First Vacation Installment

Good morning everyone, today I'm going to give you a brief rundown of Day 1 of my vacation. I'm also going to include a section entitled "Diary of a Mad White Man", an excerpt of some notes I had taken while traveling. I didn't have my laptop on hand, so I took old fashioned hand written notes when I had the chance.

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Leg 1 - Albany to Chi-Town

My flight out to Chicago was late in the day on Friday 7/20. JO graciously offered to take me to the airport and pick me up when I got back, saving me the trouble and expense of leaving my car in long term parking (Economy Lot E, yo). It also saved me the trouble of figuring out how the hell to get to the airport when an accident had a major road closed for 3 exits. Since I don't listen to the radio when I drive I wouldn't have found out about this until my car was securely lodged in bumper-to-bumper mayhem.

At the security checkpoint in the Albany airport, I was delighted to find only one woman ahead of me. She was not boarding a flight, but rather seeing a grandchild off, and her lack of luggage, carry-ons, 4 oz. bottles of toiletries, laptops and film-based analog cameras whisked her through with a pleasant efficiency.

I unloaded my quart sized Zip-Loc bags into a bin, slapped my backpack (read: personal item) and carry-on onto the conveyor and eased my feet out of my Crocs. Folks, I'll reiterate this point in almost all of my future write-ups of this trip: Crocs are AWESOME! I don't care how trendy they are or how ridiculous they look, them shits is the BAAMB! They're ideal for airplane travel, as they slide on and off without laces yet stay put until you truly want them off. Plus they're just freaking comfy. Damn!

Oh, let me back up a hair. When I checked in at the United desk, the agent at the desk was pretty helpful and seemed to enjoy my Hawaiian shirt (almost a little too much if you know what I mean). He offered to upgrade my seating to something with more leg room for what I found to be an exorbitant amount of money - I declined.

Upon boarding the plane it was evident that everyone else had also declined the offer, as every single one of those seats was empty. When the pilot turned off the seat belt light and told us to feel free to move about the cabin, I felt free to move about the cabin into a more spacious seat. {Georgia Mass Choir}UP-GRAAAADE{/Georgia Mass Choir}.

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Layover #1

My first flight touched down in Chi-town and I set forth to find the Hilton "Conveniently Attached to O'Hare Airport". I couldn't find any signs directing me to the hotel, so I asked a gentleman in an airport uniform. His response was priceless:

"Down the stairs, down the stairs, on your left"

Easy enough, but it left one question unanswered; where were the stairs? He clarified his previous response with:

"Down the stairs, down the stairs, on your left"

I see. Maybe I had to be more specific. "Are the stairs just right around this corner?" I asked. Finally he gave me more explicit directions:

"Down the stairs, down the stairs, on your left"

"Thanks, you've been very helpful" I told him and set forth to find the damn place myself. Navigating a maze of tunnels, doorways and escalators I found myself lost. Eventually I found the hotel, but still couldn't find my way to the check-in desk which was not called a check-in desk. The hotel map neglected to include a "You are here" sticker so I just found which floor most likely contained a check-in-like area and got on the elevator. It was possible that the elevator would return me to my original floor, but I had no way to know which floor I was on in the first place. What ever happened to just using plain old numbers for floors? They had something like 3 floors with names, then the numbers started. Christ, don't they know I'm tired and have to wake up in 4 hours?

The room, however, was pretty freaking nice which I guess I would expect for $180 a night (that's almost $45 per hour for me). I made sure to use up all of the coffee and tea (and fancy travel cups they give you) to get the most out of that room. I also sat in all of the chairs and even turned on the TV to watch a documentary about a heroin addict. Ahh junkies, so documentable.

Before turning in, I set up a wake-up call for 4:00 AM, set the alarm on my mobile telephone, set the alarm on my watch and made a mental note to get up early. I don't like taking chances when traveling.

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Diary of a Mad White Man

These were some of my thoughts while sitting in the Albany airport awaiting my first flight...

Sitting in the living room section of the secured area of the concourse, sipping a latte, listening to the air conditioned sounds of Jack Johnson in my Hawaiian shirt I await the first leg of my first international journey.

Occasionally flicking off the noise cancellation feature of my headphones I'm reminded that the Gadget Gods were indeed smiling on me when I found these gems, allowing me to transcend the aural living space of the masses. I am part of the acoustic elite.

When I referred to the "air conditioned sounds of Jack Johnson", the "air conditioning" was performed by my new headphones (Audio-Technica ATH-ANC7). Over the course of my travels I found them to be invaluable. After looking for a link for them, I see that Amazon has since found them to be less valuable than they were three weeks ago, by about 33%. Damn, I paid a lot more for them, but they were worth every cent. I have two words for you: Go Buy Them Shits for Yourself, Son.

The picture below is intended to show the simple comforts I enjoyed at the airport. A nice coffee table, view of the airstrip, latte and killer tunes made my wait all the nice.

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So that was the first leg of my trip. I'll treat you to more stories at a later date so you don't gobble the whole trip up in one gluttonous reading frenzy. Peace out bitches.

Over and Out,
Old Coot