Business Trip Thoughts

June 6, 2008

As you know, I flew to New York for a business trip. (La Guardia, then to New Rochelle). Here are some thoughts:

1. If air travel was ever glamorous, those days are dead and gone. The whole experience reminds me of traveling by bus but without ventilation.

2. More people seem to be doing carry-on and the carry-on luggage appears to have grown to the size of elephants. Two guys on my trip back had guitars and huge stuffed backpacks as carry-on. I wanted to say, "Dudes, get real." As a result, I ended up with my regulation-sized carry-on overnighter between my legs because there wasn't any freakin' room in the overhead bins.

3. I've got to get an iPhone or Blackberry. I mean, really, I'm feeling left out.

4. The hotel's fire alarm went off repeatedly from 11:45 to 12:15 and the fire department showed up to assure us the alarm was screwed up. Then it went off again at 6:30. That really sucks.

5. I got chicken parm at the hotel restaurant for dinner and I needed to have my entire family there to eat it. I mean, I asked for a side Caesar salad and got a whole head of lettuce, then the meal itself was 2 full chicken breasts on about a pound of linguini. This is very generous, but shit, this is a lot of food.

6. My wife sometimes complains that she needs to spend more time around intelligent, well-informed people. I think I found where they all were--at my new client's office.

7. The CEO of the company's name is Mary and there's a big M on the wall in her office, which her assistant told me stood for "Mine." Hmmmm.

8. I actually did have a series of small miracles and made it to the last 2/3 of my son's band concert. They've improved a lot and it was great. One of their last tunes was "Vortex" by Robert Longfield, who was my band director in high school before he moved to Florida.

9. It's good to be back home.

10. Long Island Sound is pretty.

11. I had two drivers transporting me to and from the airport. Thomas and Carlos. Carlos was originally from Santo Domingo. Had nice chats with both of them. Thomas tells me the best food in New York City is in the Bronx (although he admits it's probably in Manhattan, but it costs three times as much) and Carlos is a Mets fan, but he seemed to know the lineup of the Detroit Tigers better than I did. He wants to move to San Francisco.

12. LaGuardia is a zoo.

Cheers,

Mark Terry