I don't know what people are talking about, people don't look like ants. You just can't see them. At 29,000 ft, you can't even see cars. I know, I'm currently 29,000 ft above the earth, or at least Kansas which some people may believe is part of the earth.
Why am I on a plane? In all honesty I have no idea. Compaq is sending me off to Detroit Michigan to meet with the enemy, EDS. They have some form of seminar going on and figured it was a good time to ship me and Dan off to see them in action. We have to give a presentation while we are there, but I haven't bothered figuring out what it is going to be about.
So let's step back a step, its 7:30am and I'm at the airport, I get a patronizing look from the United Airlines guys when he tells me I'm at the wrong counter and that I need to go to the American Airlines counter. My first time being old enough to remember flying, how am I supposed to know that there is more than one counter. I finally do make it to the correct line where the pleasant woman behind the counter gives me her best fake smile.
"Did you pack your own luggage?"
"Yes"
"Has your bag left your side?"
"No"
"Has anyone given you anything to take on the plane?"
"Besides the mysterious package that they asked me not to discuss, no..."
For future reference, people in the airplane industry have no sense of humor. Good thing we got here early. Dan arrived just as I finished getting through security so I wait on him. Dan doesn't look like a terrorist so he got through much quicker than I did. Next we hopped in line to have our carry on luggage and ourselves scanned for metal. We picked the obvious line (it had the cutest girl in it) and proceeded to wait... and wait... and wait. They would let one customer through and then about 5 flight staff who also had to check in but didn't have to wait in line, and for some reason they all choose the line we were in... It's ok, that's why we're here early. We finally get up to the front of the line where the aforementioned cute girl sticks a stroller through the metal detector... It almost looks like it's not going to fit, but somehow it does. I set my laptop down on the conveyer belt along with my carry on luggage and it proceeds to suck them in. I step through the metal detector... nothing... whew. Not that I'm worried, what's the worst they can do? The metal detector one line over goes off and the 80 year old woman is immediately tackled and stripped of her clothing. Tied up, they pass her back through the detector to confirm that it doesn't go off again. Darn airport security...
Meanwhile, I'm waiting... this ladies stroller is now jammed inside of the x-ray machine... apparently it fit in, and probably would have fit out but the scanning person decides it should be checked to make sure it's not concealing an assault rifle of some sort and tries to unload it early. No big deal, I'm through and... hey wait... my laptop is still in there! I here gears churning and something plastic sounds like its crunching. The security people are now worried that I've been standing in one place for too long and decide they better scan me for metal again. I assure them that I'm just waiting on my laptop, which is definitely not a bomb... again, no sense of humor. Eventually they manage to retrieve the stroller and my laptop and we are alowed to continue.
Boarding the plane, the crew decides to check one more time to see if I'm a terrorist. I'm stopped for a 'random' inspection. For those of you who don't know, random inspections are where they pick people based on whether or not they are terrorists, and search for bombs and knifes. Of course I didn't have one, but it couldn't hurt to have a full body cavity search, right?
I suppose everyone who travels a lot has to go through this, but the preflight safety instructions were quite amazing. The head stewardess would read aloud while evenly spaced stewardesses would demonstrate the action with their stern faces. It mimicked some form of bizarre interpretive dance as they stood and mimed holding a mask to their faces and breathing normally in perfect unison. I have visions of some Broadway musical that takes place on a plane now... now that I think of it, that's probably not a bad idea.
Taxiing down the runway I wasn't sure whether I should be nervous or excited, seeing as this was my first real time on a plane. All kinds of important questions flash through my head. What if we crash and die? Will anyone miss us? What if we land in the wrong city? Do they really bring us little bags of Planter's peanuts or do they just do that in movies? I was expecting worse G-forces from the take off but it really wasn't too bad. Seated by a window I looked out at the ground as it slowly took off from beneath me. I'm not panicking yet, this is a good sign... Being that we were flying east, there was nothing much to see, the farms, cows, horses, people, and cars slowly turned into just cars and farms, and eventually just farms. No idea if we were just too high to see them or if people just didn't own cars, horses and cows this far east.
None the less, the view at 29,000 feet is quite spectacular. Nothing but ground and sky for as far as the eye can see. How could any person ever tire of just gazing out on the world and appreciating the earth's beauty? This will never get old! After 15 minutes of staring out on the earth's beauty I was bored out of my mind. Perhaps the earth would be more beautiful if it weren't located in Kansas which I was looking out over. Time to find something else to do. There were two magazines on board, both published by American Airlines and both terribly boring. They did have some helpful safety advice, things like don't bring gasoline or bombs on the plane. Hence the reason I have my laptop out, busily typing away. The stewardess dropped by mid-flight and offered 2 crackers, no peanuts. Like 2 crackers are going to fill me up... oh well... Rather uneventful journey overall, but then when you're flying I guess that's what you're looking for... You really don't want to have any entertaining stories to tell as most of them would probably involve spiraling to your death...
Ever wonder how the theory of relativity works? It doesn't really, it's a sham. They say that the faster you go as you approach the speed of light, the slower time goes for the faster object. By that theory I was aging slower and time was traveling slower because I was flying high above the earth at speed closer than that of people on the ground to the speed of light. It all sounds good, but they leave out the fact that traveling near the speed of light, you cross a lot of time zones. Time zones, the real mystery behind relativity. I seem to have aged slower because I went from Mountain Time to Central time. I suppose that I could slow my aging by traveling faster, but I think I could do it easier by just moving closer to the North pole. By decreasing the distance I have to travel to cross the international date line, I think I could jump a year into the future just by walking around the north pole for an hour, or even travel back in time by walking the other way... The landing was much better than expected too... No flames or craters, no screaming just a pleasant landing and an announcement that it was safe to vacate the premises in a safe and orderly fashion, as quickly as humanly possible. Don't stop, don't look back.
St. Louis, Missouri
The humidity in St. Louis is awful... Colorado Springs is a desert climate so we are used to having no humidity and I feel like I'm swimming here... The airport in St. Louis is HUGE. We disembarked at gate D26 and had to board again at gate C31... several miles away. Even with the super fast walkways which entertained us to no end, it took hours to walk from one end of the airport to the other. Ok, well an hour and 15 minutes... and I had to set my clock forward an hour somewhere in there, but it was still a long walk. And now I'm hungry. Finding food wasn't hard at all... this place had more places to eat at than the malls in Colorado Springs. It would go Terminal, Restaurant, bar, Restroom, gift shop, terminal, restaurant, bar, restroom, gift shop. I'm guessing there are about 150 different terminals just on the fact that C went from terminal 1 to 32. A, B, D, and E probably have just as many. That leads me to believe that people in St. Louis must LOVE to drink. 150 terminals means 150 Bars too... I don't think the city of Colorado Springs has that many bars, let alone in just the air port. We sit down at the Samuel Adams bar and proceed to wait... and wait... and decide maybe we shouldn't get food after all, just water for me (and a dirty look from the waitress) and a beer (Sam Adams) for Dan and then it's off to the next plane. They let Dan right in but of course the springs airport has called ahead and warned them that I'm coming and so I'm stopped at the gate and searched again. This time I'm seated near the back of the plane just behind the wing and in front of the engine. I'm not sure what's more disturbing, the fact that the engine keeps sputtering and sounding a little like percolating coffee or the fact that the wing is wobbling. Not just a little, I'm sure the wing is tacked on with gum and string, but even if this was by design, if the wing wobbles this much on the ground, what's it going to do when it's trying to support 200 tons of metal? On top of this, the trash tucked into the seat pocket in front of me doesn't inspire the faith you should place in the crew of the plane. Not that I think that a clean plane will fly any better than a dirty one, but if they forgot to take the trash out, maybe they forgot to re-ductape the wing on, or fill the tank up with gas. I consider getting out while I can but it's too late, we start Taxiing out onto the runway and the seat belt sign goes on... There's a malfunction though, the pleasant little ding that tells you the light changed doesn't go away. Imagine being forced to sit through a test of the emergency broadcast system, only the tone doesn't go away. I'm sure that's not normal, perhaps there is a real emergency, but no one else has said anything... they've all flown more than I have... maybe this is normal until we get off the ground and I just didn't notice it before.
Colorado Springs isn't that big an airport, hadn't thought much about it before, but now that I'm sitting in a plane waiting to fly off to Detroit I notice it. Unlike Colorado Springs where Taxiing involved turning onto the runway and flying away, In St Louis it involves waiting... and more waiting... and waiting some more because 15 other planes are trying to get off the ground on the same runway. Granted the waiting for 30 minutes on the ground after pulling away from the terminal isn't too bad, or at least it wouldn't have been had I not been looking back and forth between the wing as it dips dangerously close to the ground and the trash that is flowing out from the back of the seat while listening to the pleasant sound of the engine directly behind me percolating gently at 100 decibels and the warning alarm coming from the seat belt sign which is still piercing our eardrums. It will all be over soon, one way or another.
Miraculously we make it off the ground with not one, but two wings. The engine has drowned out the emergency warning and now I can barely hear it. I decide not to worry about it, at 33,000 ft, it's too late to worry going back for emergancy repairs. If we really needed them, we wouldn't survive the landing anyway. I look out at the ground from 33,000 ft and again reflect on the earth's beauty... at 33,000 ft, the earth looks a lot like it does at 29,000ft. I decide that I can always admire the earth's beauty later and turn to one of the American Airlines magazines tucked in behind the trash. Midway through the flight I'm brought some weird snack mix with no peanuts.
Detroit
Detroit's a lot like St. Louis when it comes to waiting, we circle Detroit for another 30 minutes which is kinda surprising by how quickly we made it from St. Louis to Detroit but eventually we make it to the ground and make the trek to the luggage claim. How often does the average person look at their luggage? In my case I don't actually own any luggage so I borrowed a friend's. Having just spent the last 5 hours time traveling into the future, I can't seem to remember exactly what my luggage looks like, or even what color it was. We decide to stand near the end of the luggage carousel and hope that it will be the only one left when the luggage makes it to the end. Lots of luggage makes it to the end so we break down and start rooting though random luggage 'til we find the one that has stuff in it that looks like I might wear it. Then we think better and take someone else's luggage filled with stuff I wouldn't wear because we all know I have no taste in clothes... We're chased out of the airport by people who think we stole their luggage but manage to escape on a giant Avis shuttle which whisks us away to the relative safety of the Avis car lot.
Avis: Would you like the car upgrade to a Cadillac?
Me: No
Dan: Yes, works paying for it
Me: Can we get one with ejector seats and rocket launchers?
I'm in a totally new frame of mind now that I have a new car with lots of buttons and I'm not paying for it. I'm happily pressing buttons, possibly causing spikes to shoot out from our tires and smoke screens to go off when suddenly a voice starts talking to us.
"Onstar, how can I help you?"
"Umm... who's there?"
"Onstar, you paged us?"
"Umm.. cool... sorry I think I just happened to hit the button by accident..."
"No problem, if you need us, we are there for you... click... idiot... err is this still on"
"Cool".
Driving in Detroit isn't all that bad, traffic wasn't too bad but the roads themselves were awful. Trash strewn about on the sides of the highway like a landfill, and plenty of potholes that make the Grand Canyon look small in comparison. Still, not a lot of bad drivers and everyone seemed to be protecting their new cars. Now that I look at it, there are an awful lot of new cars here. There's a new Ford, there's a new GM, there's a new Chevy... there just seems to be something missing... No matter how hard I try, I can't seem to figure out what's wrong here... I mean there aren't a lot of trucks, but then this isn't Colorado Springs where 50% of the vehicles on the road are trucks or SUV's so that can't be the problem. Dan finally pointed it out to me, no foreign cars. Every person in detroit owns a new American car. Alright, I guess I can understand the American car thing, as Detroit is the car manufacturing center of the US, but why all new? Turns out during the winters in Michigan they still use salt on the roads, and not just a little bit, much like in old times when they would salt the earth to make sure nothing will ever grow in an area again. Aside from melting ice, it also prevents trees from sprouting up in the middle of the highway between all the cracks and pot holes. It also tends to rust out the bottoms of cars. The few non-new cars I did see tended to be just the frame as the entire body of the car had turned to rust. Driving down the road we occasionally had to dodge doors, trunks, and bumpers as they would fall off the car in front of us. When in Detroit, you don't buy a car... you just lease one and hope that it stays together long enough for your lease to expire. Of course, if it does collapse, there are plenty more around, as long as you buy American.
I imagine that it would be pretty dangerous to drive around in Detroit with a foreign car... here you are driving down the road in your little Honda when suddenly coming up from behind some kids pull up and start tossing gang signs at you that look a lot like the things you see on the back of a car. Leaning out the window he be shouting 'Your in the Ford's 'hood, you best be leaving' at which time they would pull out bats and proceed to demolish your car.
It's still early (well, were from Colorado so every thing is 2 hours early here) and Dan would like to see the MGM Grande Casino in Detroit. What the heck, I got nothing better to do. The first thing we noticed upon entering the Casino were the people who carried the drinks. Pretty young girls wearing little gold bathing suits, and it was then that we decided we liked the Casino. Of course with all the activity going on, and the loud noise, and flashing lights, are attention quickly changed to a different cute young girl in her little gold bathing suit. Not to say I have a one track mind of course, there were plenty of other things to look at, the restaurant for example, the cute tall blonde girl carrying drinks, the roulette table, the nice looking black girl with great legs walking away, the slot machines, all of the wonderful gold bathing suits.
We have dinner first inside the MGM, the waitress is kidna cute, but no personality so we rush through dinner and pay the bill. $60. Again, thank God Compaq is paying all the bills. Shortly after dinner we find out that you can become a free member at the Casino which includes a free dinner... Doh!
Dan had his heart set on Black Jack so we stopped at the first table we came across and Dan introduced himself. "I'm Dan, prepare to surrender all of your moneys to me... OMG! $15 minimum bet?!?!? Umm.. I think I'm at the wrong table, is there another one around?" We stopped again at the second table we ran into, this time with a $10 minimum bet and sat down to play. Most people don't know, but Black Jack is team game. You sit down and it's everyone against the Casino. We both put up our $10 bet and we're dealt some cards. I looked at my cards and said 'Hit me' and the dealer looked at me in shock while everyone else quickly jumped in. "What he means to say is that he stays" and the dealer nodded her head and went on to Dan. Well, I thought I wanted to get another card, but perhaps I'm wrong. Dan got the same kind of reaction I did when he attempted to stand and was quickly dealt a card anyway. During our time there we learned all about using hand signals to declare our bet (since it would be recorded by the video camera and no one can say they didn't get what they wanted, but we learned all the nuances of standing on your 12 because the house happens to have a 6 showing. The idea is that it's safer to let the house drawn two cards and bust than risking busting yourself. The funny thing was, everyone knew all the rules but us and they had no problem sharing their wealth of knowledge with us less fortunate people. Even the Dealer continued to tell us when we should stand and when we should hit, when to double and when to split. Not like she was playing with her own money... what did she care if we did better than the Casino did. Dan was on a roll, he quickly doubled the $40 he started with while I, being the shrewd masterful gamer that I am, lost everything in about 10 minutes. Bah... well, Dan's having fun, let's go look at the Slot Machines.
Anyone really understand how slot machines work? I walk around the countless little old men and women with their air tanks and try to understand exactly what you need. There are so many different types of electronic slot machines now and each with different rules. Some looked like Monopoly, others just random pictures with lines that ran randomly from item to item. For my first attempt I decided to try a good old fashioned slot machine with the word Bar written all over it. I'm not sure why they say bar, perhaps it's a marketing ploy to get you to spend more time at the bar, but then again, free drinks delivered by scantily clad women kinda discourage it so maybe I'm wrong. In any case, I choose a 25 cent slot machine and put a dollar in just for good measure. I've got my choice of pulling a handle or pushing the button which is kinda funny, but I'm a computer nerd, buttons are just fine. I push the button and it spins and spins and spins and all of the rollers come up on completely different things... but I WIN! Woohoo! 50 cents! I don't quite understand how I win since nothing is lined up and everything on the screen looks different, but what the heck. I push the button again, and again it comes up with random stuff scattered about the screen, only this time I've lost. Well, I've got four more tries, I push the button again, and get more random assortments of meaningless symbols and lose again. Three more times, three more random assortments of symbols and still I'm a loser. I don't understand how the first one was a winner but the others all lost... I think it may be like the eye tests you get where they keep asking you which one is better when everyone knows nothing has changed and they are just going to give you whatever they planed the first time. Slot machines are like that, they don't care what they display, they've all ready decided if you win or lose.
Alright, lets try something else. A friendly old lady recommends I try the video poker, sure, why not. I sit down at the next machine, stick another dollar in it and have it deal me a hand. A 2, 3, 4, and a 5, that's like a small straight! Woohoo! I toss my seven and get another crap card and am declared to be a loser... Bah, who am I playing against. I suppose it would help if I understood the rules to poker, but I thought I was doing pretty well. Hey, I thought this was only a quarter slot, it says I'm done... Oh well let's see how Dan's doing.
The dealer has changed and this new guy has torn Dan apart. He stares down disheartened at his much diminished pile of chips, now consisting of $10 which will be his next, and possibly last bet. I smile knowingly, now Dan knows what it's like to loose. I sit down at the table just as the current dealer stands and the first dealer comes back. I guess they change out every 40 minutes to keep the dealers from going batty. I have another $20 to spend and it will keep me entertained 'til Dan's ready to go and out of money. Besides, I'm probably due for some good luck. Well, apparently I'm not due for good luck... Four hands of cards later I'm broke again, but Dan's grinning like a mad man because he's back to $80. I stand back and watch a bit longer as Dan continues to win money. He decides to quit at $105 and we head out of the Casino after taking one last long look at... the cute blond girl serving drinks... Damn she's hot!
It's a 30 minute drive to the Embassy Suites we're staying at and it turns out to be a pretty nice hotel. Well it better be, we're paying $180 per night which disturbs me a bit since I'd be just as happy staying at the Motel 6 for $30 but then again, Compaq is paying for it, so who am I to complain. The room comes with 3 free drinks, but I don't drink so I toss my card. Dan heads off to his room and I head to mine to drop off stuff and then we meet back at Dan's room to discuss the meeting for the next day. I knock on his door and walk in to see that he has the TV turned to some channel with a fully naked guy walking around on stage. I look away from the screen as quick as possible wondering what in the world Dan is doing watching some guy strip on TV.
Disclaimer - I'm not homophobic, I have friends that are gay! I know, that's what homophobes say everywhere, like racist people say that they have a black friend as if that proves their not narrow minded, but really I'm not, and really I have several gay friends, it had just never crossed my mind that Dan might be gay. Ha! well, he's not turns out it was the show Fear Factor and one of the challenges they had was for all the contestants to appear nude. The next person on stage happened to be an attractive woman, but for one second there I was a little surprised... Dan's a little disappointed in his room as he was told he had one of the nicer rooms and it turns out they gave him a handicapped room. While not bad in itself, the sink is designed to accommodate a wheelchair so there is not counter space any where which left Dan feeling, well... a bit handicapped... That's ok, he says he can deal with it. We head off to bed after learning that the people on Fear Factor are going to be eating hissing cockroaches next(umm... separate beds in separate rooms thank you very much).
4-16-02
Daylight savings was a week ago. I hate daylight savings because it means having to get up early. I'm now two time zones away so instead of getting up an hour early, I'm now getting up 3 hours early. This does not please me... On top of that, were still thinking colorado time so I was up late last night trying to get to sleep. I sure hope Dan's more awake. The hotel staff is kind enough to leave me a newspaper at my door, but frankly I don't really want it so I leave it at the door. At 7:30am I head down to get Dan, he's not more awake... Fortunately, the EDS building is just across the road and shouldn't take us more than 5 minutes to just walk there. Neither Dan nor I are up for walking so we hop in the Caddy and proceed to take the very first wrong turn we can. This wrong turn unfortunately dumps us out on the interstate heading south. No big deal, we'll just turn around at the first exit and come back. Little did we know the next exit was 3 miles away. Me find a place to turn around and head back north on the interstate only to find that the exit to Crooks road (likely named after the people who picked the pricing structure for the Embassy Suits) is backed up.. for two miles. I take back the semi-nice things I said about detroit traffic... the highway is still flowing fine but this exit, which leads to a tech center is just awful. We make it to the off ramp at 8 o'clock exactly... Here Dow pays for us to fly all the way out to Midland to go to a meeting with them and EDS and were late. We call our EDS contact, Jeff, to let him know were running late. Fortunately, he's running late too and we should be able to beat him to EDS anyway. We look at our directions again and realize that while we may have gotten off on the correct street now we were supposed to get off it again immediately and were still heading the wrong direction. Thanks to the amazing feature of detroit known as the Detroit Left or a turn-around, it's really pretty easy to make U-Turns but all of your directions are always confusing as they involve things like take the first turn-around on this street so you can get back to the street you just passed and turn right on it. We finally got back onto the street we needed to be on to get to the EDS building and proceeded to drive past the street it was on. I can blame the getting off on the interstate on Dan, but since I was driving and somehow missed the pretty darn obvious turn I'm going to have to take the blame for this one. We eventually make it to the EDS building only to find were at the wrong one.. sigh... one building down we finally make it to the correct EDS building a mere 45 minutes after leaving the hotel 5 minutes away.
I won't bore you with the details of the meeting with EDS, partly because it's probably covered in an NDA somewhere, and partly because it is really pretty dull. That's not to say I didn't learn a lot, just nothing that would interest any of you. I did find one part fairly interesting and that was when, during the discussions of the issues of gathering personal info, one lady stood up and said "If I go out on the Dow Gay and Lesbian website that might mean I'm GAY but that's no ones business". There was stunned silence as we tried to figure out if she was just picking an odd example of things that shouldn't be gathered by security or if it was a desperate attempt to get some attention or to come out of the closet. Wow... We have a Gay and Lesbian website?
We return to the hotel and Dan mentions that he's not exactly pleased with the room he's got and asks if they have a non-handicapped room. Not a problem, they quickly switch his room with one that was open. One of our Dow people thinks, "Hey, can I have his room?" but sometime between the 3 nano-seconds that Dan asked for it and the time it took for him to ask it was booked. Ahhh.. but what do we care, Dan got a new room :) Checking into my room I see that the news paper has migrated from the door outside my room to my table.
Dinner at the hotel was good, and we got a chance to sit down with some people from Dow that we talk to all the time but never get a chance to see but nothing terribly exciting I need to write about. After dinner we turned in for the night and I quickly checked my email and browsed for the Dow Gay and Lesbian website before going to sleep.
4-17-02
Waking up isn't any easier today, and it's nice to see they leave me a new paper outside my door. I take yesterdays paper and toss it out of my room onto the floor too... Having made the trip the previous day, getting to the EDS building took a LOT less time today. The meetings didn't seem to be any quicker, and while I got a lot out of our first day of meetings, this one was pretty dull and a bit over the scope of my job. Not to say it didn't help me understand exactly how this project all fit together, but a lot of unnecessary information. We make a stop back at the hotel (where both today's and yesterdays paper has made it back onto my table) before heading back out for the night. Since Dan and I have never been out of the country we decide that tonight would be a good night to drive to Canada, the Great White North. Just south of Detroit. Yes, south to Canada. We take Jeff and Jennifer from EDS along with one of Jennifer's friends Lisa. Jennifer's cute, Lisa's a babe.
People from detroit are funny, when you ask them for directions they just point to their hand and assume you know what this means. Apparently Detroit is hand shaped so when you want to show someone where you live, you point to a place on your hand. In this case Canada appears to be just off to the side of their hand. We get some helpful hints for crossing the border from the detroit residents like don't make jokes, look 'em in the eyes, and remember your from the US. Apparently people forget that all the time.
Border Guard: "What your nationality?"
Clueless Americans: "Iranian... err wait no... um... were we from Abu Dhabi? Something close to there I think... maybe the United Arab Emirates? That sounds closer..."
Border Guard: "United States?"
Clueless Americans: "Yeah, that's it I think!"
We take the tunnel under the river to Windsor in Canada and reach the border. Despite what people say, the border patrol people going into Canada are very friendly. We were asked the standard questions like where we were from (which we got right on the first try) and why we were coming to Canada. The guard even told us a few nice places to visit when we told him we were here for dinner. We didn't go far into Canada, actually probably never making it more than four blocks from the border, but the difference was amazing. Clean streets that were well maintained, friendly people, and even the crosswalk signals looked friendlier. Much like Saint Louis, Canada is made up of almost entirely bars, restaurants, and gift shops. We stopped at a bar called 'Loose Screws' first and had dinner. The waitress, who looked a lot like Brittney Spears, was gracious enough to take our American Money and return to us Monopoly money. They claim that it was actual Canadian money, but I think we all know the truth. It's actually pretty clever. You give them good old american cash, and they give you monopoly money in return and tell us that it's Canadian money. Like we stupid americans know what real Canadian money looks like anyway... they could of handed us sheets from the morning's newspaper and we wouldn't have known better... The food was good, although my Sheppard's Pie could use a bit more flavor. Over at the bar, a little old lady, I'd guess around 70ish sat down at the bar. I'm not sure where she came from, but this little old lady was HAMMERED! She sits down next to this young burley guy and proceeds to flirt with him, not just a little but really flirting and touching his arm and stuff. The funny thing is that this guy has probably been drinking through the entire Hockey Game (Toronto and Detroit I believe) and he's either too drunk to notice or too drunk to care. Beer goggles as thick as coke bottles, he probably thought some cute young girl was hitting on him and that he was going to get lucky. We decided to leave before it got TOO weird (too late) and figured, what better place to go when you've just finished up at a bar, than another bar.
Three bars later we stopped at out last bar for the night, whose name I never did figure out but it had the pleasant sign that read, "Nice Kitchen, Cool Eats". Lisa by this time has probably had a bit too much to drink and for some reason mistakes the sign for saying, "Nice Chicken, Great Tit's". I can get the Kitchen/Chicken thing, but I have no idea where she came up with Tit's from. maybe that's what she had on her minds, up until then I really hadn't been thinking of Tit's. (well, unless you count our time at the MGM Grande... mmm... blonde girl in gold swimsuit...). That and across the street there is a store that sells Cuban Cigars. Unlike the US, Cuban Cigar's are not illegal in Canada, and Lisa decides that she needs to have one. With a little coaxing, she convinces everyone to join her for a Cigar (well, everyone but me... I think they REEK and don't cave to peer pressure easily). They light up and I gag on the smell. I don't know what the facination with cigars are, but I think I'd rather eat those hissing cockroaches than smoke a cigar. Dan doesn't seem to be too impressed with the taste either but he'll be darned if he's going to let them smoke without him. According to Dan, Cuban Cigars taste a bit like Firecrackers.... Mmmm... sounds yummy.
Our entertainment was made up of watching the table next to us. Two girls, one pretty, the other drop dead gorgeous are being hit on by every single guy in the bar. Two guys would head over, chat for 15 minutes or so and after being shot down would eventually sneak away. As soon as they moved away, the next set of guys would try their luck. It's about midnight now and this last guy has been really trying hard, but has apparently had enough to drink that he hasn't figured out that this girl is completely uninterested. She's ignoring his stories, and trying to hide her face in her hands to mask her embarrassment. He's been at it about 45 minutes before he finally does leave. I can't help it, I go over to get their attention. "Excuse me, I'd just like to apologize on behalf of my Gender." Then went back to my seat. I don't think it helped her embarrassment any, but I think she deserved an apology and it was pretty funny. We had one more place to stop before heading back to Detroit. Across the street was a set of stairs leading up in to an alley with a sign that said, "The Light at the End of the Tunnel". We were finally able to figure out that this was a place of adult entertainment, but we still really had no idea what it was. Again, Lisa, who has gone way past having too much to drink decides that she needs to go see what it's like inside. Dan and Jeff are both too embarrassed to go, but Jennifer seems to be up for it, so what the heck. The three of us head across the street, up into the darkened tunnel to see... an attractive lady dancing about a poll... Yes, a strip club. Frankly none of us have ever been to one before (I know, I'm such a prude, I make Mother Teresa look like a wild woman) so we peek around inside and then quietly walk back out. Lisa and Jennifer both commented on how empty it was inside, I of course didn't see anything at all in there but the girl on stage (who was clothed by the way) I suppose I could have drawn it out a bit longer until she wasn't but by this time everyone is pretty tired and it's time to head back across the border.
The American border patrol is not nearly as friendly as the Canadian Border patrol. The lady at the border scowled down at me.
"Citizen ship?"
"Armenian... errr.. American... we never get that right"
"Is this your car or is it a rental?"
"It's a rental, we were going to get a smaller car but at the last..."
"Do you have your rental agreement?"
"Yeah, it's right here along with..."
"Pop the trunk please."
"Sure can, do you need to see any..."
"Are you all from Detroit?"
"Nope, me and Dan aren't, we are visitin..."
"Where are you from?"
I stretch out my arm and point to my naval.
"What's that sir?"
"well, if my hand it Detroit, then Colorado Springs is kinda where my Belly Button is." I contemplate showing her the Panama Canal between my toes, but again, security people have no sense of humor.
"Please move along"
"Thanks for your time, we ..."
"Don't make me shoot you, move now."
By the time we make it back to the hotel, Jennifer, Dan and Jeff are pretty well sobered up, but Lisa seems to just keep getting drunker. She's now to the point where she's having trouble standing. Fortunately she's not driving, Jennifer is, so after checking to make sure she's ok to drive we let them go. Now that I think about it, it would have been fun to have her spend the night, maybe she should have driven. (just kidding, prude here, remember?)
4-18-02
The morning came way too early, being that we were in Canada past midnight the previous night and now were getting up again at way to early colorado time for a technical meeting this time. It's at a new location, but Dan's pretty good about remembering the way and we make it on time. I drop the previous two days worth of newspapers out into the hall along with today's paper. Again, boring meeting you don't want to know about (well, two actually). But we ended the day by heading out to a Bar (big surprise there) called Big Bucks (or something like that). This place is HUGE. It's a brewery and a restaurant, but the interior of this place is bigger than the new stadium they built in Detroit. I can barely see from one end of the room to another. Near the entrance, a group of Michiganders sit and watch a radio broadcast... no seriously... hey, if you want to watch the radio, that's fine with me. It's still hot and humid and our waitress is wearing a turtle neck. I can't help but notice a tattoo on her arm "Italian Princess" and one on her neck, which I'm guessing she is trying to hide with the turtle neck. Being that I'm curious, I ask what her tattoo is and why she's wearing a turtle neck. Sure enough they aren't alowed to display Tattoo's at work so they are forced to cover them. Being that she has a bird on her neck, she has to wear turtle necks. Somehow, she's managed to keep the owner from noticing the one on her arm which is probably slightly less noticeable than the great wall of china, but the one on her neck, about the since of a lady bug, she has to cover up. Weird Michigan people.
It takes a while to get our food as we arrived after 3 tour busses did (really) and while they have no problem seating that many people, they apparently don't have the cooks for it. My Buffalo burger is pretty good, tastes like a cow burger, but costs a bit more. We hang around for about 3 hours and decide to say our goodbyes. Kathy (one of the EDS people) gives us a hug good bye. It's kinda an eye opener that the people at EDS are so nice, despite the facts that they are our competitors. So much for going into the belly of the beast. Dan tries to talk me into splurging on the room service, but I'm ready for bed so I head in, check my email, sigh when I see that I now have three untouched newspapers on my table, and it's off to bed.
4-19-02
As if we haven't been getting up early enough as it is, we decide it's a good idea to head to the airport real early in case we get stuck in security. I happily take my three newspapers and dump them back out in the hall, but not before swapping my four day old newspaper with my neighbor's new newspaper. Someone's gonna be a wee bit confused today. It's a good thing we left early, while driving down the interstate we see that due to an accident, they have closed off the exit to I-94. The detour runs us, and everyone else on the interstate several miles off the path we want and the detour signs aren't these big flashing signs, they are roughly 1 ft by 4 inches in size placed every 2 or 3 miles on random signs. Every time I think I've missed what I'm looking for we manage to spot one. Eventually we make our way back onto the highway but have used up what we thought was extra time to go through security.
After dropping off our car we make it to the airport to find that the security line is actually very short. No one else decided they needed to get to the airport two hours early so we quickly move up to the X-Ray machine. I dump out all my change, my keys, and happily step through the detector. I doubt that I'm going to get randomly selected for another random security check... BEEEEEEEEP!!!!!! Err... I set off the metal detector? Sure enough, I probably would have made it through security fine, but I seem to have forgotten my Cell Phone. I assume the position again as the wave the wand over me again to make sure I'm not carrying anything metal. BEEEEEP! Beep? I know I'm not carrying anything now, but it goes off when she waves it across my pocket. I root around in my pockets some more and manage to find some lint, but nothing that should have set it off. Maybe it was just a fluke... I smile at the security guard, she doesn't smile back. BEEEEEEP! WTF?!?! There's no buttons near there, there's nothing in the material, I don't have any staples in my hip. By now I've attracted several agitated security personnel, and it seems Dan's in the process of being searched too. To make a long story short, and to avoid some of the more embarrassing issues, after scanning me and my pants which are now inside out, we are finally deemed to not be security risks and let into the terminal. I still have no idea what kept setting off the metal detector, maybe someone was sitting back behind a curtain with a remote button to set it off and just decided to amuse themselves. "This guy looks entertaining, lets see if we can get security to give him an anal probe!"
I swear, I'm really not that fascinated by tattoo's but I can't help but notice the girl sitting across from me has one... on her right breast. She's got a pretty low cut shirt and every time she leans forward her shirt hangs open where you can just see it. I can't quite tell if it's a cat or an 'A' or something. I consider asking her what it is, but decide that she may not appreciate the fact that I've been staring down her blouse for the past half hour trying to figure out what it is. Eventually we board the plane and I don't look out the window. By now I'm pretty sick of flying, it's lost all of it's novelty, and once again, no peanuts... cookies this time.
Back in St. Louis we wait at one of their many bars (I swear I don't normally spend this much time hanging out in Bars...) and watch the other people about. For example, there's a group of six people who sit at a table next to us, and every one of them is wearing suspenders.
"Hey Ma, when are we gonna git back to the farm, Bessy's a missin' us by now"
"Quite Mary Lou and eat your dinna like Mary Beth"
Thankfully our flight is departing soon and we leave.
Our final flight for the day, and hopefully for the year, is back to Colorado Springs... Ahh... home sweet home... and on top of that, I won't have to go through security again when trying to get off the plane. It's interesting at 31,000 ft this time when I look down I see only clouds and blue skies. I assume that we are banked so I'm just looking up, but looking across the plane it seems we are level. I look down again... sky as far as they eye can see... freaky. Still no peanuts, were back to Snack Mix and I'm convinced that planes really don't serve peanuts anymore. Flying into Colorado Springs I manage to find my mom's house from the air... Yay me...
The Colorado Springs Airport shares it's runway with Peterson Air Force base, so it wasn't too unusual to see three F-15's landing at a runway next to us. We get ready to unload and we all stand at the door... and wait... and wait some more.
"This is the Captain speaking, apparently there has been a security breach at the airport and it has been evacuated. We can not let you off the plane at this time."
I consider just turning myself over to airport security as I'm convinced it's me they are after. We sit on the plane another hour before we are finally alowed to leave, although I never did find out what had happened from the airport.