Where You Been?

(Made it to the gym today.)

I just discovered a cool site that appeals to the list-making geek in me. It's called Where I've Been, and it's apparently one of the most popular applications on the Facebook that all the kids are talking about.



I just got to add New Hampshire and Maine to my map. I like the "been there"/"lived there"/"want to go there" choices, but I'd love to be able to differentiate between the places I've been and the places I've been through (i.e., didn't stay overnight in). Still, it's cool enough to have a spot in my del.icio.us blogroll now.

Road Food: Barbeque and Beyond in Winston-Salem, Part Two

After a great meal at Lexington Barbeque on Thursday night, I was looking forward to trying a few other places. First up on Friday was lunch at Sweet Potatoes, a little bistro in the Arts District, which was, conveniently, only a block from the Convention Center. They were packed at lunchtime but I sat at the bar and had an absolutely fantastic steak sandwich with blue cheese dressing, and the Best. Sweet Potato Fries. Ever. Crispy and nicely salted on the outside, creamy on the inside. They were heavenly.

Unfortunately my second barbeque experience was totally different from the first. First of all my phone totally LIED TO ME and Don's Barbeque was nowhere near my hotel, as it had claimed. Not a big deal, it just meant I had to drive out to the edge of town. I actually welcomed the opportunity to explore a little bit more of the city, as otherwise I was pretty much seeing my hotel by the Interstate and the two blocks around the convention center.

Don's is apparently one of the only Western-style places in Winston-Salem, which is why I decided to give it a try. Alas, it wasn't that great, but I don't know if that's because I don't like Western-style (more ketchup in sauce, therefore sweeter & wetter) as much or if it just wasn't very good. Either way, it was a let-down, although I will point out that even "not very good" barbeque is still really really good, especially when consumed with an ice-cold mass-produced domestic beer.

On Saturday, after another fantastic lunch at Sweet Potatoes (summer

Sweet Potatoes

sausage with fried onions & corn relish, cup of three-cheese bacon soup, and seriously you have to eat at this place any time you're anywhere near The Triad), I packed up the truck and headed home. First, though, I had to make one more barbeque stop, this time at Clark's in Kernersville. I got a pound of coarse chopped to bring home, since it had been made clear to me that I wouldn't be welcome back in my home without it.

I was so pleasantly full from my lunch that I didn't even break into it until I was home, and then it was just to have a couple of bites. But the next day we made ourselves some sandwiches with the 'que and the barbeque slaw, which was their vinegar-based cole slaw with some of their barbeque sauce mixed in.

Clark's was, in my opinion, even better than Lexington Barbeque. Their coarse-chopped was actually big chunks of shoulder, and the tenderness of the meat was perfectly matched to the tanginess of the sauce. The meat benefitted from a night spent marinating, and once we had piled the barbeque slaw on top, it made for a perfect sandwich. Sorry, no pictures, I ate it all before I thought to grab the camera.

I didn't get a chance to try Little Richard's, and I did see a sign for an Eastern-style barbeque place, but I'll be back in W-S in January and both of those places (along with the upscale restaurant that the owners of Sweet Potatoes are apparently opening) and already on my "to eat" list.

Road Food: Barbeque and Beyond in Winston-Salem

So here I am sitting in a hotel in Winston-Salem, North Carolina. I'm down here for a few days on business, attending the South Atlantic Fire Exposition.



This was a long drive for what is going to be, I expect, a pretty boring show, so I was not too excited about going. I got a little more excited, however, when I learned about something called the North Carolina Barbeque Society's Historic Barbeque Trail. When it became apparent that my path would be crossing the trail, I suddenly got a little more interested in my first-ever trip to the Tarheel State.

So I spent a little time poking around on Chowhound, looking for barbeque recommendations in W-S and the surrounding area. Also, since I would be driving for seven hours to get here, I looked for recommendations in the towns along I-81 and US-202, and I was not disappointed.

I stopped off for lunch in Staunton, VA, at Mrs. Rowe's.

Mrs. Rowe's

This restaurant has been around for 60 years, specializing in fried chicken. So of course that's what I had, along with some mac & cheese and greens. The restaurant itself felt like a Shoney's on the side of any highway anywhere in America, but don't be fooled -- the fried chicken is something special. Juicy and flavorful, with a light coating that didn't overpower the chicken. I wasn't particularly impressed with the sides, but the excellence of the chicken more than made up for that.

Once I arrived in W-S and checked into my hotel, my thoughts turned immediately to BARBEQUE. There are, of course, several difference schools of barbeque in America: Kansas City, Texas, Memphis, etc. I had no idea that North Carolina alone had three different styles, or that I was in the home of one (Lexington-style) that I had never heard of. Since I'm barbeque-agnostic (I love 'em all), I was excited to check out a new style, so I drove down to the city of Lexington to try the pork shoulder at Lexington Barbeque (aka Honey Monk's). This was, based on the reviews at Chowhound, the acknowledged leader in this particular style, which calls for smoked shoulder only, with a thin, vinegar-based sauce with no ketchup whatsoever.

The place was packed on a Thursday at 6:00, which seemed like a good sign. We sat down and ordered the basics: coarse-chopped outside brown, cole slaw, hush puppies, beans, and a sweet tea.

This was among the best barbeque I've ever had. It was a little surprising upon first bite to not be getting any ketchupy sweetness (and, truth be told, I do like KC-style

Lexington Barbeque

the best), but the meat was perfect. Not so cooked that it was falling apart, it put up a bit of resistance as you chewed it but gave up terrific smoked flavor while doing so. Outside brown is totally the way to go -- the additional smokiness and slight caramelization was fantastic, and the thin sauce imparted a vinegary zip and just the slightest bit of heat from the red pepper flakes. The sides were also great; the cole slaw (vinegar-based, no mayo, just like DJo makes it) carried over the flavors of the sauce, the hush puppies were light & airy, and the beans were smoky & sweet and were improved by a spot of (Texas-style) barbeque sauce.

Given the preponderance of barbeque joints littered throughout Winston-Salem, I was skeptical of the need to drive 20 miles to go to a particular joint, but rest assured the additional effort was worth it. I think any time you're within 50 miles of Lexington you are required to make the drive to Honey Monk's. You will not be disappointed.

Mrs. Rowe's
74 Hwy 250 (Rowe Rd)
(At the junction of I-64 and I-81)
Staunton VA

Lexington Barbeque #1
10 Hwy 29 70 S (Mocksville Rd)
(Just off old Hwy 85)
Lexington VA

Joe Beef!

Tonight my co-worker Dean and I had dinner at Joe Beef, a Montreal restaurant which certainly lived up to its name. That web page doesn't really say anything about the place -- if you're interested, check out what the folks at eGullet have to say.

The room is very small, only 26 seats, and the two-tops along one wall are crammed in so closely that the beyond-adorable servers have to move the table in order for you to get to the banquette seating. (I don't usually go on and on about the attactiveness of random women but this woman was seriously cute). The seating arrangement fostered a sense of community that I don't usually care for when I'm eating, but it turned out to be very comfortable. Many of the diners seemed to know each other as well as the waitstaff -- since we went on a Wednesday I'm guessing it was mostly regulars, though the room was full, and we only got a reservation due to a last-minute cancellation.

There were lots of things on the menus which sounded very tasty -- filet mignon, trout on a bed of lentils, roast guinea hen, Dover sole, mussel soup. They have a huge wine list including several wines by the glass. We started with a half-dozen oysters on the half shell -- a few from British Columbia and a few from Price Edward Island -- before moving on to the main course.

After mulling over the guinea hen as well as the "Pot Pie" with boudin sausage, we decided to split the cote du boeuf, which was a rib steak. Actually it was more like an entire rib roast cut into steak-sized pieces -- there must have been 2 lbs. of beef, plus a giant rib bone. Seriously, this thing was huge. I'm planning to bring the bone home and make my dogs the happiest dogs in the world, and I figure that if Montreal gets snowed in over the next few days Dean and I will be able to survive for at least a week on the leftovers.



In addition to being large, though, the steak was great -- tender, juicy, and well-prepared in a horseradish wine jus with greated cheese on top. The Swiss chard tart seemed almost unnecessary in the face of so much steak.

As we were getting our coats, one of the owners (Fred) came out, introduced himself, and thanked us for coming. It's the sort of thing you might expect from a brand-new restaurant, but for him to be doing it two years in is a nice touch. All in all it was a very nice meal in a great atmosphere and I would certainly recommend it to anyone who's in Montreal and looking for a big, hearty meal.

Montreal

I just flew into Montreal, and boy are my arms cold! I actually landed last night, when it was a balmy 3 degrees Fahrenheit (which converts to minus JESUS IS IT COLD celsius) and after locating my rental car I drove to the hotel our business hosts had procured for us.

I was in Montreal to train the Montreal fire department in the use of our saws. More accurately, I was there to train the trainers, the eight guys who will eventually teach the 2,200 firefighters. Even more accurately, I was there to stand next to the guys who actually do the training, and look all official and vice-presidential and representative-of-the-companyish. So it's a lot of standing around in the cold or sitting in a conference room.

In fact, it's a pretty big deal. Montreal is the first big "get" of my Cutters Edge career so I'm very excited. We'll have one of our saws on each of their trucks, and it's very important that the guys who use the saws know what they're doing. Hence the trek to the frozen tundra.

Once I had parked my Le PT Cruiser, I made my way into the hotel, which is actually a B&B, A l'Addresse du Centreville. It's a very nice, clean spot that I would certainly recommend to any visitors to Montreal. Nice bedrooms, shared breakfast, close to Rue St. Denis and downtown Montreal. We ventured out in the bitter cold and found our way to Les 3 Brasseurs, a brewpub where I dined on a sumptuous choucroute:



A perfect way to celebrate the Year Of The Pig, I thought.

The details of the day would bore you, so suffice it to say it wasn't as cold as it had been, the pompiers were very enthusiastic, and tomorrow we'll be cutting holes in the roof of an abandoned house. Tonight we dodged bundled up Habs fans on their way to the Bell Center to eat at what is, apparently, a Montreal institution, Bar-B-Barn. The menu options run the gamut from chicken to ribs. I had the combo.

Dubai, Day Six

What a difference moving up my departure by a day has had on my mood. I still woke up ridiculously early (though today I made it to 5:00 AM) but I really didn't mind since at the end of the day I'll be getting on a plane to go home!

I worked the early shift at the expo today so I got out of there at 2:00 PM. Just enough time to hit the gold and spice souks before it got dark, except when I got in a cab the driver told me it was lunchtime, and the souks wouldn't re-open until 4:30 or 5:00. So I headed back to the hotel room to try to sleep a bit (since after three nights of trying to get to sleep, I now have to stay up until 3:00 AM to catch my flight), and when I looked outside at 5:00, the traffic was backed up the entire length of Sheikh Zayed Road. I'd probably be looking at an hour or more in the cab just to get there. Not gonna happen.

So now I have a few more hours to kill, as I try to figure out how to watch 'Heroes.' NBC.com has the full episodes available online, but not for people outside the U.S. What's up with that?

No more posts for me until at least Thursday, once I'm home, safe and sound, and hopefully back onto some semblance of a normal sleep schedule. I've never had my sleep this screwed up on a trip before -- getting old sucks.

Dubai, Days Four And Five

Sunday was the first day of the reason I'm here, and it was the most boring day I've ever spent at a show (and I have been doing this for five years). I think I talked to a total of five people in the eight hours I spent in the booth. Just mind-numbing, but it wasn't like you could just go off somewhere and read (or nap, which is what I really wanted to do). I couldn't even figure out how to get online, so I lugged my computer around all day for no reason. Since the powers that be at the exposition company cancelled all the outdoors demos about a month ago (after our tickets were already bought) I don't even have the physical exertion of cutting things up to act as a diversion.

I did take some pictures of Sheikh Zayed road at dusk on the way home, but of course you can't see them because the nice people at Etisalat, who have seen fit to add flickr.com to the list of blocked websites. At this point, I'm even afraid to write anything bad about them, since I figure they're monitoring everything I do on the computer. I'm sure they're all smart guys who love their wives and dress well -- I just wish they'd let the Internets enter the country without plugging up half of the tubes.

Today my dad and I are splitting the day up -- Tom is at the booth now and I'm going to head over on a couple of hours. Ordinarily I would have taken this opportunity to spend the morning doing something interesting, but I woke up at 4:00 AM and was unable to get back to sleep, so I've pretty much spent the morning zombie-like, shuffling between the bed (where I'm unable to sleep) and the computer (where I'm trying to download the just-aired episode of Battlestar Galactica but am, I believe, being thwarted by those same fine gentlemen I talked about a second ago).

We also found out that our plan to rent a car on Wednesday is out, because the law recently changed and you are now required to have an international driver's license to rent a car here. That leaves us with pretty much nothing to do on Wednesday, though I did do some more research and found out there may be an "old" part of town on the other side of the creek that contains the gold souk, spice souk, and fabric souk. We'll check that out.

So yeah, my mood has been better. I really just want to get home to my pregnant wife and two-year-old daughter, but alas I have 50 hours to go before my flight!

Dubai, Day Three

I thought this jetlag would be gone by now.

Didn't do a whole lot today -- just a trip over to the Exhibition Hall to set up our products, and thence to the Mall Of The Emirates, because any time you have an opportunity to see an indoor ski slope, you should see it.

We walked around for a long time as my dad looked for a power adapter for his computer. I think it took us about 40 minutes to walk from one end of the mall to the other, and in that whole time I saw almost nothing that I couldn't have seen an an upscale mall in the States. Lots of high-end fashion labels, and the same book, toy, shoe, and electronics stores you see everywhere else. I did have fun pretending I was interested in buying a $9,000 diamond bracelet (and the clerk came down to $3,900 pretty fast), and I looked for some clothes for my daughter, but even the "authentic" local outfits were made in Bahrain.

One of the guys we're sharing a booth with said he felt like being in Dubai could be like being in any major American city, and I know what he means. The other day when we visited Dubai Creek I was hoping to find some sort of "real" Dubai. I try to break away from the touristy parts of whatever city I visit -- I enjoy being a tourist but try to get at least a small sense of what a place is like outside the normal tourist paradigm. A lot of times for me that simply means walking without purpose around a residential district, or spending as much time as possible in the city center and/or the oldest part of town. It's a quest to find the essence of a place, if I may be so pretentious.

Now I haven't been here for very long, but I feel like there really is no essential Dubai. Or, rather, the essential Dubai is found in its various malls and 70-story glass high rises. I guess its not surprising that, in a country where only 15% of its residents are natives, there isn't going to be a thriving "old town," but I am a bit disappointed. One of the reasons I love to travel is the opportunity to see something different, something unlike my own world, and this isn't it. This is just my world -- the American world of capitalist consumption -- transported to the desert and writ large. And that's fine, for what it is, but it isn't all that interesting to me

Which brings me back to The Mall Of The Emirates, which feels like the apotheosis of Dubainess. As such, it's worthy of appreciation, but I'm sure I could appreciate it more if it were in my nature to enjoy shopping for pants, scarves, cell phones and jewelry.

That said, I did get a really good shwarma in the food court.

After we came back from the Mall I struggled to stay awake. I thought about taking a walk around the immediate environs of the hotel but was feeling disillusioned (and lazy). When I met up with my dad for dinner -- we just went to the bar in the hotel, where I had some very nice lamb chops and a Guinness -- he told me he had done exactly that and found it to be an actual neighborhood, with houses, small shops, etc. So I guess if I hadn't been so cranky I might have discovered a little bit of what I claimed I was looking for. Oh well, maybe tomorrow. After talking a bit, we did decide that on our last day here we would rent a car, leave the city proper and explore the environs (read: desert) a bit. So I do have that to look forward to.

Dubai, Day Two (Part Two)

(Note: it looks like there won't be any more photos posted until I get home, because apparently between last night and this morning the government here decided that www.flickr.com is "inconsistent with the religious, cultural, political and moral values of the United Arab Emirates" and has blocked the site. Since I don't have an account on Etisalat, I can't log in to register a complaint.)

So after buying the bad batteries, we decided to hop on an abra and head back across, then catch a cab back to the hotel as both of us were starting to feel the effects of jetlag. We filed on, but just as the boat was leaving the dock all of the Arab and Indian guys hopped off, leaving us and a group of about 8 other tourists.

As we motored away the operator asked us to pay. Instead of the usual 1/2 dihram, he asked for $30 (US). "What? Why?" we asked. "For the tour," he said, pointing at the other occupants of the boat. Apparently we had unknowingly jumped on a boat that was doing a tour of the creek instead of just going from point A to point B. Nice of him to let us know after we had pushed away.

We told him we didn't want to go on the tour, so if he could just drop us off at the next abra loading spot, that would be great. He apparently decided not to do that, and continued to motor up the creek, giving the worst "tour" I've ever been on. As we passed by the Sheraton (with the giant sign saying Sheraton) he'd say, "there's the Sheraton." Let's just say I didn't get much of an appreciation for Dubai from our tour guide.

So the tour finally ends (we went up one side of the creek and back down the other) and the guy asks for our money. He's already willing to come down in cost and asks for "20." I give him 20 dirhams and he says "no, 20 dollars." I tell him he's crazy, I'm not going to pay $20 for a lousy tour that I didn't know I was going to be forced to go on. I give him the 20 dirhams and he asks for more. I dig around in my pocket, avoiding the 100 dirham note I have, find a 5 dirham and give it to him, telling him "that's all I have" as we exit the boat.

And that's how we got a $30 tour for 25 dirhams ($6.81) for the two of us. And I have to tell you, I still feel like we got ripped off.

After a quick nap at the hotel to ward off jetlag we set out for dinner. Under instructions to find someplace not too far away I settled for Spectrum On One at the Fairmont Hotel. I figured we'd go with a hotel restaurant since they are pretty much the only places allowed to serve alcohol and I was looking forward to a glass of wine with dinner. It's got a pretty cool gimmick -- six separate kitchens: Indian, Chinese/Thai, Arabian, Japanese, European, and a raw bar. It has a full menu from each to choose from.

My dad and I, perhaps overwhelmed by our choices, went the easy route. I chose the Arabian mixed grill, which offered six different kinds of meat, and he chose the special Turkish mixed grill, which offered six other kinds of meat (though unfortunately one was kidney). So, a dozen different preparations of beef, lamb, and chicken!

Unfortunately, since today is the Muslim New Year, all restaurants were dry last night so we didn't get any wine to go with our meat bonanza. On the plus side, we unknowingly lucked into some sort of early bird special, which offered a 41% discount off the bill if we left the table by 8:30. Our server notified us of that about 8:20 when we were deciding not to have any dessert, so we waddled out of the restaurant at 8:28 more than happy with our cheap meat feast.

Dubai, Day Two (Part One)

Didn't do a whole lot today...my dad's luggage didn't make it to Dubai last night (it got waylaid at Heathrow) so he didn't want to leave the hotel until his bags showed up. That happened about 1 PM, so once he was able to put on clothes he hadn't flown in, we set out.

My only pre-set tourist goal was to take a ride on an abra, or water taxi, across Dubai Creek. Since my grasp on Dubaian geography is still tenuous, I thought what we could do was take a cab to the Al Karama Market, walk around there for a bit, and then walk to the creek. It turns out Al Karama isn't near the creek, or at least not near enough for my dad, who just had two knee surgeries, to walk. So, as our cab pulled up to Al Karama and our cabbie pointed out that since it was Friday (the first day of the weekend) most of the stores would be closed, we asked him to drop us of creekside instead.

The area along the creek was hopping. Since it was a day off, the plazas and streets were filled with what seemed like every Indian construction worker in Dubai. I knew that something like 70% of the population of Dubai was foreign, mostly Indian, but it wasn't until I read an article in the most recent National Geographic that I realized most of them are, essentially, indentured servants, living in squalor while they attempt to pay back the cost of their airfare, fronted by unscrupulous Indian business interests.

Anyway, many of them were spending their day off hanging out by the creek, and doing some shopping. We walked around the shopping area a bit, but I'm not much of a shopper, and most of the stores in this area sold day-to-day items rather than things I'd be looking to bring home (I'll need to go to the malls for that). So we decided to hop in an abra for the ride across the creek.

"Creek" is a misnomer, since it was long ago widened and deepened. I mean, it's not the Mississippi River, but it's too wide to throw something across, which is sort of my internal definition for what a creek is. Since there are only a few bridges, and none for pedestrians, people use the abras to cross. It only costs 1/2 a dirham, or about $0.14.

The abras are simple, open wooden boats with a large bench seat and a canopy. I didn't get any good pictures of them (more on that later) but here they are:



There is no way something like this would be allowed in the States -- you sit mere inches from the water with no railing, seat belts, or even handholds, and at the end of the trip you hop out of the rocking (and often still moving) boat onto the dock. Good times.

We spent a bit more time walking around, mostly to find a store where I could buy some AA batteries for my camera. We eventually found a store selling a pack of 24 for 4 dirhams ($1.09). "Such a deal," I thought, and it would have been if Any of them worked. Most of them were so dead that they didn't even give my camera enough power for it to tell me it was out of battery. The final pair that I put in the camera gave me three photos, which was enough to take a picture of the boats laden with goods and waiting to unload:



Next up: an unwanted tour & lots of meat for dinner...

Dubai, Day One

My plane landed about 10 PM last night, as I basically spent all of Thursday traveling. I left Harrisburg at 8 PM on Wednesday, got to Frankfurt around noon, and now here I am. It was a remarkably uneventful series of flights -- the IAD-FRA plane was full, but a seat in United Economy Plus and a Lunesta made that bearable, and the FRA-DXB flight was empty enough that I was able to commandeer an entire five-seat row and stretch out a bit.

As a result I landed feeling better than I was expecting to. Plus, it was a breeze navigating the airport, I found a place to change money and a taxi with no problem, and within an hour of landing I was settled into my hotel room on the 19th floor of a hotel on Sheikh Zayed Road, waiting for room service so I could have a bite to eat and then go to bed:



This was a much better room service option than the typical burger and a salad that I get in American hotels.

I haven't been outside to explore yet, but we have no business stuff to do today so I hope to get over to the "old" part of town and take a ride in an abra on Dubai Creek. i figure I have 5 or 6 hours before the jetlag hits so I better make the most of it.

This Is Convenient

I leave for Dubai on Wednesday night. I'm on my way to Intersec Middle East, a huge exposition for the fire, safety, security and police industries. If you're looking for a CAFS system to fight oil well fires, or perhaps some new biometric equipment, this is the place you'll want to be.


Photo by Makz

I'm getting ready for the trip, getting my dry cleaning done, checking books out of the library, making sure my overseas cell phone is charged, and of course surfing the web to find out what to see, what to avoid, and where to eat while I'm there.

So it sure was nice to see this big article about Dubai on the front page of Slate. It looks like I won't have to spend too much time boning up on the history of Dubai, because there isn't a whole lot. I definitely will try to get to the Dubai Museum, though, and I hope we can get out of the city and into the desert for a quick drive, like we did when we were in Bahrain -- we visited Oil Well #1 (to quote Homer Simpson: the cause of, and solution to, all our problems) and got a feel for the non-city part of the country, which is mostly just sand. I hope we can do the same in Dubai.

I've been reading Secret Dubai Diary, One Big Construction Site, and a few other Dubai blogs, and checking out Flickr members like this guy. I've sort of struck out as far as restaurants, except for the advice to "eat as much Lebanese food as you can," which is actually advice I try to follow all the time, not just when I'm travelling to Dubai.

This is a pretty quick trip, only about two days of non-work time, so I don't know how much sightseeing I'll get to do, but I'm really looking forward to the trip. It's been eight months since my last overseas trip so I'm not burned out on travel right now, and the weather looks to be fantastic. If nothing else, I'll enjoy a couple of nights in a luxury hotel.

Brrrr

Gadling just pointed to an article by Mark Sundeen that appeared in the November issue of Outside magazine about surfing in Yakutat, Alaska.

The Coldest Ride

Yes, you read that correctly -- surfing in Alaska. It's a great article, the type of thing that Outside does very well. Sundeen reports on a caravan of professional and amateur surfers drawn to the tiny town on "the only sheltered deep water port in the Gulf of Alaska."



Looks cold, doesn't it? It is, thought not as cold as you might think thanks to the Kuroshio Current, the second-largest current on Earth which brings warm water northward from the western Pacific. It seems like braving the cold water is worth it, though:

"The beach is contained by thick forest, and out across the bay the fog lifts just enough to show the toe of a glacier cracking off the snowy base of St. Elias. Let me repeat that: I'm surfing incredible waves within sight of a glacier. The water numbs my fingers and face, but after a while it doesn't seem all that cold—nothing worse than Northern California, anyway. The waves rise out of nowhere, glassy peeling lefts we ride a few hundred yards, all the way to shore. After an hour, the tide rushes in so fast that you can watch it climb the beach, and as quickly as the waves arrived they disappear, leaving the spruce-ringed inlet once again calm, gillnetters pushing toward the open sea."

I love to travel, and have had the extreme good fortune to have a job that takes me around the world -- in addition to several trips to Germany and Holland, I've been to Tokyo, Beijing, New Delhi, and Bahrain in the last few years, and am heading to Dubai next week. Something tells me there won't be any fire service industry conferences in Yakutat, Alaska anytime soon, though, so this article will be the closest I'll get to a return trip to Alaska for the time being.

Christmas With The Family

We're back from our long weekend in the Chicago suburbs, a thoroughly enjoyable Christmas visit to the old homestead. Unfortunately all three of us got sick to differing degrees, and we're still dealing with that days later.

Zosia spiked a 102-degree fever the night before our flight. Joy. Luckily that fever came down before we left, so we were still able to go. The drive down to Washington National was uneventful, though the GPS in the car routed us through the surface streets of DC. Luckily we had left an extra hour early (fear of lack of parking), so we got to the airport in plenty of time. It may be far away, but National turns out to be a nice airport -- small, easy to navigate, and very little traffic even on the Friday before Christmas.

The flight was uneventful -- it took off about a half-hour late, but thankfully we had no connections so that wasn't a big deal. Zosia was kept occupied thanks to the Rip Roar portable video recorder I picked up last week. I haven't even begun to explore what it can do -- apparently it can be set up to automatically record shows off the TV, but I have Tivos for that. I just dumped a couple of episodes of Blue's Clues and Backyardigans onto it and that's all she needed.

We stayed at my mom's house, and my brother and his girlfriend came as well. We basically sat around playing the bowling game on Graham's Wii, talking about his new record label, and trying to think up ways to keep Zo occupied that didn't involve going out into the Midwestern winter too much. We walked to the playground one day, and drove around in search of an apparently non-existent Gymboree another day, but she spent too much time cooped up and by the end of the trip she started losing it pretty regularly. I can't say I blame her, being stuck in an unfamiliar house without much to do, and still not feeling 100%. If it hadn't been for the heroics of Grandpa Jim, who can apparently read the same book 15 times without growing bored, I don't know what we would have done.

All in all it was a good trip, if fraught. For a lot of the time I felt like Zo was one move away from a tantrum, and since her tantrums had recently begun to include the occasional hit, kick, or headbutt, I spent a lot of time on edge and I know D-Jo did too. Of course, it didn't help that she hadn't shaken the cold/bronchitis she picked up just before we left, either. We both got it, but because she's pregnant her immune system can't fight it off as well, plus she can't take the good drugs that would allow her a full night's sleep. So she spent a lot of time sleeping and trying to get well, to little avail.

By the time we flew home, Zo was pretty much a wreck. Now I recognize that we've been extremely lucky, and my definition of "a wreck" is very similar to other parents' definition of "a normal day," but still it's no fun to have to shepherd a squirming, unhappy, about-to-lose-her-shit kid through an airport and on to a plane. Incredibly, she stayed tantrum-free during the flight, even when she had to pee before the Fasten Seat Belts sign turned off (and thanks to the flight attendant who let us take her to the bathroom a few minutes early). More judicious application of the portable TV assuaged her, though she was not happy when, upon descent, we had to turn it off. She stewed over that until we landed and celebrated hitting the jetway with a full-fledged tantrum.

But, she was asleep within five minutes of us hitting the road, slept the rest of the two-hour drive, and slept through the night. After a couple of days back at the YMCA she was her normal wonderful self again.

Unfortunately, it doesn't look like D-Jo is -- her cold seems to have morphed into a sinus infection, with all of the head-throbbing, tooth-aching joy that comes with that. Her face hurts, and believe me it's killing me, too.

So here it is, New Year's Day. Zo is down for a nap (After a minor freakout that included her screaming at the top of her lungs for me to Rub! Her! Back!), Daryl's upstairs eating a sandwich and watching Law & Order, and I'm posting before I head downstairs to do some more cleaning up and maybe watch the end of the Penn State game.

And I couldn't be happier, or more looking forward to a fantastic 2007. Here's to another great year!

Worst. Train Trip. Ever.

I love train travel. One of the best trips I even took was a Eurail-heavy tour of Europe right after college graduation with my then-girlfriend. When D-Jo and I went on our honeymoon to Portugal, we made sure to have a nice train trip in the middle of it. I regularly lament the cost of Amtrak here in the States -- I'd love to be able to load the family on the train to visit my mom outside Chicago, but not if it's going to cost more than three plane tickets.

Not every train experience is great, though; The Exile, an English-language free paper from Russia, has a story entitled Platzkart Hell, in which the author describes his 17-hour Izhevsk-to-Moscow train trip. He traveled third class, which is apparently the "all drinking, all the time" class, and to top it off he was suffering from a brutal case of food poisoning.

This tops my worst train experience, which was a second-class overnight train from Delhi to Lucknow in August, 2005. I was in India on business, and we needed to travel to Lucknow to do a product demonstration at the national railway. That demo itself is a story for a different time, but just getting there was an adventure.

Since it was August in Delhi, it was about 110 degrees during the day, but it cooled off to a reasonable 90 or so at night. Our train was scheduled to leave around 10:00 PM, so after a nice dinner Delhi's only revolving restaurant we headed to the train station which, like every other thing in Delhi, was a teeming mass of humanity. What I didn't realize at the time was that every single person in the station was going to be not only on my train, but in my car.

I'm not sure what class our tickets were, but whatever it was it was a step up for our business associates, who were apparently used to the class that forced you to provide the energy to keep the train moving. The car we were in was theoretically air conditioned and we had a semi-private berth -- what more could you ask for?

Well, air conditioning that worked, for starters. And a room that was separated from teh rest of the car by more than a curtain would have been nice. We had neither of those things. Instead, we had a two-foot wide "bed" that was actually just a bench seat, stacked three-on-each-wall, in which to sack out and rest up for the big demonstration the next day. While our Indian associates cheerily got ready for bed, I exchanged a look with my father (fresh off of back surgery) and said, "it's gonna be a long night."

And it was. I'd say I got a total of about two hours of sleep, which doesn't sound that bad until I tell you that it came in 5-minute chunks. Our "room" was at the end of the car, which meant that every single person tromping through the car looking for an unoccupied berth slammed the door six inches from my head. As I mentioned, the AC didn't work, so the only air circulating to dissipate the funk of dozens of snoring adult men was a thin trickle of air from outside, where the overnight temperature had dropped into the 90 degree range.

When I "woke up" the next morning, we were pulling in to Lucknow. For the last several miles, I got an up close look at how entirely too many Indians live: in cardboard-and-tin shacks lining the railroad tracks. I got to see several thousand people going about their morning routine, doing everything that a person does while getting ready for work in a dusty field mere yards from a speeding train.

Oh, wait, did I say "speeding"? That's funny. What I meant was "plodding, creaking, and stopping randomly." From what I can tell on the map, it's about 250 miles from Delhi to Lucknow. The train took seven hours. We blearily stumbled off the train and into our meetings with the various railway folks, did our demo (which consisted of cutting a giant hole in the side of a train car), and very politely asked for directions to the airline office so we could buy a ticket for the return.

747s, Up Close And Personal

Gadling has a collection of YouTube videos from Princess Juliana International Aiport in St. Martin (or, as the Dutchies say, Sint Maarten). Apparently the approach to the runway is right over the beach. And I mean right over it.

There are tons more videos over at YouTube.

What a great day at the beach: sun, sand, surf, and 140 dB.