noriega. Details, details.

Because we're both based out of Chicago, I keep ending up on flights with Louis Farrahkan. A few years back, he was escorted up to the plane and roughly shoved in front of everybody already in line, by four cohorts in derbies and bowties. He does his best not to make any eye contact with anybody else boarding as he sits in first class. By last spring, '97, his entourage sent roughly a dozen guys ahead, and another horde surrounded him as he moved through the airport. Altogether, there were maybe two dozen guys, plus policemen, making sure he got on the plane. Four times now I've ended up on the same plane. My wife's not pleased. She figures, it increases my chances of getting blown out of the sky, either by one of the many people Louie has pissed off, or by a discriminating Ja. 

OHIO

November 2007: After working most of the week in San Fran, I flew into Cleveland on a Thursday night for a meeting the next day. I stayed at the Sheraton in Independence. It was actually pretty nice, with good service at the desk and in the restaurant. The breakfast buffet, however, was awful, although ex-Browns QB Bernie Kosar was in the banquet room on behalf of some corporation. Wow, he's tall. All the rooms are BROWN. The wallpaper, the carpet, the fixtures. Very drab. The very nice shuttle guy drove me to the Outback Steakhouse for an incredible dinner. Overall, a good experience, for Cleveland.

August 2006: Downtown Columbus could be so cool. Lots of neat littel rehabbed places. But during the week, it's dead as a doornail. Ate at a decent little Italian place around the corner from the Marriott. Service was good, waitress was beautiful, food was average. She directed us to the bar next door for martinis. The Vine. Ed and I were the only straight people in the place. But it was a gas.

April 2000: Once again, Ed's lack of attention to detail has landed me without a reservation. I show up at the Marriott Courtyard in Dublin, Ohio, and am screwed without a room.  Luckily, they get a cancellation, and I end up with a double suite.  What's it cost?  I DON'T CARE.  I get in the side entrance with my room key, and start heading for the lobby, figuring on finding an elevator.  All Courtyards are architected the exact same way, right?  Not quite with this one.  No elevator in the usual place.  I pass a sign pointing to an elevator, back the way I came.  So I start heading back, thinking I've passed it.  I walk and I walk, and still no f______g elevator.  So I go  back the OTHER way again.  The bartender tells me, the elevator's WAY the hell the other end of the loop. You have to walk clear the frigging hell to the other end of the hotel to get an elevator, so you can then walk all the way the hell back on the second floor.  Who the goddamn hell thought of THAT?
 

Late January 2000, we pop into Columbus OH for an all-day presentation to a bunch of bank execs, then hop in the rental, and we drive to Indy, to swap the car for a van, which we're planning on filling with computer equipment we're picking up.  Alamo is the only outfit that's got a van available.  It's about 3 degrees Farenheit.  They insist on vacuuming and washing the van before they give it to us.  I recommend that this is a bad idea, given the weather,  but they insist.  The very second the van emerges from the car wash, it turns into a block of ice.  We end up right there and then having to scrape the ice from the windshield, the back window, and the side mirrors.  Brilliant, just brilliant.

The next morning, we drive to the middle of nowhere, central Indiana, to do another call.  On the way, we're obliged to pass through the town of Gnaw Bone.  Ed reminds me, "I told you that I'd show you the world."
 
 

In winter of early '97, Ed and I ended up at an ISP in a bad part of Cleveland. There were dealers in parkas on every corner, and here we were in suits, carrying laptops. It was getting dark. The ISP's offices were in a half-rehabbed building which emptied out by the time we got there. While we were inside, somebody started yanking on the knob. The door was smoky glass, so we could only make out a silhouette. Our host told us, "Just give it a minute, they'll go away."  Late in '96, a partner took us to the Great Lakes Brewery, which is in a historic building in a very bad neighborhood. We asked the hookers down the street how to find the place when we got lost. Eliot Ness worked in that building after leaving Chicago. The cellar is like a dungeon, it's really neat, they have a lot of their own beers, and the mirror behind the bar is amazing. On that trip, we stayed at the Harley Hotel, named fr leona Helmsley's kid. The bartender got very friendly, and actually invited herself to my room for later. I passed, not wanting to risk the wrath of God OR my wife. The buddy who was with me at the bar practially dragged me away, and to this day he thinks he saved me from cheating on my wife.  In Summer '94, Ed sent me to Cleveland to train somebody. He arranged for me to stay in a Ramada by the airport. As I walked up, the cops were pulling somebody out of the attached sports bar in cuffs. The lobby was dingy, with stained carpet and an old smell. The rooms were grimy and itchy. Outside my window was a blinking neon light advertising XXX porn videos and magazines. I called Ed to thank him for the accommodations. If you're ever in Cleveland, skip the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame; it's a joke. The Flats are a blast. I also highly recommend the Great Lakes Brewery. The food is excellent, and they cook up some of their own very good beers. The place is really old, the bar has great character. The neighborhood is the pits. You can't have everything. Waiting to get home from there one night, a man with a shaved head asked me if first class had boarded already. It was Mike Singletary. Got an autograph.

Jacobs Field, Cleveland

Spring '99, we were in Cuyahoga Falls, Ohio. We stayed at the Starwood, on the Cuyahoga River. Ed had one of those Starwood membership cards; he flashed it, and they gave him a first floor room peering out at the parking lot. I got a huuuuuge suite overlooking the river, waterfalls and all. I bent the window frame a little so I could open it all the way, and the sound of the river rushing by put me to sleep.

Summer '97 we were in Warren, Ohio. We asked the locals, at the Avalon resort, at the fast food place, at the customer site, at the Lone Star steak joint, what Warren is known for. They all replied, "Drugs." When we stopped to ask directions at the gas station, the cashier had stencilled across his knuckles, in homemade tattoo fashion, "K I L L" .

At the Avalon, the computer was down, so the desk guy had a quickly-growing crowd in the lobby. He didn't know how to check anybody in without the computer. The joys of technology. Ed walked me down to the bar for a couple of vodka martinis.  I've been hooked ever since.

Ed's actually very good to me. Summer '95,  on a trip to Appleton, Wisconsin, I mentioned that I'd always wanted to stop at the Houdini museum in town, and darn if he didn't get directions there and take me. That was five companies and five years ago. My wife feeds him and my kids ask him to read books whenever he visits. In '97, he took me to see where the Cowboys play. We'd been by it many times before, and never stopped. We went into the gift shop, and Ed bought me a commemorative Michael Irvin crack vial. He's such a guy.

IOWA
 

These are some giant plastic cows outside some official-looking building in Des Moines. Being from Indiana, Ed thought it was some sort of dating service establishment, but I convinced him it was agricultural in nature. He replied, "And your point is ... ?"  While visiting a customer on the wrong side of Des Moines, also known as White Trashistan, our rental car was nailed by a paintball. We were wearing suits. I felt out of place.

Growing up in a Catholic school, I often heard tales of the nuns' retirement home in Iowa. We wrote letters and made finger-paintings for the retired nuns out there. We heard of it constantly. I came to think of Iowa as a nuns' graveyard. Much like the elephants in a Tarzan movie, nuns who knew their time had come would just trudge out over the landscape to Iowa, and if you knew where to look, you'd find a secret Iowa valley where the bones of nuns were strewn all over, sticking out of the ground, some of them dating back centuries. 

KANSAS

Summer '88, I walked into a big, beautiful hotel lobby in Kansas City to work with a nurses' association. I walked in very late, very tired. I saw two nutcases standing in the lobby, in leather boots, leather jackets, and leather pants. Trying too hard, I figured. It was 11:30 pm and still 80 degrees out. Then I realized one of the guys was Paul Stanley of Kiss. I was never a fan, but I actually had seen them in'74, with friends. I told him this, and he told me I made him feel old. I also told him it was too warm for leather. He laughed and gave me an autograph. And then he probably went out and got laid.
 
 

After a meeting on the southern-most end of Kansas City, for which we'd come in separate rental cars because we'd flown in from different cities, Ed and I disagreed on the best route back to the airport. I take the expressway which circles the city, while Ed prefers going straight through town. I fairly flew, averaging eighty, encountered little traffic, and made great time. I also pulled in half a minute behind Ed, who, while in transit, had changed from his suit into shorts and a tee shirt. This is a man who veers off the road if he's on the cel phone while driving. 

INDIANA
 

March 2000:  On my way to Indianapolis on business, and also to catch the last home game of the season for Indiana University (vs. Purdue!).  At O'Hare on Tuesday afternoon, and the line for the metal detector gets held up by some fiftyish guy who walks through the detector WHILE TALKING ON HIS CELL PHONE !!!  Several of us give him all sorts of crap.  THEN he's too stupid to interrupt his conversation to back out of the detector so the rest of us can get through, so I grab his sleeve and yank him out of the way.
 

While hanging out at a hotel bar in Indianapolis, we watched the Pacers get robbed by bad officiating and the New York Knicks. Particularly galling to the locals was the complete and utter non-call on Patrick Ewing, waltzing several yards without dribbling, on his way to the basket with the game-winner. This had followed another non-call on Starks, who likewise had done a hop-skip-and-jump without drawing a whistle. The next day, some local DJ's concocted a song to the tune of "The Hokey-Pokey" : 

You put your right foot out
you move your left foot with the ball
you never bother dribbling
and the refs don't make the call
you do the Patrick Ewing and you travel all around
and that's how we lost the game.

If they hadn't been Hoosiers, I'd have sympathized. 
 

On a '96 flight from Ft. Wayne to Chicago, on an American turbo-prop, Ed mentioned that, if nothing else, we were getting to see the world. "Ft. Wayne is the world?" I asked. I also pointed out that we were seeing the world from a plane with propellors on it.

Ed was going through his Wall Street Journal and pointed out two articles, both on the same page. One involved a giant telecommunications company, which happens to be a customer, going through a merger. The other involved a large financial institution, also a customer, swallowing up an insurance company. Ed observed, "Look, two major stories in the Journal, and we're involved with both."

"Yes," I agreed, "and somehow we're still on a plane with propellors. And if this plane goes down, both mergers will still happen. And we'll both be greasy stains on the cold Indiana landscape."

At least I have someone to leave my life insurance to. Ed's will go toward the guy who tried to fix his transmission.

Why is it half the chicks in the strip joints in Ft. Wayne are bigger than the bouncers? Have they all caught Iowa hip disease? Are they corn-fed? Will they still let me in after posting this? Of course they will, my quarters are as good as anyone else's.
 
 
 

The Wretched Eastern Seaboard

The city of Boston is poorly named.  It should be labelled The Hellhole of Boston.   NBC News recently featured the massive road project there in the Fleecing of America segment.  Locals call it the Ted Kennedy Full Employment Act.  Every square inch of space in and around town is torn to shreds, there are temporary bridges everywhere, and if you take the wrong exit, you are screwed for hours; you won't recover easily.  They want to put all the roads underground, even though they've already got a tunnel they barely use.  We have construction in Chicago too, but individual projects don't take an entire decade.  In April 2000, a massive audit determined that the guys running the Boston Big Dig should be canned. 

Starting in mid-99, I stopped using Logan, and started flying into either Providence RI or Manchester NH.  Providence is a pain to drive back into, but fine to get out of.  Manchester is further than Logan, but it's a straight shot, and there's never traffic.

August 2007, UA 532 O'Hare to Logan. I have rarely seen such a collection of boobs while boarding. I get on early, with my status, and two women, one with a baby, take their sweet frigging time rearranging their stuff. When they’re finally done, they literally stand in the aisle chatting. Holy shit, there’s people all lined up behind them, and they’re oblivious. I made a face at the idiot guy flight attendant, who finally asked them, “Ladies, could you let people through?” They finally moved into their seats. The very next guy, middle-aged, puts his bag up, then takes it down, takes stuff out of it, puts stuff into it, then takes off his jacket nice and slow, folds it nice and slow, and the goddamn idiot flight attendant just stands there. So I said, “Hey pal, we’ve got about two hundred people to board yet.” When he gave me the Look, I just barged past him, forcing him to move over, and then he was trapped by the rest of the unhappy people following me. At row 12, where I had the window, the guy already sitting in the aisle seat had his seat belt fastened and his tray down with shit on it, as if nobody else was going to get on the f____g plane. He seemed rather grumpy about undoing all the shit he’d done too damn early. Then a woman an aisle back, very small, struggled to get her too-large bag into the overhead. She refused several offers of help, but couldn’t get the damn thing up, and continued to hold up the rest of the process. If I hadn’t been trapped by this huge guy in my row, I would have forcibly helped her. Finally, somebody just grabbed it, while she protested, and heaved it up there. The universe is full of retards.
 

November 2005: After deftly avoiding this area for almost two years, I'm stuck here once again, doing a two-day gig in Newton. I get off Rt. 128, looking for Kendrick Street. I get to the intersection, which is pretty damn big considering two four-lane roads meet there, and NO STREET SIGNS. Nothing at all to tell you if you're at your street or not. I take a wild ass guess and go left anyway, and find out a couple of blocks down that I am indeed on the right street. Then the next two streets are ALSO unmarked. This chowder-eating donkey-faces don't want you to know where you're at or where you're going. On the plus side, I stayed at the Newton Marriott, which was wonderful, if packed. My fourth-floor room overlooked the Charles River. The gift shop keeps some excellently long hours, if you need a snack, and the food and service in the restaurant was good. Had dinner with an old friend in downtown Waltham, at a place called The Elephant Walk (formerly Carambola), a great little French-Cambodian place. Ate too much, all of it good. The third day there, visited UMass, and dodged a lot of beautiful coeds before our meeting. Oh, yeah, I did  this one with Ed.
 
 

April 2000, once again I fit the profile for an evildoer.  At Logan, about to head out for Baltimore, my bag is randomly selected to be swabbed for cocaine samples.  All they find are bits of Oreos.  Maybe it's the jean jacket and two days' beard, but my large bag is ALSO randomly selected, how convenient, for an EXACT BAG MATCH tag from US Airways.  They want to make sure I travel on the same plane as my bag.   I'm wearing a wedding ring and a Pillsbury Doughboy hat, do I  look  that frigging dangerous? 

The interesting part was riding a plane with Fred Francis of NBC News.  He said he was surprised anybody recognized him, and that I must watch a lot of news (I do).  We traded stories about Louis Farrakhan, since we've both flown with him.  Fred was pretty cool. 

Once in Baltimore, I met up with Ed and we got on 95 South to head for the meeting in Delaware.  I yanked out the map, and said, "Ed, this has got to be wrong."  He had me pull his laptop out of the bag and check the directions.  Sure enough, 95 South was correct, IF you were going to the meeting from the Philadelphia airport.  He apparently missed that part.  We turned around. 
 

August 2002, I came in Manchester NH and attempted to go back home out of Logan, after searing the place off completely.  A ground stop keeps us, well, grounded.  Weather in Chicago is supposedly great, but one of our VPs, who had moved out to Boston then gleefully moved right back to Chicago, says that Logan always has stops on Fridays, because they're a bottleneck and can't handle the traffic, and they always blame the weather in the midwest. 
 
 

July '97, our company took us to a Red Sox game at Fenway. We sat just next to the Green Monster, while Jose Canseco struck out like a doofus, and the A's lost in humiliating fashion. Great place to see a game.  July '99, two years and two companies later, we went to another Red Sox game, just a week after Fenway hosted the All-Star game. They beat the Marlins. In August '97, Ed got us great seats just behind home plate at the Skydome. We saw the Blue Jays beat the Twins, with a homer in the ninth. Joe Carter hit his 200th homer as a Jay. The girl who sang both national anthems did a wonderful job, unlike the boneheads who usually get pegged for duty at the Super-Bowls.

We checked into the Westin in Waltham, Mass, (Oct. 98) at 9 PM on a Wednesday night. They had one guy checking people in. The line quickly grew to over a dozen. They finally got another guy from the back room to help. They both had to also take phone calls. Later, in the bar, the large woman tending bar was too busy bullshitting with some yuppie dufus to take an order. We literally stood up and yelled "Hello?" In the morning, the cab we ordered didn't come for half an hour. Management needs to be informed. Or beaten. 

Check out this pic I snapped from my Westin hotel room.

March 2002: Got to Providence airport at 6 AM on a Friday, and the security line was all the way to the door.  But it MOVED.  I got through the entire line in less than twenty minutes, and that included being wanded, searched, etc.  They were thorough, but they were efficient.  That airport should be the model for everybody else.

January 2002: The Westin put me on the second floor over the bar.  A bunch of drunks from my own company stayed too late and made too much noise.  I went out of the room, leaned over the balcony, and yelled at them to shut the hell up.  Then I called the front desk, told them find me another room (moved to seven), and clear the drunks from the bar.
 

Spring '99, I stayed at the Home Suites Inn in Waltham MA.  I awakened to a crunching sort of noise, around 6 AM.  I thought it was the ice machine run amok.  I looked in the hallway, and there's a maintenance guy watching the ceiling, and he calmly said to me, "Electrical fire."  Sure enough, there was smoke and a sickening stench.  He was just standing there.  I said, "I'll call for help," since he was too obviously enthralled with the pyrotechnics to bother alerting anyone.  Before I even reached the phone, the alarm went off on its own.  I packed what I could, then ventured back into the hall, stepping around the bits of flaming ceiling tile falling to the carpet, and  stood in the rain in the parking lot, then ended up at the Suisse Chalet across the street while the firemen took care of business.  A little after 7 AM, we were allowed  back in to gather our belongings.
 

April '99 I checked into the Wyndham Gardens in Waltham MA. Same week as the Boston Marathon. A gaggle of college chicks in sorority tee shirts stood between me and the check-in desk. They were practicing smoking. I was very loud in proclaiming, "Nothing is sexier than a young chick lighting up." They got out of the way. 

New Yawk

Winter '88-89, I ventured a couple of times to New York City to consult. Cold as hell, and people living in cardboard boxes. Times Square was Sodom. The garment district was a gas, and I loved the pawn shops. But the place was rude and dirty. LaGuardia was frightening, and when I got stuck there one night, and they kicked us out, it was $125 to stay at a Holiday Inn for six hours. Otherwise, it was $250 a night (and that's over a decade ago) at one of the decent places downtown, and even thirty floors up, you hear the traffic in the morning like it was right outside your window. 

Fall '95, I take a couple of trips there to work at a software joint owned by Norman Lear's daughter and son-in-law. It's in a brownstone they claim is haunted. I stayed in a little bungalow-cum-hotel called The Franklin. Teensy room, but classy. Really dug it. 

December '96, Ed and I worked Internet World at the Jacob Javits Center. The show was gargantuan. New York was a blast. We ate one night at a good-food/lousy-service oyster bar two blocks from the Ed Sullivan Theater. Then we walked around Times Square. It had been massively cleaned up from when I'd been there in '87-88.

December 2003, stayed at the Marriott a block from the Ed Sullivan Theater. Nice place, just a short hike to Times Square. We got dragged to a club where I got to be totally obnoxious to the yuppie bastards there. We bought drinks for this hilarious gay guy. Got taken to an ancient dive restaurant in Little Italy, where "The Italian Elvis" performed for us. The food was wretched, and one of our crew got sick on their homemade wine, but the entertainment was wonderfully cheesy, and Elvis passed a basket for tips.

Spring 2004, stayed at the Marriott Marquis. I would never, ever, ever recommend this place. The service is good, the restaurants inside are good, the location is perfect. BUT ..... the elevator situation is a disaster. You can wait for literally twenty minutes to get an elevator. And if you're there during an event (and this time we were there for some Catholic/Greek Orthodox soiree), you get huge crowds that back up, waiting for an elevator, and then you end up with packed elevators because nobody wants to wait for the next one. We wasted, no kidding, over an hour each day waiting on elevators. Out in the morning, back in the afternoon, then out for dinner, then back again.
 

Too many times to New York, I had to go through Newark. Awful airport. 

Our Nation's Capital

Other than the beautiful picture I snapped leaving DC one morning (after being stuck for the night), I've had some awful business trips there, starting in 1988. Crackheads shouting at nothing, dealers in parkas hanging out in doorways directly after rush hour, the hotel doorman telling me not to venture out at night (TWO BLOCKS from the White House), terrible traffic, garbage piled up, streets gone to hell, you name it. I took my future wife back there just so she could see the nation's capital, and we had a good time, but she got to see firsthand the goofy stuff I told her about. 

Winter 2004. Flew into Dulles to do some biz, then grabbed a United shuttle to Houston. Very, very late. Kept getting different stories as to WHY we were delayed. Then neither bathroom worked on this little shit plane going most of the way across the country. It was brutal. Never again. Then we got to Houston, and the baggage carousel was busted. A shit end to a shit trip.

October 2003, came out of our hotel to head to the CSI show, and there were Secret Service guys swarming all over. "Getting ready for somebody coming in?" I asked. They don't even give you facial expressions in return. Ate at some really old joint in Georgetown, can't recall the name.
 

April 2006: Traveled to McLean, VA for a few days to do some consulting. I really hate Dulles airport. Too large. 

Stayed at the Marriott on Leesburg Pike, in Vienna. In the little dive bar off the lobby, it took me several minutes to attract the attention of the barmaid,who was too busy chatting with buddies to actually serve customers. After ten minutes, I actually managed to order a beer and get a menu. Several more minutes went by before I got that beer and ordered a burger. When it was time for another beer, she was still too busy chatting and laughing like a hyena. After 25 more minutes, I had to go to the bar from my little table, which was only five feet away, to get her attention again and ask about my dinner and a second beer. That was when she asked me if I had ordered the Marriott burger or some other kind of burger. It became apparent that she hadn't entered my order the first time, and I had waited almost a half-hour for no good reason. So I left two bucks under the ashtray and walked across the lobby to the Shula's steakhouse. 

I know from previous experience with Shula's joints that they ain't cheap. But what the hell, somebody else is paying. Got an incredible steak, great service, fantastic soup, and they let you smoke cigars at the bar. I usually won't anyway, but the only other guy at the bar asked me if it was okay for him to light one up, so away we go.

The manager of the dive bar came into Shula's for something, and asked me, what the hell. I told him to fire the chick in there, and he apologized for the crappy service. I apologized as well, but said that was no way to run a place.

July 2006: I have now been in DC five times in four months. Last time, everything was WONDERFUL. They screwed up my room at the Marriott, so they put me on club level, without having to pay club level price. The food and service there are great. I was on a 10 pm United flight home, but what the hell, took an early cab, thought I'd go standby, and got put in business class for no extra dough. Fantastic meal, video, back roller built into the seat, tons of legroom, and got home early. But THIS time, forget it. Flight was delayed when some ding-dong decided she wasn't sure she wanted to board. The captain announced to everybody he was trying to calm her down. I thought, great, she'll freak out at 30,000 feet. But she finally begged off. That meant delaying further while they fished her bags off. Then my damn cab driver, with black turban and long beard, got lost. Three times. I kept saying, "turn here," and he wouldn't, and we'd get farther from my destination.  He finally turned off his meter and told me to pay him "whatever." I spotted my hotel (the Sheraton Premier) and told him to dump me there instead of the office. Between the flight and the cab, I was two hours late and starving. So I ate lunch (a great Cobb salad) and grabbed a cab. It wasn't really a cab, it's just some guy named Mohammed with a town car and no meter, but he's really cool. He took me to the office the next day as well.

The Sheraton's a nice place, but they can't seem to figure out where their shuttle goes. It could pick me up from the office the first night, but they told me the next morning that the office was now too far. Other people kinda ran into that as well. I ended up at club level there as well. Deathly quiet, very nice, but the club itself had crappy food. You also CAN'T WALK TO A DAMN THING. From the Marriott, there's all sorts of stuff within walking distance, but at the Sheraton, you're surrounded by nothing but car dealerships. That sucks.

The flight home got massively delayed by weather. I guess this crappy trip made up for the last great trip.

The Dusty West

Not a bad one

February 2007, flew to Houston for a couple of meetings, just in time for Chicago to get SOCKED with snow. Stayed at the Marriott Courtyard on Westpark. Nice enough place. Ate an incredible dinner at the Houston’s, which is a chain. Good service, good food. Hardly any beer selection, however. They introduced me to Harold’s Spring Bok, which was good.  The next morning, we had lousy service at Le Peep. Passed the former Enron Stadium, which is now Minute Maid Park.
 
 

TOO WET TO BURN

September 2002: The company sent me and a whole bunch of other geeks to Seattle for a week.  Used some miles to upgrade to first class in both directions, just wonderful.  Stayed at the Hyatt on 108th in Bellevue.  Nice place.  Breakfast service was a little crappy, but the food is good.  Woke up in the morning and saw Mount Rainier.  Had dinner at the local manager's house one night, on a lake across from the Olympic mountain range.  Beautiful sunsets out there.  Ate at Matt's Authentic Chicago Style Dogs.  Had a chili dog.  Fantastic.  But it really is cloudy out there a lot, it rains a lot, and there are Starbucks EVERYWHERE.  No shit, looking out the window at the office building we worked at, you can see two of them, and another is right around the corner. 
 

LOOK, SON, IT'S A GUSHER

January 2006: Went to visit a gummint agency, on a huuuuuuge campus, just outside Oklahoma City. Stayed at the Marriott Courtyard just outside the airport grounds. Ate at the Bennigan's. Had to wait forever to get security clearance, and amazingly enough, they gave it to me. They must do crappy background checks. The coooool thing about the trip was, ran into Barry Sanders, the Hall of Fame running back, in the OKC airport on the way outta town. He was a very nice guy. Gave me his autograph. I helped him get his oversized bag out of the overhead bin when we landed in Chicago. Very few people recognized him. 

July 2001, I'm in Tulsa.  The Double Tree on Yale is pretty nice.  The salesguy takes me to an okay restaurant called The Skupper.  Good service, decent food, neat decor based on all the oil companies that have done business in Oklahoma during the past century.  The highways are easy to figure out.   Great museum with a wonderful collection of Western art. 

The salesguy drove me to Bartlesville, an hour north of Tulsa, for our second day's appointments.  We stopped at Woolaroc, formerly the hangout ranch of Frank Phillips (of Phillips Petroleum fame and fortune), now a wildlife refuge and museum.  The museum has an amazing collection of western art, and the grounds are very nice.  The country around there is also great to look at.  Got da wife a refrigerator magnet.  I'm such a guy.  Had a very good BBQ beef sandwich at the Radisson across from the Tulsa airport.  Everybody there is very friendly.  Oklahomans in general are very friendly. November 2005 update: Went back to Woolaroc with da wife. Had a fantastic time, saw even more of the back portion of the place, thousands of acres. I highly recommend it.

May 2002:  I stopped in Dallas to see a humongous company, then pop over to Tulsa, so I could drive a little ways over the Arkansas border for a meeting.  In Springdale, me and the sales guy stopped at a little dive bar called the Blackhawk Lounge.  He bought me a tee shirt with the bar's name on it.  Seriously, it's a dive, but very quaint.  A bit further up the road, we stopped at Mary Maestri's Italian restaurant.  The service was great, the bread was very good, the spaghetti with meat balls was average.  But very nice people.  A little provincial.  When the salesguy asked the waitress if they had cannoli, she replied, "No, but we have port or cognac."  Which prompted me to ask, "Hmm, I really could use a glass of cannoli." I took a great sunset picture next to the place.
 
 

FRUITS AND NUTS

November 2007: Flew in on a Sunday night to work the gigantic Oracle Openworld Show at the Moscone Center in San Fran. Stayed at the Courtyard downtown on Second Street. Three days of standing for hours at a time, giving software demos to nitwits. Had a pretty good dinner, with so-so service, Monday night at the Thirsty Bear. Good looking waitresses you couldn't find with a geiger counter. The next night was even better food at Rickenbacker's, a block from the hotel. Antique motorcycles hanging everywhere. I love that joint, have eaten there several times over the years, the last time when I was in town to install and demonstrate some software at eWeek's labs (for which we got a great review, I might add). Three of us hit the Metreon afterwards, which is kind of a mall with some nifty stores. Had a passable lunch at the Chevy's, right by the Moscone. By the weirdest freaking coincidence, one of my company's two booths was located next to the booth run by a buddy's company. It had a week earlier been sold for many millions. Working the booth was the poor marketing chick who'd been on board for two weeks beforet he purchase. She hadn't gotten her stock options yet, and as such, probably did not get the great stock price they'd offered her, and likely got stuck with the buy price. 
       After working my third full day on Wednesday, I flew home on a 6 pm, poured myself in my front door by 1 am, then 12 hours later flew to Cleveland, and finally got home Friday night. Loooooooong week.
 

Summer 2007: With fairly little notice, I got asked to attend the Burton Group’s Catalyst show in San Fran. Pain in the ass, since we were about to close on a house. So I grabbed the early flight outta O’Hare on Monday morning. Da wife graciously packed me some Uncrustables, which are these fantastic pre-made frozen PBJ sandwiches we learned to love in the Red Carpet Club at the Denver airport years ago. I’ve used all my upgrades lately, so I had to travel toward the middle of the plane with the great unwashed masses. The flight was smooth and perfect. Ed  picked me up at the airport, then we headed an hour-plus northwest of the city to do a presentation at a large university. It’s hilly and nice, and it was hotter than hell. Then back to the city, where by dusk it was cold and windy. I stayed at the Marriott Renaissance at the corner of California and Powell, at the top of the f____g hill. I couldn’t get a cab from Ed’s hotel, the Marquis, to save my life, and I had my computer and luggage with wheels. Quite a struggle. The Renaissance is NOT well-marked, to say the least. They do not want you to identify it as the Marriott, that’s for sure. Their goddamn website won’t even give you their address; you have to get it off Switchboard or something else.

My fifth floor room was beautiful. After a nap that first afternoon, I hit Powell Street and found the Maru, a great Japanese place. Service was instantaneous. I hadn’t been in the place a whole minute, and I had miso soup, a hot towel, and green tea in front of me. Then came the sake (salmon) and dragon roll. Big fat Sapporo as well. Then Ed called me up, having finally woke up himself. I met up with him, and took him right back to the Maru. He insisted I have a second dinner with him. I stuffed myself silly yet again. Then we hit some bar for a night cap, before returning to our respective hotels. The top of the hill is pitch freaking black at 11 pm, but as da wife says, the people who have to worry are the ones who run into ME.

Coming out the front of the hotel, I look left, and there’s Grace Cathedral, which is huge and must be seen to be believed. At the corner to the right, you have a great view of the Transamerica Building, which is very unique. Hang a right down California Street, down the hill, and there's Chinatown. The Bank of America building has an indescribable view. 

Lots of gay couples wandering around. How can you tell? How can you NOT? Lots of homeless folks too. I gave a couple of bucks to a very old man in a wheelchair. But the crackheads and drunks are another story. One guy maybe my age, with a wild beard and holding a small bottle, was waving his arms up and down at the bottom of the hill (Powell). One leg was all wet; he’d pissed himself. Even the cops didn’t wanna grab him, since he was disgusting. One dumbass gay guy had a shirt with the words “FUCK YOUR POWER TRIP” on the back. There you go, insult the ninety-nine percent of the population who otherwise have no problem with you, asshole. 

The building I work out of in San Fran is right by the Federal Reserve, near the water. There’s a farmer’s market every Tuesday and Saturday that da wife would love. There’s also lots of tables where local merchants hawk their little junk. I’ve picked up earrings for da wife and kids there before, and this time I did the same.

Ate the second night at the Roxanne Café, a seat at the bar. The server seemed initially confused by the beer tap, but finally got it together, Excellent teriyaki skirt steak, with mashed potatoes and steamed veggies. Then I hit the Scala Bistro inside the Francis Drake Hotel. Kinda lousy Irish coffee, and a pretty lousy Bostini Cream Pie.

The trade show itself was fun, saw lots of people I know from past lives, schmoozed a lot, and early the next morning I caught a limo to the airport, courtesy of RV Limousine Service. They take plastic!!!!  Flight was on time, got home, did final walkthrough on the house, and we bought it the next morning. 
 

May-June 2007. UAL 831 Chicago to San Fran. Got an upgrade to biz class, with breakfast. REAL damn nasty bumpy ride over Iowa. Otherwise pretty good. Just missed getting on the earlier fliight at 7:10 am. Oh well. Missed the earlier flight home, the 6 pm on Friday night, had to settle for the 11-freaking-PM. Ouch. At least I got to upgrade again for the ride home. While I waited HOURS at SFO, I ate at the Yankee Pier in Terminal 3. Good food, good service. Not cheap, but very good. In between, stayed at the Marriott on Amphlett in San Mateo. Screwy-ass set-up, difficult to figure out the map of the place. When I went to check out, they had the hallway sealed off in both directions for painting. The workers seemed annoyed that a handful of us actually wanted to reach the elevator. I said to them, sorry boys, we didn't feel like going out the window. 

When I landed, I grabbed the BART to downtown San Fran. Easy, cheap, althogh the cars seem old and shitty. Of course, they get a lot of use. 
 

September 2006: Another jaunt to San Francisco. Stayed at the very nice JW Marriott. Actually took a cab to the wrong Marriott, which is also a very nice place, and had to cab it to the correct one. Got put on the concierge floor, and the concierge lounge has decent eats in the morning. Got in around 10 pm, and I was hungry, so I toddled down the street and found Lori's Diner, which was pretty damn good. But I had to run the gauntlet of crackheads and beggars. I've many times given spare cash to folks on the street, but when they come up to me in a state of drunkenness or they're just plain high, forget it. Cuz I've also had street people go a little nuts on me, even after I've given them money. 

Second night there, hit the Sushi Boat restaurant with Ed. Nice folks. Food was okay. Service was awful. Had to remind them multiple times that I hadn't gotten everything I'd ordered. "Hello, still waiting on my kappa maki." Over and over. Ed waited probably fifteen minutes on the spicy roll he ordered. Cute waitresses. Not real good at their jobs, but cute. We literally spent twice as much time in there as we needed to. From there, off to a local piano bar, O'Doul's. The piano player was great. Bartender was cute and efficient. Talked to a young alcoholic plumber who had an apartment on Derby, so he told me. Walked in drunk, walked out drunker.

Back to the JW Marriott afterwards. Older Asian lady bartender. Fantastic at HER job. Had the Devil's Food cake dessert and an Irish coffee. Outstanding. The following night I walked around to have a cigar, and saw a guy younger than me, wearing a cowboy hat, digging in a garbage can. At first I thought he was looking for stuff to recycle, but then I realized he was pulling out drink cups that people had dumped, and was emptying the contents into his own cup. So he emptied the dregs of somebody else's Coke, and some other things. Yuck.

Now I'm practicing a Powerpoint presentation for tomorrow morning. Can't believe people pay me to DO this shit.

Ate at an excellent hole in the wall Italian joint, Fino, on Post Street. Great food and service. A little later, I had beers at the Owl Tree, a really quaint little watering hole across the street from Fino. The pretty cool old guy tending bar was busy scolding an older patron who had ordered black coffee with sugar, and was saying he was going home later to smoke a joint to help him sleep. "You're ordering black coffee, and THEN you're gonna go home and smoke pot?"  It was hilarious.
 

April 2006: Out in the Oakland suburbs for a company kickoff. The boss sprang for a private suite at Oakland (McAfee) Coliseum for opening day. Watched the Yankees destroy the Athletics, 15-2. Got some great pictures of the game and the sunset. My man Frank Thomas, formerly of the White Sox, hit a dinger. Met my sister and her kids at McCovey's in Walnut Creek. Ate at the Hana sushi restaurant in Danville. Had a lousy meal last time there, but a great one this time.

February 2004: At the Moscone Center in San Fran for the RSA Security Show. The presentations are pretty cool. Some great-looking booth bunnies. Met an old friend and his wife at Rosie O'Grady's, and then he and I got a great dinner on the bay. The bartender squeezes his own fruit to make foo-foo drinks, including my Tequila Sunrise. He used to be editor at a high-tech magazine, and now he edits drinks.

February 2005: Bacak in San Fran at the Moscone once again, for the RSA show, again. Got in early the first night, to take my sister and her family to a great sushi joint in Fisherman's Wharf. It's too damn far to the show, but Ed got us cheap accommodations, so he have to hike it each day. Went into a crumbling old bar in the Wharf one night, and saw this wild old guy playing classic rock, even Yes, solo on guitar. .He was amazing.

There's a great sushi place in the Metreon across the street from Moscone. Walked around downtown, saw hordes of flaming gay shoppers, in groups. We were walking past a guy who looked like he was praying to Mecca, on his hands and knees, getting up and down. As we passed him, he suddenly sat up and let out a yell. He had a screwdriver in his hand. I pushed Ed and his chick along, and backed away, in case I had to kick him in the face.
       We were outside a restaurant where we'd just had a late dinner, and a tall, incredible looking blond came our way. As she stepped into the light, we realized it was an It.  Oops.  I blame the lighting.
 

May '99, Ed and I have spent the last couple days in or around Oakland and San Francisco. Got to meet up with my sister in Pleasanton. Ed and I drove around this afternoon through San Mateo, looking at multi-million dollar homes surrounded by hills and greenery. It was surreal. One good pre-IPO slot, that's all I need. Not that I'd live in this rathole. Too much congestion, too many loonies, too many guns, and gas is over two bucks a gallon in some places. 

September '99, San Francisco.  I've been here a few times before.  This time we went to Chinatown.  What a gas.  Visited an old buddy who's got a house on Nob Hill.  From his roof, you can see the Golden Gate, Alcatraz, and much of downtown.  Beautiful, starry night, with the fog starting to roll in, like clouds in a painting.  Unbelievable.  He says he likes living on the hill because the junkies and whores are in such bad shape, they won't come up the hill, it's too much work.

While in town, we ate at what is reputedly the oldest sushi house in San Fran.  From there we walked to the Castro, which is the fruitiest area of the city.  Leather boys walking hand in hand everywhere.  As I waltzed through the place with three pals, I muttered to them, "If anybody gets friendly with me, I'm telling them I'm your bitch."

Also visited the Cafe Du Nord, an old bar in the basement of an old building.  The decor and the fixtures are all antique.   It's kind of a dive, but a very classy dive.  My sister also highly recommends it.

The Marriott downtown on 4th Street is strategically located, and the breakfast buffet there is just about the best of any hotel I've ever stayed at.  I've never gone back for thirds at any breakfast buffet.  Four of us ate for 45 minutes.

I still can't figure out the San Fran airport.  Why are the rental cars SO DAMN FAR from the terminals?  You have to allow fifteen extra minutes when returning a car, twenty or more if it's rush hour. You ride a shuttle for a helluva long time between the locations.  But at least this trip they gave us a Chrysler LeBaron convertible.  Great car for cruising the bridges, looking at chicks, and crying over lost bachelorhood.
 
 

Bush Country

May 2006: Flew to Austin for a three-day gig. LOVE that town. Stayed at the very nice, very old Driskill Hotel. Supposedly haunted. But the food, service, rooms, decor, ambience, EVERYTHING is great. Half a block away, I had a serviceable New York strip at Riley's Irish Pub, and listened to some wretched singer-guitarists on open mike night. But it was entertaining. Good service. Across the street, I shot pool with a friend at the very spacious Buffalo Billiards. Early in the evening, had the joint practically to ourselves. We also ate one night at Eddie V's, settling for the incredible appetizers at the bar. Oysters, crab cakes, shrimp. Good service as well. I also recommend Progress Coffee, a non-chain place on Fifth Street. Somebody took me up Mount Bonnell, for a great view of the city and Lake Austin. The city is a great place to hang out. Too damn hot much of the year, tho.

Spring 2003, flew down in bad weather to Dallas. The flight got bumpy just as I got some orange juice. We bounced so bad that every bit of O.J. bounced right out of the cup onto the tray. Everybody hung on for dear life. I was so messed up from that flight, I was still sick to my stomach at dinner that night at the Sawgrass (a great place for a steak, btw).

February 2002, American has mechanical problems with their itty-bitty jet, so we're late getting from Dallas to Houston.  Avis lost our reservation, we weasel a smoke-filled car out of them, force them to cough up (no pun intended) a non-smelly car, then the Galeria Marriott Suites is oversold, and can't accommodate my two colleagues, so they get free rooms at the crap Fairfield Inn next door, and beers.  I got into the Suites, and got promptly stuck in the elevator the next morning.  I also had the room on the other side of the elevator.  That was fun.  In other words, I don't recommend the place very highly.

June 2001, I'm in Dallas on a business trip, and see a billboard off of 75 for a radio station, showing the logo for the band AC/DC, the name of their song "Highway to Hell," and a picture of the devil with his hand on Timothy McVeigh's shoulder. 

Ed and I visited some nice folks at the LBJ building in Austin in August '97, and ate in the cafeteria. The guy who manned the register there was blind. He made no mistakes. The food servers were sighted. But the fare was, well, disturbing. I had nachos for lunch; Ed had mashed potatos and potato chips. They were the least frightening of our alternatives. I pointed out to Ed, "We've hit the big time." 
 

Winter 2004, did a gig in Virginia, then flew out of Dulles to Houston, on an express jet. Toilets didn't work. Got to Houston, and the baggage carousel was broken. Got in very, very late. The Residence Inn in downtown Houston was pretty nice. There's a restaurant down there with plates all over the wall, and lots of different kinds of beer. Excellent food as well. Can't remember the name.

DFW Aiport is a piece of SHIT.  Everything is too spread out.  Getting and returning a rental car is nightmarish.  There's a sign pointing up a ramp for all these rental companies, and at the top of the ramp, you must turn,, and there's an arrow pointing one way for Avis, and another pointing the opposite way for Hertz. What about the others? There's always a line to get on and off the grounds at their stinking little tollbooths.  It also has one of the highest incidences of near-collisions on the ground.  You can walk for blocks in baggage claim to find a restroom.  So let me reiterate, DFW airport is a piece of shit.  SHIT. 

One of the hazards of travelling with Ed is fitting the airlines' profile for an evildoer. On return trips from Toronto AND Las Vegas, I was stopped and searched. In Vegas, they opened my backpack and found my Fighting Nun. They demanded to know what it was. It's hard to explain a Fighting Nun. Next time you're in Vegas, you'll have to pick one up. Then you have to get it through security.

A Fighting Nun is not to be confused with a fighting cock. In some of the places Ed has fed me on trips, I've had to fight tapeworms. After sitting on a lunch counter stool in downtown Detroit recently, I was fighting a rash.

Rocky Mountain Why

I've been to Colorado several times for leisure, but mostly only gone through it for business as a stop to somewhere else, like Vegas, or back from British Columbia. Spring 2005, I went there for a Department of Energy trade show. It was wretchedly organized, and a waste of money. The Westin in Westminster lost half the boxes we shipped, and several other exhibitors had the same problem.

In the meantime, I got to hang out with my college roommate (and best man) for three days. I hung out at the Residence Inn, in Westminster, a very nice joint with lovely ladies running it. My buddy took me to the Rock Bottom for burgers, Wahoo's Fish Taco (where the steak burritos don't have much steak in them), and to Boulder, which was a blast. Besides all the college chicks walking around (many of them half our age, dammit), there's plenty of hippies, bums, potheads, deadheads, and assorted lowlife laying about to make the walk interesting. My buddy highly recommends Mike's hot dog stand, along the main drag. Downtown Boulder is closed off to traffic, so it's a sort of outdoor mall. Very nice. We had a great seafood dinner at Jax, which was staffed by gorgeous young women. My eyeballs were sweating all evening. There's a big record store there with a huge collection of very eclectic stuff as well.

The shitty part about going there is the Denver airport. It's awful. I've never liked it. Nothing is marked. You can easily get lost there. Going out, they had rope barriers everywhere around security, with all the entrances marked "Special Access Only." There were five of them. I walked around the whole mess, looking for an entrance for regular people. I finally asked, "Okay, I give, where do I get in?" The guy said he'd do me a favor, and let me in where he was standing. Oh, gee, thanks, I told him. 

The rental car setup is, I think, two miles from the airport. Takes a helluva long time. If you get stranded due to weather, ,there are NO hotels in the immediate vicinity. Denver International is a poorly planned disaster of a place.
 

The Frozen North

Here's a slice of my life.  Right at this moment, I'm in a cab in Toronto heading for the airport.  We're not moving too fast, there's nothing to read, and I'm typing to take my mind off the unbelievable smell of this taxi.  It's mid-April 2000, and suddenly it's winter again, snowing sideways, and I'm not sure if my flight will actually get out of here for Detroit.  The cabbie's inventing a route I've never been on before, trying to make it on time for an 8:20 flight (it's 6:45 PM now, and the QEW is stacked), and if I don't make it, I won't cry.  Detroit is a hole, the suburbs are bland, and at least in Toronto, there's shit to do.  LOTS.
 

At the mall, ya hey dere

I've been practically living in Minneapolis.  The Mall of America is my second home.   Had dinner with one of the Timberwolves there.  He didn't say a word about those illegitimate kids of his they mentioned in Sports Illustrated. 

Too many whiny customers up here.  The service at the open lounge near the front desk at the Double Tree Hotel is awful.

One block from the Marriott City Center at 7th and Hennepin is an incredible book and magazine store that's got everything. I love the place. But June '99 I stumbled in there, and the girl behind the counter had a jagged nose ring, a few other facial piercings, and a metal ball in her tongue. She couldn't speak well, so I presumed the thing was relatively new. OUCH. 

The guys who run the airport in Minneapolis can't figure out where they want the rental cars.  They used to be a quick shuttle ride or a long walk from the terminals.  Then they moved them WAY off site, and you HAD to ride a shuttle. Then in '99 they again moved them closer to the terminals, but there's no walking.  The airport's been ripped up from construction for a long time.  It's fairly aggravating. 

December 2001, the young doofus manning the scanner at the airport has a problem with the machine.  It's obvious he doesn't want to ask for help, so he just sort of hopes to catch the eye of a supervisor, while the line behind me grows, and the other two lines keep moving.  After a minute or so of this, I step forward and yell toward the back, "Junior here has a problem, and I'd like to make my flight."  We get taken care of.
     This was a great trip, however.  Got to town early on Tuesday, didn't have to meet anybody til late, so started drinking with an early lunch, and just kept at it til very late.  Wasn't driving, so what the hell.
      Ate at the Brit's Pub by the Hyatt. Service was rude, and they didn't have the Guinness pot roast.  Also, it ain't cheap.
 

The Strip Club From Hell

September 2005: Drove up to Fond du Lac with Ed and a salesguy, who kept looking up strip joints on his Blackberry. Apparently you can even get pictures and dancing schedules of individual strippers at some of the clubs. So we got up to the Holiday Inn, kinda late out of Chicago, and were directed to a halfway decent restaurant in town. Now, it was beautiful out, and there was a double header for Monday Night Football, because Hurricane Katrina had displaced the New Orleans Saints. We figured every bar in town would be packed. INSTEAD, the whole damn main drag of Fond du Lac was completely deserted. I still don't understand it. The handful of bars that were actually open had hardly anybody in them. One place we found, the only one in there drinking was the owner. Dollar drafts, in frosted mugs. I could have severely injured myself in there.

We walked the whole main street. There's one bar there that was raided by the axe-wielding Carrie Nation earlier in the previous century, and it boasts a plaque commemorating the incident. 

Finally came to a strip joint that one of the guys desperately wanted to visit. From the outside, it looks just like another bar. I was the first one through the door, and instantly stopped. The bar itself ran long and deep into the narrow joint, on the left. On the right, writhing around on her belly on the tiny stage, was the biggest, ugliest stripper in the universe. Her thong must've been made by Firestone. Short, cropped hair, tattoos, and GLASSES. I tried backing out of the place, but Ed just started laughing, and pushed me right back in. I told the group, we're staying for one beer, then diving out the window.

The stripper finally stood up, and grabbed the stripper pole. I remarked that the thing must have been sunk into the ground at least fifteen feet, and when she leaned on it, the whole building tipped. When she was done foundering about up there, she came down and asked up if we wanted to tip her. Ed said, "We'll pass." She was roughly five-nine, and easily two-fifty. OUCH.

The weird thing was, her boobs were all flattened out. Usually big girls have big boobs. 

The bartender was a big, busty girl, kinda funny. When we sat down at the bar, she was showing a patron how she could hold a full beer can under her boob. She lifted up her sweater (she was braless) and sure enough, she could tuck a full beer under there and it would stay.

Another stripper, obviously done for the night, was a large nosed, gap toothed thing, standing in a long football jersey in front of the juke box. Also full of tattoos. Still another sat a few seats away, in a leather bustier, also kinda big, also covered in tattoos, and all made up like a goth. The first stripper, having taken her seat on a concrete barstool specifically designed for her, started making out with her boyfriend. My stomach was churning by now.

THEN .... the next stripper came up. Tall, lean, fake tan, funky bleached hair, but the most incredible behind in the world. She looked very, very good from where we were sitting. She worked the pole, and worked the rednecks sitting in front of the stage. THEN .... she took off her top. Her boobs were aall flattened out, like they'd been deflated. When she was all done, she worked her way down the bar for tips, and Ed flipped her a five. Up close ..... GAH !!!!!!  Her face was all ragged, like she was ninety-five, and her few teeth were a wreck. Putting that together with the bosom, our colleague remarked, "Oh, she's a meth addict." And he wasn't trying to be funny.

Hey, Canuck, suck a puck

I used to think of Canada as a big jolly neighbor of a country. Toronto can be a real blast. Quebec and Winnipeg are gorgeous. But customs has become a real chore.  They're slow, and generally nasty. It used to be an orderly process, but it's gotten hazardous.  May '98, they ask me my business, look at my customs card, and send me into a side room for forty minutes. For no good reason. Ask me some other questions.  Let me go.  All these hockey-brains accomplished was wasting my time.  All because they didn't like my haircut, or I was the fiftieth guy in line.  Who the hell knows.   That's three trips in a row they've screwed with me.  God forbid I come to their country to spend any money. 

Air Canada has yet to get me to Canada OR home on time, or even close to on time in the last six attempts.  They've lost my bags.  They've stranded me and a horde of other folks at a gate with no plane and no personnel to explain themselves.  They are obviously a product of the same socialist, "it ain't my job" mentality that pervades their government.  There's never any sense of urgency.  They'll make smalltalk at the gate with the previous customer, while the other people in line are pointing at their watches and saying, "We have to catch a flight." 

January 2000, cab to the airport.  Get in, and almost stifle on cigarette smoke.  Then the driver seems to not be in any kind of a hurry.  In fact, we ride most of the way on the QEW in the middle lane, being passed up by old ladies in walkers.  Everybody's honking at us.  We can't seem to stay in a lane, either.  As we wind into the airport, the driver slows down, more and more, until we're almost crawling.  People continue to honk.  For a change, I'm the one with the cash.  Ed recommends getting my money out in advance, "since paying for the ride will probably take ten minutes."

If you're stuck at the Air Canada or United terminals on the way out, there's squat to eat of any quality.  But at the Northwest terminal, you've got a choice of decent joints.  I highly recommend the American Bar.  April 2000,  I order a cheeseburger there, and it comes out with the bacon still sizzling on top of the cheese.  Incredible.  Good martinis, too. 

August 2000, quickie trip to Ottawa.  The market area is nice, lotsa restaurants, but too many punks and panhandlers.  They think out-of-towners are automatically scared of them, but I don't hesitate to shove them aside.  One guy gets in front of us, his face is all drawn on, and says to us, "If I were to do something totally pointless, even more pointless than drawing all over my own face, could you spare some change?"  My colleague tells him, "F____  no."  We ate at a Mediterranean joint, excellent food, slow service.  The Westin lost my reservation, but still managed to come up with a room.  A completely nasty smoke-encrusted room.  I wish I'd stayed at the Chateau Laurier again, I love the joint.  Except that they have smoking floors.  Literally, you get off the elevator and choke on it.  Air Canada actually got me there and home on time, for a change, although their staff at the gates are still surly, rude, uncommunicative chumps.  The international gate at the Ottawa airport is crowded, with few facilities and scarce seating. 
         The area just south of Ottawa is a poorly-marked place.  They don't want you to find the airport, I think it's a scheme to make you miss flights so you stay and spend more cash.  They have an occasional picture of a plane, posted low on the poles, instead of up high where you can see  them in case you're next to a truck.  No signs actually say "Airport," tey just have these very small airplane pictures.

November 2001, Ed asks if I'd like to take a trip to Toronto, help beat a competitor I'm familiar with, and do some Christmas shopping on Yonge Street.  Bought a ton of excellent gifts for next to nothing, ate like a fiend, did a lot of drinking.

Okay, it's not SO bad
 

In all fairness, here's some pics I've taken while north of the border. I actually DID take my family to Winnipeg in the summer of '98.  When they don't work in customs, the people are wonderful.  I'm considering taking my wife to Quebec City for an upcoming anniversary. 

Toronto is one of the more beautiful cities to pull into at night.  The Dome is all lit up in green these days, and the skyline is gorgeous.  Reminds me a lot of Chicago. 

January 2000, I'm checking into the Marriott Eaton Centre in downtown Toronto, and the guy at the desk says, "There's a message here for you."  He starts reading it, then smiles and hesitates.  He reads, "It says, you're ugly."  It's from Ed, who has gotten to town and checked in before me.
 
 
 

December '99: ate at Hiro's, a very expensive sushi joint in Toronto.  Fantastic.  Slow, but good. 

In April '99, Ed and I ventured to Quebec. It is gorgeous. I can't wait to drag my wife there. I stayed at Le Chateau Frontenac, which I recommend to anybody (check out the link a couple of paragraphs for a pic of the place). The only quirk was getting awakened by an errant phone call from the front desk at 7:15 am, asking if I was ready to get in the van to go "duck-slaying."  This shall be my new title: Whizbang, Slayer of Ducks.

Ninety percent of all business done in Quebec is with the government. We went the first day to the Ministry for People Who Smoke Too Much. No shit, the cloud in the parking garage near the stairs was stifling. 

The next day at another client in KC, a father goose, protecting mama sitting on the nest, hissed at Ed and almost bit him. Life is nothing if not a glorious adventure.

So now it's May '99, and I've been on the road with Ed for 2-3 nights a week for six weeks straight. As I'm typing, we're heading for Calgary. That's Quebec-Toronto, Toronto-Ottawa, and now Calgary, in the last four weeks.  This last trip, we passed a suit store, and they had a great sale on some nice-looking suits.  I came home with a pair of  two-piecers and a sports coat. 

Next to the AT&T building on Wellington (in Toronto), there's a park, and in the summer, all the office girls hang out there, sunning themselves.  We always find a few minutes to walk around and gape.  One day when I've got a lot of time between meetings, I'd like to hang out there (in good weather of course) and just keep circling with a camera until someone calls the cops.
 

August '99, visited Montreal to show off some products.  Too many people who keep forgetting NOT to speak French, and everybody kept getting confused.

Had a blast on Sainte-Catherine Street, had a great meal, and counted at least two dozen young girls with pierced eyebrows, lips, or noses.  I tell ya, nothing's more sexy than a girl with half a pound of iron bolted into her face, puffing on a Marlboro.
 

Motor City Madhouse On a '96  puddle-jump from Detroit to Fort Wayne (garden spot of Calcutta), I got this pretty cool shot, at umpteen thousand feet. In the air, with the sun going down, you can almost remember there's a God, until you land, get the rental car, battle through traffic, and eat hotel food.

It's amazing that a town like Detroit, which fairly worships the auto, has such bad roads.  And just take 75 North from 94 some time, you'll be amazed at how many cars are abandoned on the side of the highway.

Detroit Metro Airport  SUCKS.  The bathrooms are TINY.  Even the newer ones are small.  The whole airport is set up awfully. 

December 2001, the line for security parallels the entire ticket counter (United), then goes all the way down the hall behind the counters, then back up the hall.  Only 1.3 hours wait.

February 2001: Got reservations for the Double Tree in Novi.  Hey, it's a Double Tree, can't be too bad, right?  Oops, it's an old Sheraton, and it reeks.  The guy at the front desk couldn't give directions to his own hotel with a gun to his head (something that happens a lot in Detroit, by the way).  In the morning, I seat myself for breakfast, nobody ever comes by to ask if I want coffee, I eat from the buffet totally alone (it was only 8:30 AM), no waitress ever shows her face, and when I'm done, I literally hunt down the chef to get a check.  At checkout, I tell them that the service was less than stellar.  Gal tells me, "Oh, you're a Hilton Honors member, you shouldn't have been charged for breakfast anyway, we'll just kill the check."  Okay.  Then I get my credit card bill, and there's the breakfast charge.  Then I can't get reach anybody in accounting for two days.  It's now the principle of the thing, not the lousy ten bucks.  This place sucks, I'll NEVER stay there again. 

September 2000, at the excellent Troy Marriott.  Their inhouse restaurant is a Shula's Steakhouse.  A prime rib the size of my head, creme brulee for dessert, and fantastic service.  PRICEY, but good.

August 2000, I'm waiting to get home on Southwest, and some nitwit comes to the gate with some skanky looking gal, and the back of his shirt says, in large letters, F___ YOU, I'M FROM DETROIT.  The woman with her small daughter next to me gets up and moves, so they won't be subjected to this clown's filthy slogan.  I get up and say to him, "You're a real asshole, huh?"  I bully him til he goes away. 
 

May 2000, at the Hampton Inn in Warren, for the third week in a row.  It's not a bad place.  Had dinner last week at the Lone Star Steakhouse on Van Dyke.  I usually like the franchise, but not this one.  Sat at the bar, and the barely-old-enough bartendress is too busy chatting with friends to wait on people.  I have to chase her down to get my first drink, a wretchedly-made martini I can't even finish, it's so bad.  Tasted like solid olive juice.  My dinner was late, cold, and not that great.  This week, I walked from the Hampton to the Chili's (never ate in one before), also on Van Dyke, and had an INCREDIBLE bowl of broccoli-cheese soup, then INCREDIBLE ribs and chicken, unbelievably good corn on the cob, great cinnamon apples, great service.  I highly recommend the place.

April 2000, I'm stuck staying at the Quality Inn on Merriman Road near the Detroit Metro airport, because of late reservations.  Remember, anything with the words "quality" or "motor" in the name will be crap.  The idiots checking me in took forever, and were busy yacking with friends on the phone.  Then they gave me a room whose door knob didn't work.  They guy took ten minutes finding me another room.  When I grabbed a towel, the rack fell off the wall.  The light switch plate was missing.  The outlet plates were all broken.  The TV had been yanked out of the wall and moved across the room for some reason.  The water valve in the tub was broken.  But it was cheap.  The waitress at the Big Boy told me the Travelodge is worse.  Hard to believe.

March 2000, Ed and I have some time to kill before the flight home, so we head down Merriman Road away from the airport, in search of a restaurant he thinks he remembers.  We end up at a chicken joint, the only white guys for miles, and we're in suits.  A woman who claims she used to work there is screaming at people as they walk in , recommending different menu items.  Another guy walks in, asks if we're "officers."  Two other guys in parkas stop outside, look through the window, stare at us.  Since people presume we're the police, I just give them a thumb, as in "move on."  Everybody else there makes a big deal of us being white guys.  Sorry, can't help it, I was born pale.  The staff hides behind thick, bulletproof glass.  The food is actually pretty good, but we drive back to the hotel parking lot to eat, in relative safety. 

Speaking of the Big Boy on Merriman Road, the breakfast buffet is great.  The eggs are kinda funky, but everything else is wonderful.  I've eaten many meals there, and highly recommend it.  ANY McDonald's in the Detroit suburbs, however, ESPECIALLY the one right outside the airport, is AWFUL.  The service is awful, the premises are always filthy, and they often get orders wrong. 
 
 

Ow, it really HERTZ

My old company had a thing for Hertz. They gave  us upgrade coupons,  enrolled us in Hertz Gold, told us not to use any other rental company unless nothing else is available. But twice now we've shown up and our name has not been posted on their Gold board, so we end up going inside anyway. The latest incident was in Detroit. Getting our Hertz Gold car actually ended up taking longer than if we'd just shown up off the street. Minneapolis 12/97, people who arrived long after us got their cars, while we stood around for twenty minutes waiting like boobs. The attendants laughed about it, but did zippo to expedite us getting in our car. It was roughly ten degrees out. We took turns going inside to the counter to tell them to get their idiot lot workers off their asses. Detroit Feb '98 we get our gold car, the tag inside has the wrong name on it even though the sign above the car has the RIGHT name on it, the gatekeeper says we can't leave with that car, so we get out of line, the counter chick says it's okay to take that car, the gatekeeper again says we can't take that car, we go back IN and end up with a different car, so four of us have to take all our shit out of the trunk and transfer. That's four incidents in a row. Hertz needs an Inspector General to pop around to the different sites and measure performance, and perhaps soundly beat all the slack-jawed gawkers on the payroll.

Detroit just gets nastier and nastier. Every single time we go there, we see another large building downtown boarded up. We're talking about thirty-plus story buildings, with plywood for windows. They can't get people to rent office space in their skyscrapers. Sad.  Out in the burbs, specifically Center Line, there lies, on the corner of Van Dyke and Hupp, a small brick building, no bigger than a standard garage.  The south end of the building houses the Christian Cathedral Full Gospel Church.  The north end contains the Marked For Life tattoo parlor.

November '99 : I leave Troy (northwest suburbs of Detroit) with what I figure is enough time to make my flight.  It's rush hour, but what the hell.  I crawl down I-75, then it takes off, and I fly the rest of the way to I-94 West, which hauls until just before the airport.  At which time I find the road is CLOSED.  They route us off the highway onto a local road, with no signs, no indications of a detour, no f_____g clue as to how to get where any of us needs to go. A woman three cars ahead of me pulls off on the left shoulder, to approach the state trooper parked there.  He gets on his bullhorn, orders her back into her car, and tells her "Follow traffic."  She waves her arms and yells back, "I don't know where you're sending us."  He only replies again, "Follow traffic."  I wing it, and find the airport, but miss my flight.  The next one's two hours later.
 
 

Speaking of Detroit, if you've been on I-94 heading east from the airport, which by the way is consistently and righteously named one of the worst if not THE worst airport in the country, you've seen the BIG TIRE. After all these years passing it, I finally got a picture of it. It's bigger than a house. The thing sticking out of it right now is a giant nail, as part of a marketing thing about how tough these Uniroyal tires are. Of course, as I'm taking the picture, Ed  is moaning and groaning. He's missing the point of all this: travelling America is a grand adventure. Where the hell else could you find a big tire?

Florida Panhandle

May 2005: Have to make a connection through Atlanta to reach Pensacola, then rent and drive over an hour east. Stayed at the Holiday Inn in Destin. Ninth floor of their tower, overlooking the pool, facing the beach. Everybody there was really cool. Everybody also told me I was lucky not to b e there the night before, when the Vanderbilt kids had their late spring break. They were loud, obnoxious, and they left a helluva mess at the beach. Apparently at Vanderbilt, they're raising a generation of swine.

Have to install some software at a place where the guy's known I was coming for two months. But the morning I show up, he finished putting the box together. On his desk is a picture of what appears to be a  guy in a wig. Turns out to be his tattoo-covered wife, who works the phones for him. She interrupts maybe ten times that morning, to give him a hug, a kiss, just to hang out in the doorway. Maybe she's getting flashes from the hormones her doctor from the transgender clinic is giving her. He has the cliche barbed wire tattoo around his arm, but she's got 'em on her arms, legs, hands, and even on her feet. She is mongoose friggin' ugly. Their office is in a shithole little strip mall, essentially, and they keep it good and filthy. When I used their can, I wanted to pee from ten feet away, so I wouldn't have to touch anything. Thank Ja we get everything working early, so I get out that afternoon, instead of my original plan for the next morning, when thunderstorms futz everything up.

On the way there and back, I passed through Gulf Breeze, infamous for its UFO hoax a few years back.
 
 

Atlanta's burnin'

I've actually been here several times for business, starting in 1988. Six lanes of traffic sounds nice, until you've been cut off by some hick asshole who moves over five lanes at a time. Downtown Atlanta is actually pretty dead, and t here's always idiots around muttering to you, "Whatcha lookin' for?" I was told by a bartender that these clowns actually figure that if they point out a bar or restaurant or a place to score pot, that you'll give them a dollar. Buckhead is where all the action is, north of downtown. May 2007, and there's brushfires all around the southern portion of the state. Wake up one morning at Marriott Marquis, look out my 30th floor window, and it was like being in San Fran, with all the fog in the morning. Except it wasn't fog, it was forest fire smoke. The inside of the hotel, and the lobby of the World Trade Center downtown, just like the street, smelled like burning wood.

A week earlier, I stayed at the Marriott Courtyard on Peachtree-Dunwoody Road, way to the north. There was blood on the curtains and window shade, which was cute. The restaurant only serves breakfast, and it was bad. The shower fixture came out of the wall. There is literally NOTHING to eat nearby. The lady at the front desk drew me a map to the nearby mall, said it was half a mile. BULLSHIT. It's more like two miles, and you have to cross back and forth over a VERY busy road, because the sidewalk keeps disappearing. Walking through the underpass was a trip. When I got to Hammond Road, instead of turning to the mall, I ran into The Derby, a dingy sports bar. Had a great Black and Bleu Burger, and three Stellas.
 
 

Nawlins

Been there before, on honeymoon, and even a couple of times before that. Winter 2002, down for just an overnighter. Went to a place called the 7-11 Club, saw the 7-11 band. Albino guy in a white suit, backed up by a drummer who was good with a harp, and a standup bass player. They did a lot of speeded-up Delta blues. Absolutely fantastic. Ate too much, drank a little, but dammit, had to work the next day.

What, no Carmen Miranda?

Spring 2004, Ed and I flew to Brazil for a week. Landed in Sao Paulo, which is so vastly huge, even from the air you can't see end to end. The thing goes on forever. We got a map of the downtown area near where we stayed, and were told it only covered fifteen percent of the city. It's considered rude to invite someone to dinner before 7:30 or 8, since you can't get there. Rush hour is pure hell. Sao Paulo is not for tourists, it's mostly for business, so I had one helluva time finding touristy kinds of things to bring back to da wife and kids. My Portuguese wasn't so bad, I even got to insult Ed in meetings without him understanding a damn thing. Our host told us lots of Brazilian stories and jokes. 

The UPS trucks down there are VW vans. Cracks me up. Grafitti is everywhere. Enterprising taggers, scumbags that they are, even get to the rooftops of very tall, very nice buildings, hang over the sides, and paint up there. They'll wreck anything at all, including churches. They even have their own language, which most people can't make out.

We took Varig airlines to Brasilia for a couple of days. We had beers and played snooker with a bunch of Japanese business partners in a pool hall, and because I'm so damn good at pool, I cleaned up at snooker. Good enough, in fact, that at the gentlemen's club later, the guys bought me a woman. I told them I was flattered, thanks much and all, but no. A couple of them got indignant. "How can you say no?" they asked. She was indeed gorgeous, unbelievably so, and probably no older than 21. Quite exotic looking as well. I said, "Look, I appreciate it, but first, I'm married, second, I don't do hookers, third, I don't want to catch anything that will make my johnson turn green, and fourth, I don't want my throat slit." Apparently it's all very organized there. When we got back to the hotel, the guys who did rent some love for the evening had to register their girls at the front desk. "Brazil is the land of procedures," one of them explained.

The smog in Sao Paulo is brutal. Crime is rampant. The ATMs close after 9 pm, to discourage people from getting held up at night.

We ate at a couple of churrascarias, which are incredible barbeque joints. Very swank. The best was Fogo de Chao. There are several, in fact. The salad bar alone is more than a meal, and everything on it is stupendous. THEN when you're ready for MEAT, you turn over your little coaster, from the red side to the green, and they start bringing you chicken hearts, goat, cow, pig, you name it. All of it is really good. When you've had enough meat, you turn the coaster back over. You can literally kill yourself eating there. 

Surprisingly, hardly anybody smokes there, at least from my observation.

The airport was easy enough to figure out although security can be a bit intimidating. I was lucky enough to upgrade there and back. It's a direct, 10+ hour flight from Chicago to Sao Paulo, and about an hour flight from there to Brasilia.