Travel – Regular Guy

Safe Keeping

brian — Thu, 14 Nov 2019 15:19:11 +0000

Ah, that time in 2013 when I needed the safe in my hotel room for work documents, but it was locked so the security guy came to unlock it for me, and we found two cans of Bud Light inside the safe and then stood there and wondered aloud for a good five minutes about why someone would lock two cans of Bud Light in a hotel room safe and then leave them there.

London Reviews: Family Selfie Gallery

brian — Mon, 13 Aug 2018 21:08:53 +0000

[tribulant_slideshow gallery_id=1]

London Reviews: Icelandair

brian — Mon, 13 Aug 2018 18:24:48 +0000

This is one in a series of reviews/commentaries on things that happened during a recent trip I took to England with my wife and daughter.

When we started planning our trip, the flights over gave me the biggest concern. With all the ways flight prices can fluctuate, I worried about getting stuck in a deal that made no sense in the long run. There were so many questions:

Would we find an affordable non-stop price?
If we connect, where do we connect through?
What is too long of a layover? What is too short?
What time works best for our return flight?

In the end, we went with Icelandair from Dulles (between 90 minutes and two hours from home) to Heathrow through Reykjavik. The next best option would have been Aer Lingus from Philly through Dublin. I dreaded that drive, but that would have avoided our less than awesome experience in Cambridge on our last day (more on that another time) because the flight to return home would have been too early for us to go there.

But the choice ended up to be fine. We did have delays on almost every leg, but none of them made a serious impact on our trip. The biggest negative was the whole “use a bus to get to and from the plane in Iceland.” It was cold and rainy and the bus was packed. They obviously have more business than working gates.

That said, we had comfortable seats, and I enjoyed the entertainment options (even if I didn’t have headphones to plug in on the way to London and didn’t feel like springing for them). We ate on the way home and liked everything we bought. The crew members were pleasant and helpful. Plus, they didn’t lose our luggage!

I don’t know if they would be my first choice if/when we go to England again, but I certainly wouldn’t avoid using them.

Free Thoughts on ‘Hamilton’

brian — Thu, 28 Jun 2018 15:35:47 +0000

Here are “free thoughts” on the cast and performance from Hamilton, which I recently saw in NYC:

Michael Luwoye is a great Hamilton, but I wasn’t as blown away as I was led to expect from stuff I had read online. He was reserved in some spots and talk sang the beginnings to a bunch of songs. Maybe it’s his style, maybe it was a slow start for a Saturday matinee. However, I think he was really crying during “It’s Quiet Uptown.” He just didn’t always have the energy Lin can bring.
This may be blasphemy, but Daniel Breaker may be a better Burr than Leslie Odom. He had the snark and bitterness that I imagine Burr actually had from the beginning of the show. He was outstanding.
None of the women can touch the original trio even though I loved their performances. Lexi Lawson is a great Eliza. She worked really well with Elizabeth Judd, who is the standby for Angelica. That role is so hard because Renee Elise Goldsberry is such a powerful figure. Judd is younger and brought great believeability to the two as sisters. She wasn’t as powerful with some of her singing, but you saw the connection between the actresses. Joanna Jones was a great Peggy/Maria. I will never not love Peggy.
Euan Morton may be my favorite King. I think I have seen videos of 3-4 of them. I think his face just is more expressive than Jonathan Groft.
Anthony Lee Medina does a great job with Laurens/Phillip. He has an excitement that is natural, just like Anthony Ramos. He plays Laurens more like a horndog than a guy who may be obsessed with Hamilton, which was fun, but I liked the layered performance Ramos gave a little better.
Bryan Terrell Clark’s Washington just oozes cool. He doesn’t have the gravitas of Chris Jackson, but he makes the role his own. Unflappable.
Not the biggest fan of James Monroe Iglehart as Lafayette/Jefferson. His First Act accent is all over the place. And I am certain they play “Guns and Ships” a little slower so he can pull off the rap. Not horrible, just a curious choice for the role.
Andrew Chappelle played Mulligan/Madison. He was in the Public Theater ensemble and he been understudying on Broadway for a little while. He was good. He is not as imposing so he loses a little in Mulligan, plus it is hilarious watching him (he’s 31, but looks a lot younger) saying “I got ya’ll knuckleheads in loco parentis” to Igelhart, who is 43. I loved his Madison. He played him kind of foppish and effeminate, which I think underscored the weakness the character is supposed to have. He seemed more like Jefferson’s sidekick there so the casting worked well.
The ensemble member who played James Reynolds (Ryan Vasquez) was spectacular. You could tell he knew he had about a minute to be the biggest asshole he could be and loved every second of it.
I think the thing that goes unnoticed when watching the bootlegs is how active the entire cast and ensemble is throughout the show. You don’t see all that activity from a video.
“Battle of Yorktown” is just mindblowing. It was so hard to not stand up and fist pump along with them.

Parking Lot Problems

brian — Wed, 20 Nov 2013 13:03:12 +0000

I had to travel for work recently. I don’t have to do this often so it still has some novelty involved.

I have a few traditions for these trips. I try to sample as many local beers as I can. I have at least one room service dinner. And I always take good notes on where I parked my car at the airport.

I have good reason to worry about this issue. For this, like most things, I blame my brothers.

My brother Kevin took me to my first-ever concert. I will never forget that night. We drove down to the suburbs of Washington, D.C. and saw the Go-Go’s and The Police.

At the time, the Go-Go’s, the opening act, had the number one album in the country. The Police had the second-best selling record. (If you are sharing this with your kids, take a moment now to explain what an album is to them and how it used to be a really prestigious thing to be at the top of the charts.)

I loved every minute of the night. Well, every minute until we had to leave. You see, the concert followed a blizzard so it was pretty easy to forget where you parked at the Capital Centre since one mound of snow looked like another.

I can’t say we were the last ones to find our car, but we walked around for a really long time before we could head home. I never wanted to do that again.

Two years later, I went to Los Angeles for the Summer Olympics with my brothers Eddie and Dennis. We went mainly to see wrestling, but caught several other events, including a soccer game at the Rose Bowl.

The venerable stadium has a really small parking lot so not everyone can get a space. But it is surrounded by a golf course, giving everyone a place to park. Have you ever parked on a golf course in the daylight and then tried to find your car in the evening?

Yeah, this didn’t go too well. We saw a rousing game and then came out to the realization that we had no idea where we had parked. I vaguely remember a sand trap nearby and probably a green. In reality, I had no clue.

So we split up to search for the rental car. I remember wandering aimlessly through the golf course when I suddenly heard my name. I followed the sound and eventually came upon my brothers. Eddie found the car, drove around yelling until he found Dennis. Then they did the same to find me.

But I don’t have that kind of backup at the airport. I have to put a note in my phone to remind me the section where I parked my car. I also need to note the shuttle stop where I need to get off in order to find the car.

One day someone will hopefully invent something where you can pinpoint the GPS location of your car wherever you leave it. I bet that guy is wandering around a parking lot right now.

Time for a Trip

brian — Tue, 19 Feb 2013 13:23:35 +0000

I approached my wife with a little trepidation. I don’t know why.

I should have no worries asking her about the fun things I want to do. We understand that parts of our personality differ so we might each want to strike out on our own at times.

This works out for me both ways. I get to run off and have my fun, and I don’t have to go see “Les Miserables” and things like that.

But, this time, I had some concerns. So I just asked the question and hoped nothing bad would happen.

“Do you mind if I plan a trip to Vegas for myself to cash in my winning ticket?”

She looked at me funny for a second before saying something I never expected to hear.

“What winning ticket?”

Let me go back in time for a bit. My wife had a chance to go to Vegas last spring for work. She took a few minutes out of her schedule to go to the sportsbook to make a special purchase.

For most of the last seven months, the $10 ticket on the Ravens to win the Super Bowl sat among a pile of papers in our computer room. When Baltimore used an improbably touchdown pass in its upset win of Denver a month or so ago, I made sure to find the ticket and put it in a prominent place.

I didn’t truly expect to win the bet when I had Maria buy the ticket. I hoped my team would win the Super Bowl. I wanted my team to win the Super Bowl. But I couldn’t get my hopes up too much until the big game approached.

Now I have a trip to Las Vegas to plan. Once she remembered buying the ticket, I got full blessing to go. The payout won’t pay for the whole thing, but I can stretch those dollars if I don’t aim too high.

Besides, the last time I traveled to Sin City, I booked a low-cost room and ended up staying in a two-story penthouse suite because some nice person at the front desk took pity on me for some reason. Sure, the place didn’t have the greatest air conditioning (this was in July), and some of the furnishings may have pre-dated my birth, but I scored a penthouse suite with no real effort.

Maybe my lucky streak will continue. Maybe I will cash in my ticket and turn that into a huge windfall. Maybe I will get upgraded to another nice room.

In reality, however, the end of my five-year absence from adult Disneyland will probably result in staying up too late, eating too many rich foods and a fair to middling gambling record.

That doesn’t matter to me, however. Regardless of what happens, I will know that I paid for part of the trip on one bet I made, a bet which I had to wait more than half a year to win. That’s why I deserve this trip more than anything.

At the very least, I can place another $10 on the Ravens for next year and cross my fingers.

Wakeup Call

brian — Tue, 11 Sep 2012 12:00:15 +0000

Traveling often puts us at the mercy of other folks. You have to hope that the person in the seat next to you on the plane isn’t a jerk. You have to trust the taxi driver doesn’t try to rip you off. And you have to believe that the person who had the hotel room before you didn’t set the alarm to try and wake you up unexpectedly in the middle of the night.

Based on my recent trip to Arizona for work, two out of three ain’t bad.

The first one actually reflected my attitude as I took the cramped window seat in the back row of the plane so that the 6-foot-4 guy who was ticketed for that seat did not have to fold himself in half for the two-hour flight from Denver to Tucson.

I figured my aisle seat might actually get uncomfortable with him struggling to fit into the seat next to me so I took one for the team.

When my work colleague and I arrived, we jumped into a cab and had a nice ride to our hotel. The cabbie talked to us about our trip and gave us some advice on dealing with the heat. I have no idea if he took us a longer route than he needed to just to make a few bucks, but he made us feel welcome so I kind of doubt it.

The third example actually did happen, although I lucked out and had already woken up by the time the unplanned alarm went off. In fact, I was not even in the room when the radio started playing.

I wish I could say that this was the first time I had received this kind of unpleasant surprise. One time, some jerk set the alarm for three or four in the morning, sending me into a panic as I struggled to remember where I was and figure out what had happened.

On some trips, I remember to check the bedside clock to make sure nothing like this will happen again, but this time, I completely forgot.

Lucky for me, the person who tried to play this trick had the alarm set for 7 a.m. Sure, that may have been his or her regular wake-up time and they just forgot to turn the alarm button to the “off” switch when they left, but I like my sinister plot idea a lot better.

By the time the alarm went off, I had woken up, taken care of some work on my computer and headed down to the fitness center for a workout. I walked in the room with my headphones on, listening to the last few minutes of a podcast so needed a minute to discover the source of the other noise.

Hopefully the 45 minutes of the radio playing (better than the annoying buzzer) didn’t bother the person in the room next to me. A classic song from Madonna filled me room as I turned the alarm off so that may have softened the blow.

A Day at the Beach

brian — Mon, 03 Sep 2012 14:29:27 +0000

My big mouth gets me in trouble sometimes. That should not shock anyone. I have learned over the years, however, to not promise things I might not do.

I did not follow that guideline earlier this summer during a conversation with my daughter. She loves our family’s annual beach week as much as I do, so I told her we could make plans to head down to the beach for a day trip sometime.

I didn’t regret things at that point. When I saw a free Saturday on our schedule and proposed the trip, I felt a little guilty, but not enough to worry.

At that point, I felt fully confident I could get organized and pull off the trip. My only concerns at that point were ones out of my hands, specifically bad weather or rough surf which would keep us from enjoying the actual ocean.

So I started to get ready for the day. I had great plans of getting up early, packing the car and beating the traffic to the beach.

Of course, that didn’t happen at all. We got up early, of course, but getting everything ready took a little bit longer than I had planned. I don’t blame anyone – I just always underestimate for these kinds of things.

Then I forgot that I needed gas. Or maybe I remembered and just figured that we would be on schedule so getting gas wouldn’t put us further behind schedule.

None of that, however, had the impact that my fellow travelers had. Somehow, I picked the day when all the people who don’t know how to merge or handle steady traffic decided to head to the beach.

I do my best not to get all road ragey, but I could not believe my bad fortune that day. Since we do not have a superhighway to the beach – something I need to add to my list of presidential promises – we have two and four-lane roads with stoplights.

I can’t blame the roads for the almost five-hour drive to the Delaware shore. I blame the people who can’t keep a constant rate of speed and seemingly freak out when we lose a lane of travel. They should know to stay home on the day I want to go to the beach.

In the end, I forgot about all the stress and angst the moment my toes hit the sand. We had great weather, enjoyable waves and even saw some dolphins that came incredibly close to shore near the end of the day. I read a ton, we had a nice dinner and walked around town before heading home in the evening.

The drive home had some minor issues – I needed to stop a couple of times, including once for a soda so I didn’t lose focus – but those kinds of things didn’t seem to bother me as much as the delays on the way to the beach did. That’s good because leaving the beach in and of itself makes me feel bad. I didn’t need any other problems.

Pacing Myself

brian — Mon, 03 Jan 2011 14:29:41 +0000

When I found out last year that I had to travel to Indianapolis for business for a few days, I immediately began to make plans. I knew some sporting event had to fit into my schedule over the four days in November for my trip.

The Colts were out of town, but that didn’t matter much because I had to leave on a Sunday anyway. Indy doesn’t have a minor-league hockey team. They do have a junior-level team, but their rink was not downtown near my hotel (I wouldn’t have a car) so I didn’t even check to see if they played when I was in town.

My first choice of diversion was the Butler men’s basketball team. I really wanted to see a game in Hinkle Coliseum, where they filmed final game of “Hoosiers” The Bulldogs’ run to the NCAA final last season also made them appealing, but their one home game during my stay did not fit into my schedule.

That left the Indiana Pacers. I didn’t see them as a fall back. I just wondered if I could manage to find a ticket in the price range I wanted without having to sit in the nose bleeds. Luckily, the Pacers played twice during my visit, giving me a really good chance of seeing a game.

As it worked out, I ended up going to both. I’m not the biggest NBA fan, but found the first experience pretty exciting. Of course, it helped that I scored a ticket in the club level for $30 (my maximum) and spent the entire game watching from the restaurant in that level. They had a row of seats which looked out onto the court above one baseline. I had a fantastic view of Blake Griffin since the Clippers were in town.

The restaurant had a really good buffet (for another $30) and a much better beer selection than you would find in the seats. I never considered going to my section because of the great view and atmosphere in the restaurant.

Two nights later, I scored a $20 seat in the middle level, actually in the section below where I ate and watched the previous game. The Orlando Magic put up a much better fight than the Clippers did, but I still bailed early to go enjoy some other parts of Indianapolis.

I know the NBA has lots of problems, but I can see why it still resonates with many people. I have slowly come to re-discover the league thanks to Bill Simmons’ ESPN podcasts, and these games made me realize how fun the league can be.

Peanut Butter Burger

brian — Thu, 09 Dec 2010 21:07:49 +0000

One summer in college, I went to Los Angeles to spend the week with a few friends. One of them helped open my eyes to the many wonderful uses of peanut butter.

I had only believed that you could use peanut butter for sandwiches and crackers until this point. Shawn showed me that it could really jazz up a bagel, an apple or even a banana.

Not all of these uses appealed to me, but it definitely made me open my mind a little. I thought back to that week the other day as I sat at a bar in Indianapolis.

I had to travel there for work. Before I left, I asked some friends who knew the city for dining recommendations. One pub showed up on almost every reply I received.

After settling into my seat on Wednesday night, just a few hours after my arrival, I began to peruse their extensive menu. I kept flipping back to one page, the one with all of their burger selections.

They had a burger special which a friend of a friend highly recommended. He worked at the newspaper in Indianapolis for a number of years, and I try to always trust suggestions from fellow journalists.

But this burger – the Shewman Special – had a unique combination. They topped the thing with bacon, cheddar, lettuce, tomato and onion. They also mixed jalapenos in with the cheese. Those aren’t my favorite, but I could survive.

The final ingredient kept me both interested and worried as I considered my order. The burger had peanut butter on it.

I had mulled this situation over ever since I found out about the burger a day or so before I left. I love burgers. I love peanut butter. Would I love them together?

I sometimes have very hard and fast rules about food. Pineapple is fine, but it does not belong on a pizza. Same goes for veggies outside of onions, mushrooms and, even though I don’t like them, green peppers.

Too many people try to mix and match different foods just to shock people, but sometimes the combinations work. Would peanut butter on a hamburger fit in that category? After all, the burger has been named one of the 25 best burgers in Indy.

I considered the fact that the burger had so many different things on it, the tastes might all just mesh into one. I also considered the fact that I would be drinking a beer so it might not really matter what I ate for dinner.

Seeing as how I don’t know when or if I will ever return to Indianapolis again, I bit the bullet and ordered the Shewman Special. I agree with the guy who gave me the recommendation – don’t knock it until you try it.

I couldn’t finish the burger, but that had more to do with how huge the thing was than the taste. Once in a while I got a taste of peanut butter. Sometimes a jalapeño hit my taste buds. Mostly, I just tasted burgery goodness.

So thanks to the recommendation and my college friend’s peanut butter obsession, I came away a winner.