Category Archives: Travel

San Francisco Trip Report Day 1

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I warned you: I am on travel, and the cumulative exhaustion from all the travel this month has led me to post my trip reports from Thanksgiving 2010 while I am on my latest trip, rather than writing fresh. Not everyone has read these, and I still enjoy reading them, so I hope you do too. This first day doesn’t have any pictures but the rest of them will have pictures.

Links to all of the trip reports from this trip:

Day 1

Day 2

Day 3

Day 4

Day 5

Well, how about one iconic San Francisco picture:

Leaving Denver: Got up at 5:00. This is not a good time for me to get up. Clamped my finger in the curling iron instead of my hair. That left a mark. Got to the airport and parking was kind of goofy, they have no signs for the Mt. Elbert parking lot, but apparently that one was full anyway and we followed the crowd to the Pikes Peak lot. Lots of cars but the airport had staff there directing traffic. Pretty full bus to the terminal, I was amazed at the number of people flying today. Security wait was pretty long, but it kept moving along. Did not see a lot of people getting pulled out and groped, but the lady in front of us who was apparently wearing ALL of her favorite jewelry and had to go through the metal detector 5 times was pretty annoying. Got there with plenty of time for me to go out to concourse C and get my breakfast calzone that is Tradition, but their quality has decreased, might have to get something else next time. Plane was full, and numerous kids that weren’t thrilled to be sitting still for 2.5 hours, but they were really pretty good. Kenny slept part of the way and I watched TV and knitted, although I discovered I dropped a stitch several rows down (sticky yarn, so it didn’t unravel) but it was going to drive me nuts so I had to unravel about 20 rows to fix that, so I didn’t really make much net progress. Lovely weather of about 18 degrees when we left.

San Francisco Airport: First off our plane nearly ran into another one on the taxiway. Not sure how close we came but the pilot slammed on the brakes. Don’t know if he was supposed to yield to us or we were supposed to wait for him, but I am sure there was a report written up about this. He was just a little tiny United Express jet so we would have come out better in the collision, I am sure.

At the SF airport, there are apparently two sets of luggage carousels. Beware, your ride may go to the wrong one to meet you. Beware, there is not a lot of parking on busy travel days.  He  made his own parking place that he wasn’t sure we were going to be able to get out of, but we did. Pretty drive in from the airport to their house, lots of gawking around at the scenery. I was unhappy on the bridges that they put the walls too high that you can’t see stuff. Brother-in-law Nick says, “They do that so you don’t go off of the bridge!”

On Thanksgiving, we hung out at the house and visited and smelled the turkey while it was roasting. Nick likes to make the Alton Brown brined turkey recipe. He couldn’t find any allspice berries at the store so decided to throw some fresh cranberries into the brine before he cooked the brine. If you do that, please consider that your turkey will come out of the brine bucket with pink skin. We really should have gotten a picture of that. But it did not stay pink, when it was cooked. It was very good. Sister-in-law April has a family recipe for mashed potatoes where you make them in advance, it involves a lot of butter and cream cheese, I believe, and that was delicious. There was kind of a pie crisis, because April wanted to experience making her own pie crust and then was not pleased with the results. Diagnosing the recipe, I think she has a family recipe (low in instructions, high on “everyone knows how grandma always made this”) that is meant to make 4-5 double pie crusts. So there was a last minute run to the store for pie, and gravy and stove top. Sorry, I come from a family that has to have gravy. (I remember how gravy was the main thing my brother would eat at most holidays). But really, I will admit, those mashed potatoes were so rich you wouldn’t need gravy!

So we ate and then got the phone call from the family on speaker phone. I think the kids were all running around playing so we didn’t get to visit with them. Ken’s dad had to give us his sales talk on some calendar lottery their church is running to pay off the mortgage, so both of us couples now are signed up to buy a calendar and win big $$ on a Sunday or Holy Day when they have a drawing.

Then we all pretty much went into food comas and watched TV and just relaxed and caught up.  There was reminiscing about last Christmas when we were all snowed in in South Dakota.  April and I pulled out the knitting and the crocheting. No games tonight, just went to bed.  Nick said we were lucky, it was an unusually clear and sunny day.

BBQ Yak on a Bun and Robot Pancakes

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You only think that jobs requiring a great deal of travel are exotic and exciting until you have one. Then you realize that, regardless of the destination, you spend the majority of time in airports and hotel rooms, conference rooms, meetings and trade shows, and very rarely get to appreciate your surroundings. Sometimes you are able to get out and explore and enjoy the area you have traveled to, but not often.

Most likely, if you are traveling more than 30 days a year for business, things like this will happen to you:

You will check into a room and then reject it and request a different room. Maybe because it is dirty. Or maybe because the bathroom sink has been torn off the wall and is in the bathtub.

You will be given the key card to a room, you will enter the room, and it will already be occupied. Or, someone will be given a key to your room and will enter it. This is why you always put the security lock on.

You will be awakened in the middle of the night by a drunk pounding on the door, possibly saying (or yelling) something like “Ethel, forgive me.” Very rarely is it a drunk woman. Women apparently take out their drunken frustrations in other ways.

You will pay a hotel bill with your personal debit card accidentally, which will cause you to write “personal” across your debit card in black Sharpie. Immediately after you do that, you will receive a new business credit card which looks nothing like your debit card.

Security will call you (wrong number) at 3:00 a.m., to ask you about the fight with the woman in your room. They will not apologize when you tell them that was not your room. They will just hang up.

Someone will pull the fire alarm in the middle of the night. Pray this happens in California or Florida, not Chicago or Grand Forks in the winter.

You will stay at a hotel which requires to to leave your ID at the front desk to obtain an iron and ironing board.

Usually in the Dakotas or Nebraska: The “list of dos and do-nots” in your room will include instructions about not cleaning your fish, pheasants, or other deceased game animals in the room. Despite this instruction, their is evidence that previous occupants have done so.

You only order water to drink on airplanes because it is less sticky when you or someone else dumps it on your lap.

You will lose your cell phone or some other object which is important to you on the plane.

You will grab a carton of milk at the breakfast buffet and take a big swig before you discover it is past its prime.

You will call your boss “Dad” in front of two board members, mortifying him and amusing the board members to no end.

You will almost miss your flight and will have to run through the airport like OJ Simpson in his commercial days, and will be the last one on the plane. This only happens on flights where there are witnesses, such as your board members or co-workers.

The more boring and bland a destination, the more often you will travel there.

My job involves going out for meetings in the country, often in farm fields or outbuildings. Sometimes those days start out really early and end really late. Sometimes you don’t see an indoor bathroom for hours (not a problem for the men, but I don’t enjoy “going behind a pickup.”)  Sometimes it is 110 degrees and you are out in the sun for several hours at a time. Sometimes you eat BBQ beef on a bun for 4 out of 6 possible lunches/dinners in 3 days. I don’t mind bBBQ beef on a bun, but sometimes a little more variety is nice. BBQ yak on a bun doesn’t count as “variety.”

Now, admittedly, not all business travel is stressful. Sometimes you get to travel with someone you are really compatible with, and you go in early and tour the sights, and eat amazing food. Sometimes you get to see friends and family you haven’t seen in years in conjunction with a business trip. Those are the ones that make it all worth while. And the other ones give you good stories to share with your friends who are in the same traveling boat.

And sometimes you see random things that just make your day, such as the Pancake Making Machine at my Holiday Inn Express this morning, which I found totally amusing. And yes, I did use my fancy work camera to take pictures. My board member wasn’t even embarrassed. He has traveled with me before.

Look, it is like a desktop printer for pancakes!

Waiting for my miraculous pancake.

Oooooh, here it comes! Plate positioning error, must move closer.

One pancake is not enough. Especially when a robot is making them for you!

Now, these weren’t the best pancakes in the world, but they were certainly fresh. And weren’t we all convinced this was the way we were going to be eating by 2010 – punch the instructions into the machine, and it would produce the desired food item? Well, this one only produces pancakes, but it is a start.