life as a dog…

I decided to travel today instead of tomorrow.  I thought it would allow me to avoid the crowds at least a little bit.  Of course I was wrong.  Though I can only imagine, if today is this crowded…what is tomorrow going to be like?

I’m returning on Friday.  I imagine the crowds won’t be horrible.  At least I’ll avoid the Black Friday crowds at the stores.  That’s one thing I hope to never experience again.  Quite honestly, this week begins my boycott of going to stores unless absolutely necessary.  I can shop online for any Christmas presents.  I’ve already got my Christmas card shopping done.

A while back, I wrote a bit about some places that I’d like to travel to.  That was a fairly general list.  With the job I have now, I’m starting to actually check off some of them.

I was able to knock of Hawaii back in October.  I didn’t have it on the list, but I made it to Calgary this month.  Now I’ve found that I may finally get to London at the beginning of the year.  Not only that, but there’s a possibility that I may be going to London three different times.  I also have been told there is a possibility I may headed to Vancouver as well.  I’ve traveled with other jobs, but generally not to cool locations like this job.

I thought of some more things that I still want to see at some point.  Some of these I can’t believe I’ve never been to, either through work or way back in the 70s during family vacations.

• Grand Canyon – Why did we never go here on a family vacation?
• Glacier National Park – We were close – we went to Montana and Yellowstone back in 1980.
• Key West
• Vatican
• Banff (I was close…but I didn’t make it out of Calgary)

Who knows…maybe I’ll get some of those knocked off in the near future.

Oh, how I hate Houston.  I thought this trip was going to be longer – Houston to Detroit to Memphis to Orlando.  But Detroit and Memphis got canned.  I would have much rather gone to either of those than Houston.  Yes, even Detroit.  But no… Houston was still on.

Day 1 – Monday

This is how much I hate Houston – I purposely booked the latest flight I could to get to Houston.  Instead of booking a noontime flight, I booked a 7pm flight.  That’s 7 fewer hours that I have to spend in Houston.  The flight was pretty uneventful.  Southwest from Baltimore directly to Houston.

I booked myself into a Hampton Inn.  I guess my stays are increasingly landing with Hilton properties, as my “status” just got bumped up to Silver.  I don’t know how much that really matters… hotel points aren’t even close to having the same effect as airline miles.  The room was nice, though.  A king bed, free wireless and a fairly large television.  I’m starting to wonder, though, about these super comfortable beds that the hotel chains are starting to promote.  Yes, they are super comfortable.  But I sleep in a fairly firm bed.  If I stay in hotels with these beds for more than a night or two, I find myself coming home with a headache and back ache.  I don’t know if it’s worth it.

Day 2 – Tuesday

Event Day.  Not to much to say for this day.  I was on the job site from 10am until about 6pm.  I got some food and went back to the hotel.  Pretty much crashed by 8pm.  I think it would have been different during the summer – the fact that the sun is gone by 5:30pm pretty much kills the day for me.  And as there is nothing that interests me in Houston… there is nothing to do after the job.

Day 3 – Wednesday

Again… to keep my time in Houston as short as possible, I book an early flight.  9am gets me out of Houston.  Less than 48 hours in that crummy city.  I was at the airport by 7am.  I didn’t realize there were earlier flights – there was a 7am and an 8am flight to Baltimore.  I easily could have made one of those.

POST

So that was my trip to Houston.  Very short.  I’m not sure where I’m going next.  My next job is right here in DC.

It’s been about 30 years since I’ve set foot in Canada.  Even then, it was only for dinner across the bridge from Detroit.  You would have thought I’d at least been to either Toronto or Niagara Falls.  But no.  This trip is to Calgary.  I wish I had more time, so I could make a quick side trip to Banff.

Day 1 – Thursday

Had to get up super early to get to the airport.  My flight on Air Canada left at 6:00am.  There were several people at National that were coughing/sneezing/sniffling.  If I end up getting sick because of these people, I’m going to be seriously ticked off.  The flight was very nearly empty.  That’s always nice.

My flight took me through Toronto, where I had to go through customs.  I made the point of having a longer layover in Toronto, simply because I don’t know what the time frame is like trying to get through customs in Canada.  It ended up not being bad at all…it took maybe 35 minutes to get off the plane, go through customs and get to my next gate.  There was one thing that I didn’t do at Toronto that I should have…but the line was too long.  Gotten some donuts at Tim Horton’s.  It is a Canadian institution, after all.  I guess I’ll have to do that in Calgary.  To make up for it, I stopped by Starbucks and got a couple pumpkin scones.  Yummy.

My flight arrived in Calgary at noon.  Damn, it’s cold.  I must say… I really like Air Canada.  Just like other international carriers – they don’t skimp to the degree that the U.S. airlines do.  Screens in all the seats, you choose what you watch.  MUCH more legroom than any U.S. carrier.  And my flight from Toronto to Calgary had power ports in all the seats.  (Though I don’t know what was up with the power port – it would be fine for about 30 seconds and then shut off.  I ended up not being able to use it.  The flight being four hours, I had to be careful with how much I was on the laptop.  So Air Canada gets a black mark for that.)

I made my way to the hotel and checked in.  After a quick nap, I made my way over to the event location for setup.

Setup wasn’t too bad.  Probably went about an hour longer than it needed to, but that’s not really that big of a deal.  I was completely wiped out by the time I got back to the hotel, however.  Getting up at 3am and travelling and working until about 11pm will do that to you.

Day 2 – Friday

Today was event day.  It was nice to have been set up on Thursday evening.  Everything went pretty much as planned.  We finished up at about 4:00.  Unfortunately, that made it too late to try and drive out to Banff (or any of the mountains, for that matter).  I got back to the hotel and pretty much crashed.  I think I was asleep by 8:30.  Good thing, though, since I had a 4:00am wake up call to head to the airport.

Day 3 – Saturday

I had a 1 hour layover in Montreal.  I was a little worried – instead of going through customs when I got back to DC, I had to go through in Montreal.  One hour doesn’t seem like a lot of time.  Especially since I was toward the rear of the plane coming from Calgary and it was pretty full.  On top of that, our flight left about 20 minutes late.

As it turned out, the flight crew was kind enough to let me move up to an empty business class seat just before landing.  That put me in row 1.  I was able to get off the plane first instead of having to wait on nearly 100 people.  But that wasn’t the end of it.  Customs was yet another problem.

I got to Customs after a long ass walk through what seemed like the entire Montreal airport.  Everything was going well until I got to the “declarations” line.  My checked luggage hadn’t made it through yet.  So I was sent to the waiting room….without my ticket or passport.  The Terminal came to mind.  After about 15 minutes they finally called my name.  I thought I had to take my baggage to another drop point, but apparently not (their pamphlet said I would).  I got to my gate as fast as I could.  Only to find out… my flight to DC was delayed.  All that worrying for nothing.  The flight to DC was a nice short one… just over an hour.  It was an interesting flight path.  I was able to see Albany, New York City, Philadelphia, Baltimore and DC from my window.

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Unfortunately, I didn’t have enough time to do any extracurricular activities in Calgary.  I would have liked to have gotten to Banff.  People in Canada are so damn nice.  Actually, it may be just average, but since living in DC, even average seems super nice.  It was actually a little disconcerting.

My next trip is in 2 days.  I’m heading for… Houston.  Blech.