Fiddley Gomme - Travel

I Couldn't Not

Pete — Fri, 08 Aug 2008 22:13:18 -0700

It seems wrong to be blogging under the circumstances. But here I am... camping. And there's WiFi. And it's not like I'm at some froo-froo KOA or something. This is full-on dark dirt camping high up in the mountains.

Do You Know How Much Better A Guitar Sounds On A Beach?

Pete — Mon, 07 Jul 2008 22:56:49 -0700

I spent a long four-day weekend with nary a sign of internet access. And with the exception of a couple of photos I managed to get emailed from my phone, I took a vacation from blogging as well as work.

Makes No Difference Who You Are

Pete — Tue, 29 Apr 2008 10:08:29 -0700

Donna and our two oldest girls are taking a road trip to Disneyland this week. Megan's dance company will be shaking their booties at the Magic Kingdom as part of their mission to spread their message of Miley Cyrus-inspired tween hoochiness around the world.

It should be a fun weekend of overpriced food, long lines and miles of endless walking between rides for them.

But you want to know the best part about their trip? Since they are taking my mother along, my house will actually be The Happiest Place on Earth.

Southern Comfort

Pete — Wed, 07 Nov 2007 09:17:53 -0800

I'm leaving our fair Zion for yet another babysitting... err... business trip today. This time to St. Louis, MO. Well, Ofallon, to be specific.

I enjoy travel, for the most part but have become weary of traveling with co-workers and spending my time in offices. Business meetings in conference rooms are exactly the same everywhere as they are here. Exactly. The. Same.

But, off I go. To rescue this project and be the only one of three vendors who meet our deadlines only to have the entire project delayed at the hands of less-in-every-way companies who can't manage to look at a calendar and realize that it's been a week since our last meeting and they've done nothing at all. Such is my life.

While I'm there I'm only drinking Budweiser. When in Rome and all that. And maybe I'll see if I can pick up a clydesdale to bring home as a souvenir. Though I'm pretty sure TSA would confiscate it just like the unopened Southern Comfort they stole the last time I left New York.

Look, I'm no chemist and I know SoCo is really amazing but I'm one hundred percent certain I couldn't make a bomb out of anything that still has the Utah State tax stamp on it.

Sleepless Rambling

Pete — Tue, 30 Oct 2007 13:06:04 -0700

I woke this morning at 5:15 eastern time. 5:15 feels like 3:15 when you've been living the mountain time zone since you were eight. Like me.

The early hour made for restless travel from New York earlier today and I simply don't have the energy to write anything intelligent. In fact, I'm sure I'll read this short disclaimer tomorrow and laugh about how retarded I am.

That is all.

I Can Manage

Pete — Mon, 29 Oct 2007 10:48:26 -0700

I'm in Connecticut today. I came here at the behest of a client. The client feels that one of the other vendors on the project needs a bit of babysitting. How it's come to be my job to babysit her vendor I don't know. But it has.

So, here I am, sitting in a meeting where it is only my job to glance reassuringly at the client from time-to-time to remind her that everything will be OK. Though I'm not sure it's all going to be OK. But that's not your problem. Really, it isn't even my problem. Except that somehow, it is.

Also, somewhere along the line, my co-worker, who is tagging along on this trip to visit with other clients in the area, has decided that she needs to be involved in every detail of my travel. Saturday night she sent me a text message.

I'm wearing sweat pants tomorrow on the plane so feel free to wear something casual.

Umm... thanks. I wouldn't have known what to wear without you.

Then Sunday, as I stood in line at airport security in Salt Lake.

Where are you?

I'm a big boy and can get myself on a flight on time. I proved this by actually getting on the airplane... on time.

Once on the plane, she began talking shop immediately. It didn't take long before I finally just leaned back in my seat and turned on my iPod and laptop. This was Sunday. It was bad enough I had to spend my day off traveling. I didn't need to be a captive audience to a five-hour business meeting.

Perhaps her need to talk shop comes from the fact that we only have a work relationship. Fine. I get that. But saying nothing at all is always acceptable. Please, don't ruin my weekends.

Then this morning, as I sat eating breakfast at the hotel, she called.

I'm on my way there. I'll be out front in about fifteen minutes. Oh, and you can get breakfast in the hotel there if you want.

Golly, it's a good thing she called to let me know I was allowed to have breakfast. I'd have starved without her.

On top of making sure I know how to board a plane and get myself fed, she's taken upon herself to communicate with me every detail of her day. She called shortly before lunch.

I went up the road to meet with a potential new client and then met with the other people about that one project. I'm going to get some lunch and then I have to go up the road to meet with the people I came to meet with in the first place.

Yeah... about all that... I don't care. You don't work for me and I don't work for you.

Maybe she should consider writing a journal. Or the world's worst blog.

Land Of Make-Believe

Pete — Wed, 24 Oct 2007 12:54:26 -0700

When I was younger I remember learning about faith at church. One teacher presented a challenge for the class. "How do you know New York City is real if you've never seen it?"

I'm here to tell you, I've seen New York City and it isn't real. It's all a pretend fairy tale. A reality show passed off as life using clever movie cliches and made-up languages on the subway. Counterfeit reality.

Murray Hill Market

It is a place where north feels like south and where east changes to west while you're standing on the corner waiting for the light to change. It can't be possible to turn left three times and still be walking the wrong direction. Except in New York. Because New York is fake.

If New York were real then there would be a Kinko's right where my iPhone said it would be. If it were real then there wouldn't be bathrooms in Frank Lloyd Wright designed museums where you have to sit sideways on the toilet to keep from banging your knees into the elegantly curved wall. If it where real a bottle of water would not cost the same as an entire six-pack of beer from the Utah State Liquor store.

The only place in the Guggenheim they let you take pictures

Only in a fake city could I see rat the size of a cat one second and a dog in purse the next. And only in a pretend place could I go from having a real conversation with myself about whether or not it would be better to sleep where I had arranged or on a bench in the park to having a kitschy spa hotel room fall from the sky into my lap. And only made-up places have lines painted on the roads merely for suggestion rather than as actual delineation.

And what kind of a real city has a Kander and Ebb musical starring David Hyde-Pierce where I can get a half-price, front-row seat five minutes before curtain? Not any real city I know of. No, this place is fictional.

I must be on the front row

Though, if New York really isn't really real who could possibly have been clever enough to make it up? And if they had, where did they come up with that outrageous accent and why didn't they think to have better cell phone coverage?

It's A Gangsta Menace

Pete — Thu, 27 Sep 2007 16:24:40 -0700

I sat in the passenger seat of the rented SUV with the windows down, snapping pictures as we came to the red light at the intersection of 45th and Broadway... Times Square. As we pulled to a stop, this dude came right to the door of the car, stuck his head well into my personal space and asked, "Hey! You guys like hip-hop?"

I was dressed for the theater in the only dress shirt I own. I am, it should be pointed out, the whitest person you've ever met.

"Yes. I love hip-hop. It's all I listen to."

He shoved a CD in my face. A CD featuring a lovely portrait of Chedda Boy himself and two smoking 9mm handguns. "It's A Gangsta Menace C-Boy". His mother is very proud, I'm sure.

"Remember me. I'm gonna be famous."

There was an awkward pause. Awkward in the way that while I paused, he stood there with his head still inside the car. Awaiting my reaction, I presumed.

"Any donation is welcome."

Ah. He was asking for money. I fumbled through my wallet, hoping not to make a scene of the stack of twenties and handed him five dollars.

As we sped away the only adieu I could muster was, "Thanks, brutha." Our trip back to Connecticut up the Westside Highway was orchestrated with the rhythmic stylings of "Knock Knock Twice" and "It's Money In Da Hood".

What? You didn't think I'd shell out five bones for a CD and not listen to it, did you?

Fuggetaboutit

Pete — Wed, 19 Sep 2007 16:09:34 -0700

I've spent the last 24 hours, or so, scheming a way for me to live and work in New York City. If you had asked me when I was half the age I am now what I would be doing when I am the age I am now, I would have said, "living, working, starving, whatever in New York City".

I've hearted NY since I first visited the summer I was fifteen years-old. That city is alive and dirty. Sexy. It scares me and intoxicates me all at once. Now, every time I stand in Times Square and watch the throngs of people press into the theaters at 7:45 while cardboard-scented steam seems from the manholes, I am transported back to that summer. I am filled with my dream to starve my way from audition to audition.

Coming home, I leave a part of myself there. Maybe someday I'll get a chance to go back and find it.

Avoiding The Very Appearance

Pete — Tue, 18 Sep 2007 07:53:25 -0700

Food on airplanes is exactly like security at airports. You don't get the actual thing... just the appearance of the thing. To make you think you are being taken care of rather than actually taking care of you.

Instead of a nutritious, delicious and filling meal you get a barrage of raisins, crackers, plastic foil-sealed cuplettes of processed cheese and half-cans of diet soda. Instead of a menu you are given a dispassionate cold-reading of a laminated plastic card by a bitter and tired flight attendant. Wait a tick, wasn't there even a meal for sale on your flight, Pete?

"Only on flights from JFK to LAX or SFO to JFK", the weathered steward uninformatively droned.

This is typical. In fact, in my experience, the airlines have pretty much zero idea about how to actually be a service industry. Two dollar headphones? Five dollar 50mL bottles of Finish Vodka? Five dollars to watch the movie? Are you serious? According to the boarding screen at the airport there were one-hundred-eighty-three passengers on my flight from Salt Lake City to New York. Including twenty-six in First Class seats.

If each of those passengers paid exactly what I did for his or her ticket then Delta Airlines netted somewhere around sixty-thousand dollars. Now, I know fuel is expensive and the trip from The Salty Zion to The Big Apple is a fair number of miles but seriously... a couple hundred sandwiches would kill them?

Although it might not be fair to assume that every passenger paid what I did. As any executive administrative assistant can tell you, depending on a number of variables like umm... the tides at the time of purchase or something, these seats could have been sold for anywhere from a hundred bucks to more than a thousand. All that says to me is that the airlines have seriously over-complicated their entire pricing model. Well, that and that I may have paid too much for my seat. My seat which is functionally identical to the other hundred and fifty seats in the coach cabin. Except that mine came with the handy feature of leaking sub-freezing air through the emergency door into my lap virtually freezing me into a hibernation-like coma. Don't get me started about their so-called blankets.

Call me old-fashioned but doesn't it seem pretty easy to closely estimate the cost of operating a given flight? Then, once you've done that, simply estimate how many passengers are expected on that flight and divide the one number by the other? After that, add your profit, which you'll earn by smiling at me when I pay you for the drink you should have offered me in the first place while I sit comfortably in a seat which actually reclines. Then you charge this price for seats on this flight starting at the first moment the tickets are made available and ending with the time the wheels leave the ground.

Of course if they did all that people might actually want to travel by air again and airlines like Delta wouldn't find themselves at the end of another fiscal year surprised that they had no idea how much money they were actually going lose before they are forced into another annual bankruptcy. And what would be the fun in that? Making money is very overrated, apparently.

To their credit, I was able to watch Sunday Night Football live and in its entirety courtesy of in-flight DirecTV. Too bad for the San Diego Chargers that didn't show up to enjoy it as much as I did.