October has come to an end, and as usual, I've slipped on posting an entry for many weeks. As hectic as my travel schedule is, I really don't have much excuse for this. Everywhere I go has Internet capability, and I was able to watch a couple of baseball games on TV, so clearly, finding time wasn't an issue. To be frank, I've been lazy about posting, so what else is new?
My original thoughts on this post was to give a debriefing on my upcoming trips, but such was planned around the beginning of the month. Twenty-something days have passed, and I am five trips too late for that idea. Instead, I present the highlights of my recent five-city tour.
East Lansing, Michigan: Flying into Detroit, Michigan State was another hour and a half from the airport. Getting back to the airport was the same hour and a half distance. That was it, the highlight was leaving East Lansing. Moving on.
Atlanta, Georgia: Since the beginning of the year, I've been to Atlanta a handful of times, usually for work or just passing through Hartsfield Airport for a connecting flight. This trip wasn't any different, except for the fact that I was flying from Detroit to get to Georgia. The food in Atlanta is underrated in my book. I used to think the stomach-upsetting Varsity was all there was to its cuisine, but there are some real gems in this city.
Each time I visit, I am more and more impressed with the dining options. I'm talking about the pastrami at Goldberg's Bagels, the Ghetto Burger at Ann's Snack Bar, and all the free Coca-Cola products and fatty snacks at the Georgia Tech Conference Center. This past trip, I had the Bean Sprout Cafe's non-meat squid, which tasted and looked like meat, the Elvis Burger at the Vortex (medium rare topped with bacon and peanut butter), and a mess of pulled pork and fried jalapeno chips at Fox Bros. BBQ. One more thing about Atlanta, get a chance to visit the Clermont Lounge once, and only once, sometime in your life.
Miami, Florida: My second visit to Miami ever. Crammed between the Atlanta and Morgantown trips, I was limited to a little over one day to spend in southern Florida. The Miami airport is annoyingly long - I swear I walked a half mile to get to the baggage claim. The line to exit the parking lot there took almost 30 minutes, with a queue of only six cars. The trip started out rough.
One of the Florida International professors, however, turned it around. His reception was held at his penthouse of a 26-storey building right off of Collins Avenue in South Beach. The place was decorated with original artwork and marble accents, and it had a balcony with a magnificent view facing the Atlantic Ocean. I ate my share of caviar and quiche and other foodstuffs I cannot spell or pronounce. I retired the evening in a bed at the touristy Best Western the next block over. It had been a full week since I was last in my crummy futon bed in DC. On the eighth day, it was back home for a couple hours to recharge for the drive to West Virginia.
Morgantown, West Virginia: Miami to Morgantown, trading beaches for mountains. My second visit to the Lakeview Resort, just outside of West Virginia Univeristy's campus. This time they finally got the Internet to reach out to all the hotel rooms. They also managed to not have the toilet spew water from its base when I flushed - I only needed one room instead of the three they had me in last time. Highlight of every trip to West Virginia? The chicken biscuit at the Sheetz in Frostburg, Maryland.
Fayetteville, Arkansas: Flying into an airport whose abbreviation is XNA can never be good. It sounds like I flew onto another planet. In fact, I may very well have, as this place had immaculately spotless Wal-Marts. Fayetteville neither disappointed nor exceeded any expectations. Their BBQ (Whole Hog cafe) and fried chicken (AQ Chickenhouse) were excellent, as was expected for a Southern city. Besides the food, there were strip malls and grass fields, also not a big surprise. I believe the busiest part of the town was the XNA airport, as people from all over are in and out of there due to Sam Walton's little Five & Dime stores he started in Bentonville.
Second most memorable part of the Arkansas trip? The possibly slow-witted Wal-Mart cashier that was compelled to crinkle her eyes and ask "Whuuuudt?" (translation: What?) three times before computing the meaning of the words "do you do cashback." The most memorable part? As I leave her cash register, I hear her next customer asking some other question, followed by a familiar "Whuuuudt?" I knew right there I was still on Earth, particularly, in America.
Friday, October 31, 2008
Thursday, October 9, 2008
I saw a homeless man sleeping in the laundry room
I delayed it for a day. I was too tired the night I got back from Alabama. There was almost two weeks worth to do, starting from the tail end of my roadtrip to Florida, mixed in with my running gear, and topped off with the laundry I collected in Auburn. The basket was overflowing, I needed to get it done that night. It didn't happen.
I got to the 10th floor laundry room and immediately sensed something was wrong. The lights were out and the garbage can, normally situated behind the open door, was in the middle of the little room. I stopped in my tracks - felt like something was alive in that room. That something had two eyes staring me back from behind the hinges of the open door of the dark room.
The elevator was immediately summoned back to the 3rd floor, transporting a pile of dirty laundry and a mixture of unexpected disbelief and controlled panic. I spoke with an unsurprised apartment security operator, who in turn dispatched an officer to the building. The whole interaction felt like I was calling about exterminating a rat. I hid in my apartment the rest of the evening, a mountain of dirty clothes taking up space on the floor. I just wanted to do laundry. It didn't happen.
I got to the 10th floor laundry room and immediately sensed something was wrong. The lights were out and the garbage can, normally situated behind the open door, was in the middle of the little room. I stopped in my tracks - felt like something was alive in that room. That something had two eyes staring me back from behind the hinges of the open door of the dark room.
The elevator was immediately summoned back to the 3rd floor, transporting a pile of dirty laundry and a mixture of unexpected disbelief and controlled panic. I spoke with an unsurprised apartment security operator, who in turn dispatched an officer to the building. The whole interaction felt like I was calling about exterminating a rat. I hid in my apartment the rest of the evening, a mountain of dirty clothes taking up space on the floor. I just wanted to do laundry. It didn't happen.
Wednesday, October 8, 2008
Opelika
It's my first day back in the office. Incidentally, it is also the first day my feet don't feel as if they are engulfed in flames. Yes, I finished the 10-mile foot race that I alluded to a couple weeks ago, a race that I finished in an hour and 34 minutes, only to be whisked off to Atlanta that same afternoon so I could drive another hour and 45 minutes to Auburn, Alabama. So there's two big steps I took in one day - running an entire 10 miles, and visiting Alabama for the first time.
I'll get into the Army Ten-Miler, or ATM as it's colloquially known. Not much of a story here, really, besides the fact that I finished it, with a sub-10 minute/mile pace (9:25 specifically). The weather was very brisk that morning, perfect conditions for me to avoid that "I hate life" and "why am I doing this" feeling I always encounter when it's just sweltering hot.
Before the race, I met up with some friends at the Lockheed Martin 'Hooah' tent, where I managed to snag a free moisture-wicking running shirt from The Company (as it's colloquially known within the turnstiles). The hoopla within the starting area was a mix of electricity, anxiety, and confusion. For some folks, 10 miles was just a training exercise for a marathon, and for others, like myself, it was the marathon.
A cannon went off and the race started at 8 o'clock, yet I was still standing still. There was two heats, and I signed up for the slower paced one, which was scheduled to take flight 10 minutes after the faster pack. So 8:10 rolled around, and I was officially punching in my timecard.
The race takes you around the southern portion of the city, with the 6.5 mile mark at the Capitol, and with it starting and ending at the Pentagon, in Alexandria. Running takes place in the streets, and on major highways, when bridges are invovled. Without giving the mile-by-mile rundown, here's some random details about the race:
1) There's 2 bathroom options during the race - port-o-potties or trees along the Potomac. I ran past many port-o-potties with lines formed behind them. I opted to empty my bladder well after the race was over, as I didn't want to waste precious race time.
2) Water station management is a real art. You need to decide how much you need/want to drink, since excess will make you want to hit the bathroom, and dehydration is not much of an alternative either. Something that I need to work on is drinking while running, as I did find myself nearly choking to death after a misaligned paper cup splashed a decent amount of Gatorade through my nasal cavity. As an aside, the water station areas always look like a scene out of Bourbon Street, where there's trash and wetness on the ground everywhere you look.
3) The post-race food offerings were plentiful, albeit somewhat low quality. The bagels, muffins, and cookies were pre-packaged, each flavor collectively sitting in their respective shipping boxes to be ravaged by exhausted runners. The only thing fresh was the bananas, probably trucked in by the thousands a few days prior to the race. Bascially the food tent looked like as if vending machines were in flea market format. Regardless, I ate about three of everything.
It wasn't even 11 o'clock in the morning and my body wanted go back to bed. But the day was far from over, as I had a 4pm flight to catch, plus the drive from Georgia to Alabama. Not to mention spending the following two days in the Opelika-Auburn area. I'm exhausted.
I'll get into the Army Ten-Miler, or ATM as it's colloquially known. Not much of a story here, really, besides the fact that I finished it, with a sub-10 minute/mile pace (9:25 specifically). The weather was very brisk that morning, perfect conditions for me to avoid that "I hate life" and "why am I doing this" feeling I always encounter when it's just sweltering hot.
Before the race, I met up with some friends at the Lockheed Martin 'Hooah' tent, where I managed to snag a free moisture-wicking running shirt from The Company (as it's colloquially known within the turnstiles). The hoopla within the starting area was a mix of electricity, anxiety, and confusion. For some folks, 10 miles was just a training exercise for a marathon, and for others, like myself, it was the marathon.
A cannon went off and the race started at 8 o'clock, yet I was still standing still. There was two heats, and I signed up for the slower paced one, which was scheduled to take flight 10 minutes after the faster pack. So 8:10 rolled around, and I was officially punching in my timecard.
The race takes you around the southern portion of the city, with the 6.5 mile mark at the Capitol, and with it starting and ending at the Pentagon, in Alexandria. Running takes place in the streets, and on major highways, when bridges are invovled. Without giving the mile-by-mile rundown, here's some random details about the race:
1) There's 2 bathroom options during the race - port-o-potties or trees along the Potomac. I ran past many port-o-potties with lines formed behind them. I opted to empty my bladder well after the race was over, as I didn't want to waste precious race time.
2) Water station management is a real art. You need to decide how much you need/want to drink, since excess will make you want to hit the bathroom, and dehydration is not much of an alternative either. Something that I need to work on is drinking while running, as I did find myself nearly choking to death after a misaligned paper cup splashed a decent amount of Gatorade through my nasal cavity. As an aside, the water station areas always look like a scene out of Bourbon Street, where there's trash and wetness on the ground everywhere you look.
3) The post-race food offerings were plentiful, albeit somewhat low quality. The bagels, muffins, and cookies were pre-packaged, each flavor collectively sitting in their respective shipping boxes to be ravaged by exhausted runners. The only thing fresh was the bananas, probably trucked in by the thousands a few days prior to the race. Bascially the food tent looked like as if vending machines were in flea market format. Regardless, I ate about three of everything.
It wasn't even 11 o'clock in the morning and my body wanted go back to bed. But the day was far from over, as I had a 4pm flight to catch, plus the drive from Georgia to Alabama. Not to mention spending the following two days in the Opelika-Auburn area. I'm exhausted.
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