Like Geddy Lee Said, I Took Off - To the Great White North

09.02.2007

August became my month of travel for work. I started out going to Kansas City for a conference to hob-nob with the movers and shakers of the Justice Engine. Last week I made my way to Montreal for an introductory 3D training class for the 3D engine we use at work. Montreal. Canada. Eh?

Except for a childhood trucking excursion with Dad when I was 9 that led us a mile past the Canadian border, I've never been out of the country. Much less flown out of the country. Especially alone. I was a little less feared of air travel after my Kansas City experience, but now there's the international aspect to throw on top to make me a little anxious. But it's only Canada, they're an unofficial US state, right?

The flights to Montreal were (luckily) uneventful. Huntsville -> Atlanta -> Montreal. But once I got to Montreal, it's not just another state. I knew that it was French Canadian, and that everything would be in French, and more than likely also in English. I just didn't expect the French part to be so... prevalent? I follow the crowd de-boarding the plane and we walk through the Montreal terminal. Down hallways, up escalators. More hallways, more escalators. It felt like we made 3 laps around the terminal before I finally saw it. Customs.

 

After making my way through the line for about an hour, I finally got my first stamp in my brand new passport! Yes, I'm here for business. No, I'm not carrying anything I shouldn't. Let me pass, you hoser! So from customs I went and picked up my poor little checked bag that I feared would make its way to Greenland or something. The terminal had 5 or 6 luggage carousels. None of them were marked, and I heard no announcements as to which I should go to. I picked one at random, and a minute later my bag appeared! What were the odds? Do I really want to know.

From there I trundled through the airport wondering what my next move should be. I didn't have a car (the hotel I was staying at was supposed to be a couple of blocks from my training class according to Google Maps, so I was going to try walking around for the majority of this trip). My plan was to get a taxi and go to the hotel. Being Sunday, and with the hotel being downtown, I wasn't sure what my dining choices would be. I got screwed in Kansas City in a similar situation. It was just before 5PM and I was starting to get hungry. After getting some cash at the currency exchange, I found a Tim Hortons in the airport, right next the the suddenly long line to get taxis. I opted to dine on a lovely sammich while waiting to see if the taxi line would shorten. It didn't. After the hour long customs line, I stood in a taxi line for another 20 minutes before getting my assigned taxi (taxiteer?), whereupon I pointed to my destination, the Hotel XIXe Siecle, because I had no idea how to pronounce it. So 2 hours after my plane landed, I'm finally out of the airport and off to the hotel!

If ever there was truth in advertising, I would have to commend the Hotel XIXe Siecle. Here's the picture of one of the rooms as advertised on their website:

Here's what my room looked like:

The hotel featured fine European living. That equates to a void of vending and ice machines. They did have room service, so if I wanted any type of French variation of duck I would have been in business. But alas, I am but a country boy, so I went and wandered around the downtown Montreal area in search of (1) places to eat later, (2) that would accept Master Card, for although I had brought some cash with me, the taxi ride from (and eventually back to) the airport would take ⅓ of what I had brought.

I found a few places to eat. The first was actually a McDonalds! I went inside, expecting, well, McDonalds. I was not expecting the menu to be in French. Entirely in French. Luckily, holding up 3 fingers in a McDonalds is the international symbol for "I would like a #3 Combo, please", and the people working actually did speak English, so I wasn't completely screwed. Scared me a little, though.

Monday morning I walked about and played tourist. The training class didn't start until 1PM, and I had discovered the previous night that while Google Maps put the hotel and training class 300 yards away, it was really only half a block - a 5 minute walk, if I lumbered at my usual rate and followed all traffic laws. So I went around snapping pictures here and there.

The training class was nationally diverse. Teaching was Eric, originally from Paris. Joining him at times, acting occasionally as gopher, other times as comic relief during lunch, was Michael (from Ireland). My fellow students were Richard, a Montreal native (it was here I found out French and French Canadian is not the same thing - they actually speak different dialects of French). From Exxon out of Houston was Mikah - originally from Poland. This was all topped off by me, with my Alabama version of English. Luckily everyone spoke English. Except for me, everyone spoke a couple of languages.

From there is was 3 days of training followed by 3 nights of walking around soaking up the culture of Montreal - might have more on that some other day. The only other highlight was that I spotted a Lamborghini and had to take a pic for Brandon at work:

Weird thing to be a highlight, huh?

Thursday I checked out of the hotel and hung out at the airport for 5 hours until my flight was ready to leave. It's not that the flight was delayed or anything, I just couldn't think of anything I wanted to do before the flight left since I didn't have a car, plus I would have been paranoid about missing my flight the whole time. I did get a massage in the airport, though, from one of those "sit face down on this chair" places. That did wonders for my neck and shoulders while making a half hour fly by. Although the weather had been bad the previous night and earlier in the morning, my Montreal -> Cincinnati -> Huntsville return flights went off, once again, smooth and without a hitch. At 9:08Pm Thursday night I once again felt the humidity of Huntsville upon my face. Ahh, home!

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Kansas City: The Return

08.16.2007

Just a quick note that I've survived my adventure back from Kansas City. I've got a couple of pics and more details to post later, but for now "I'm back and ok, mom!"

Here's a few pics from the camera phone just to show how uneventful the trip turned out.

Some wierd KC sculpture?

Lunchtime in the ATL airport!

Waiting time in the ATL airport!

Lobby of the hotel I was staying at. Swanky!

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Kansas City Here I Come

08.13.2007

This week I find myself on a trip for work attending the American Correctional Association Conference in Kansas City, MO. While I'm sure the conference will be chock full of interesting and exciting tidbits to share, I'll save that for later. I'll start out by sharing my journey from my little hovel in Athens, Alabama to the big and exciting metropolis of Kansas City!

 

The first leg of our trip involves an itty bitty plane, in this case a 70-seat CRJ-700 traversing from Huntsville to Cincinnati. I lucked out on this flight in that there was nobody in the seat next to me (the flight was only half full), so my shoulder wasn't going to be crammed into anyone's face.

For those that don't know, I hate flying. I hate roller coasters, so it's only natural that I hate flying. I don't drink because I don't want to lose control of myself - well, the alcohol tends to makes me hot and sweat a lot - and flying is pretty much giving up all of that control. Add in that planes aren't made with people my size in mind. The first thing I have to do when boarding a plane is ask for a seat belt extender. Of course, the way I'm wedged into the seat I doubt I'm going anywhere, but there are FAA rules to follow.

I also have an anxiety problem, mainly at take-off. The roar of the engines,the shaking of the cabin, those fleeting moments when the god of gravity is toying with the plane about whether or not it should really get airborne. Inevitably there's a sharp turn while climbing at 70°. I am not exaggerating! But once cruising altitude/speed are reached, I'm usually ok. In preparation for this trip I made visit to the doctor last week and he prescribed something to help with my anxiety. He said that it wouldn't knock me out, but it should help with the anxiety. Cool, I'm willing to try anything.

Time to board and I get my seat with seat belt extender all to myself. I've got my iPod on and am cranking out some music to drown out the engines. My hands are sweating but not at the gallons/minute speed of past flights. Maybe these drugs are going to work? Engines roar, gravity god gets distracted, plane shakes a little and we're up. Hmmm, these little planes (before the smallest plane I've been on is an MD-80 seem to handle a little better. We fly a while and start to make the decent to Cincinnati. There's a little rumble as the landing gear lowers. There's a little rumble as we touch down. I had to look out a window to make sure we had actually landed, it was that smooth.

I also tried a little trick when hitting a couple of spots of turbulence, and this is incredibly dorky. On previous flights I tend to have a death grip on a seat, cushion, somebody, etc. Watching the ground swing to and fro, and even the wings shake doesn't help. My last flight to Miami I remember deciding to only look inside the cabin, but you can see it shake too. This time, I was going to try and treat it like a video game. I can do some insane piloting in games, so if I could just visualize that in my head, maybe I would do ok? We hit some turbulence and started to go lower. I closed my eyes and felt the plane shake, but I kept my (sweaty) palms in my lap. In my head I was playing Battlefield 2142, piloting a transport and swooping in, down, and over enemy bases. Damndest thing - it worked. Part of it was probably the drugs, but mental video game piloting helped too.

 

I had never been to Cincinnati before, so this airport was a new adventure for me. First thing to do on my list was to grab a little something to eat (McDonalds, because it was fast) and take another anxiety pill since it had been 7 hours. We were a little late leaving Huntsville, and our hour layover before going on to Kansas City was down to 35 minutes. That was until I had gulped down some food and taken my pill. At that point the outgoing plane was delayed another hour.

I wasn't as lucky in my seating arrangements on this flight. My shoulder was stuck to another guy's for an hour and a half. There was a thunderstorm we were trying to avoid, so I got to play mental video game piloting. I played a lot of mental video game piloting when making the final approach to KCI. Once the landing gear came down it felt like we were all over the place. Nose down, hard turn right, hard turn left. Even with the pills I was freaking out a little. Thankfully I had my superior flying skills to fall back on :)

 

10:35PM - Made it to Kansas City. My luggage made it too. I went and booked a shuttle to the hotel downtown I was staying at.

11:00PM - Where the hell's that shuttle?

11:15PM - Talked to the shuttle ticket guy. He thought I had gone on the 10:30 shuttle. He called for another one to come pick me up.

11:30PM - Where the hell's that shuttle?

11:38PM - Oh, there he is.

12:10AM - Greeted at the hotel with a "Good Morning, sir". People around here are as anal about that as Jerry, evidently.

Thus ends the first day of my trip. On planes. That I suddenly don't hate as much as I did when all of this started.

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Hot (and) Accountant Mother!

08.10.2007

The young'un and his entrepreneurial shenanigans have made it into one of the local papers! I like how Gina is referred to as "accountant mother". I'm going to start calling her that. It should make for some hot romantic conversations.

 

On the subject of hot, it's also been hot. Damn hot. Yesterday on the way home the external thermometer on the car hit 105°. I don't remember any 100+ days last summer. This summer seems to be making up for it.

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Not Quite A Juke Box Hero

08.06.2007

This weekend found myself and my close person first tier associate Jer partaking in Jerry & Russell's Day of Fun 2. The first Day of Fun, back in March, found us at the R/D store, the comic shop, and probably a couple of other things that I don't really remember in detail. Saturday we grabbed lunch, then went to the R/C store, followed by a trip to Wal-Mart for the off chance that they still had a Wii. After that we sauntered to the local game store and picked up a few games for the Three Hundred and Sixty. After that we went to Casa Boonies and commenced the playing of games.

Game #1: Gears of War.
Jer tends to excel at the shooting game, while I lean toward wrestling and driving games (although not together). We popped in Gears and found that we both suck at it. The controls weren't as intuitive to those of us trained on the PC in First Person Shooters as to the kids these days growing up on their hippity hop. It'll take a little time getting used to the controls on this one.

Game #2: Full Auto. I had read mixed reviews on this release title for the 360. But it mixes driving (for me) and shooting (for Jer) so I figured it was worth the bargain price I had found it for at my local CompUSA the previous weekend. Luckily, the controls were more intuitive for us than the Gears of War control scheme. We raced. We shot. We blowed up. While fun, it wasn't as graphically pleasing as I had hoped - there seemed to be a constant fish-eye perspective. Maybe I need to check those HD settings?

 

Game #3: Guitar Hero 2. Although not a rhythm game kind of guy, I had heard others speak of this game and it sounded fun - especially with other people playing. It also comes with a guitar controller, and I'm a sucker for gimmick controllers. We cranked up the Guitar Hero and played.

And played.

And played. No death. No destruction. No shooting. I think we played for about 3 hours. Nerdy middle aged white boys playing 1 level above air guitar. Hootin', hollerin', cheering each other on. I would sing along, usually trying to frantically get my fingers on the fret/buttons while singing "dammit shit shit dammit" to the beat.

Never a huge fan of the rock scene, I might have know half the songs. For the half I didn't know it was a game of trying to find the rhythm and then hitting buttons. For the ones I did know, I was playing a guitar!

There's an 80's version for the PS2. I have a PS2....

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