The way we tour(ist)

Scott flew down to meet me here for the weekend and we decided to do the touristy things. On Saturday we went to the historic naval dockyards and on Sunday we went to the aquarium.

At the dockyards, we went into the maritime museum, I was pretty fascinated by the outside with all the cannons and the walls and such. Inside I was impressed by the award-winning renovations to the structure. Soon I asked if it was time to go see the dolphins. I just couldn’t handle being inside a museum on a beautiful sunny day in the tropics reading plaques about the history of the island. Yawn.

We sat and watched the dolphins at the ‘dolphin quest’ exhibit – same museum facility – but the dolphin quest offers the chance to swim with the dolphins. The water is really too cold at this time of year to do it, but it was great fun to watch them chase each other and play.

We had some lunch, wandered around the island, and were eager to find the Hagen Daas ice cream shop. Then we had had our fill and we took the ferry back.

On Sunday we spent our time at the aquarium admiring the fish and going through all the zoo exhibits, but we bolted through the geological museum offerings. Again it was a beautiful day outside and neither of us had any interest in reading informative plaques regarding sediment changes over the history of the island when we could watch the seals, peacocks, and wallabies throughout the zoo.

Given what information geeks we both are I found it kind of amusing. I realize that our penchant for technology has made us (me at least) too fidgety to stand inside a museum, reading all the walls upon walls of information, when there are glorious seals just out the door frolicking in their pool (or, in this case, sunning themselves and grunting, but still). It was exactly the same the day before – cannons = cool, museum = dull, dolphins =excellent!

It may be where I am in my life, or the fact that I am on a business trip taking advantage of the weekend to sight see with my husband, or maybe I just don’t get enough sunshine anymore.

But at least my partner in tourism is okay when I say, “I’m done with the history, let’s go see the dolphins!” because really, shouldn’t you do these things with someone who will enjoy what you enjoy and won’t be horribly disappointed when you tell them you need more sunshine and less time reading about sediment?

Drunk on a Plane

I’m sitting in the last row on my flight. Aisle seat.

Huge guy comes up to me and tells me he has the middle seat. I’m thinking, “Nightmare” but I smile and get up to let him in.

He tells me his brother is coming too, so he’ll take his brother’s window seat and put his brother in the middle.

The brother shows up… and he’s drunk. Really, stinky drunk.

I get up to let him in, and he tells me to go ahead and scoot in. I just started laughing, “Oh no, I paid for this seat, I like this seat, you go ahead and take your seat.” He said, “Oh no I insist.” I laughed again and said, “insist all you want, but that is your seat.” He sat and started grumbling.

So I sat and started reading my book. He’s chatting me up. I’m reading. He’s chatting. He says to me, “How’s your book?” and I reply, “I have no idea, every time I try to read this guy keeps talking to me,” “Really?” he asks – like he doesn’t realize I mean him, “Yeah, I’m not getting anything read,” “Oh okay, I’ll let you read then.”

A minute later he reaches over and starts trying to turn the page in my book, “I already read that page, turn the page.”

“No you didn’t,” I replied, “that page has words, and you don’t know how to read words," and he starts snorting. Then I said, “didn’t you bring anything to amuse yourself with?” and his brother said, “No he was hoping to have someone to snuggle with” at which point the drunk looks at me and smiles and makes his eyebrows bounce. I said, “Well then, you two go ahead and cuddle, it won’t bother me a bit.” The brother starts laughing and the drunk starts sulking.

Just then a member of the ground crew who checked us in came up. He told the drunk to come with him. The drunk was escorted off the plane. The brother inquired as to why, was told it was illegal to fly while intoxicated and that he had been removed, and so the brother exited as well.

Then a woman came and asked if she could have the window seat. I let her in. She told me a story about a drunk guy boarding the airplane next to her that was shoving people and reeked of liquor and was loud and disorderly and how she reported him to the flight attendants. I told her she was in his seat. She thought that was pretty funny.

The flight attendants asked me all kinds of questions and wanted a recap of the experience. They were kind of surprised that I hadn’t complained. I said, “It never occurred to me that I could complain about a drunk guy who talked too much and wanted to snuggle - especially since I could keep him at bay.” Of course, I was thrilled that he was removed – he was stinky and obnoxious, and who knows what would have happened once we hit full altitude – would he have become violent, puked, passed out, or just kept turning the pages in my book? But like I said, where else in the world can a woman summon someone and say “this man is drunk and is paying too much unwanted attention to me – make him go away”? Maybe next time I'll remember that I can say "hey, this guy is drunk, take him away!" but more than likely I'll just keep being me, giving better than I get and being mildly amused at everything other than the smell of it.

Road Warriors

I’m not a real road warrior – I have one international client and I get to go to a topic locale for a week or two at a time about every other month. But still I deal with planes, airports, parking, customs, hotels, dining alone, over-packing, tracking receipts and expenses, and calling home every night.

I work with some real road warriors – the ones who spend more time on the road than at home. And I met a couple while I was stranded at the airport on this trip. She was young, bubbly, and yet once she started talking about the road you could see the fatigue. She spent two years at one locale – living there full time. Then she was home for a few months. Then she was at another locale for a year. Then home for a month. She has no boyfriend/husband/significant other. She doesn’t even have a cat. How can she? She misses these things. She loves her work – she hates living out of hotel rooms and eating alone.

He was older, middle-aged or perhaps a bit older than that. His assignments weren’t long, but they were frequent. He likes his work. He hates hotels. He loves to cook but never does because he never has any food in the fridge – how can you keep food in the fridge when you are always on the road? He’s proud of his company’s rules about international and cross-country travel – always first class. Still, he has the fatigue too.

And I realized something after we parted company. I had talked to strangers. Willingly. And I enjoyed it.

Normally I hate strangers. I hate that people I don’t know start talking to me and interrupt whatever I am doing. I’m a curmudgeon. Now I’m starting the road warrior personality shift – so many nights alone for dinner, and at your hotel. It’s lonely. Strangers wanting to chat you up seems less intrusive and more welcome. The company isn’t horrible.

Maybe that’s why I didn’t complain about the obnoxious drunk guy next to me on the plane – sure he was obnoxious, but I just gave him more verbal grief than he gave me and kept putting him in his place. It was simultaneously mildly amusing and annoying. Then when they booted his drunk ass from the plane I realized I was relieved – I enjoyed having my quiet again.

And then at dinner I didn’t discourage the waiter from chatting me up excessively, even though I had a book. He was amusing. It was more enjoyable than the alternative.

I wonder how many road warriors become the ‘chat-up-a-stranger’ type and how many stay walled off. It almost seems inevitable.

Adventures in Flying

So I’m on another prolonged business trip out of the country and my start was quite an adventure in and of itself. It started with a delayed flight due to a ‘crew change’ – which required the pilot to sit and do paper work, which had to be shuttled to and from the tower before we were cleared for takeoff. This took 30 minutes. I was blown away that a commuter flight to Phili was delayed by the same amount of time it takes to get to Phili.

Then, my flight arrived so late that I had to run to my next gate, hoping I would not miss my connecting flight out of the country. You can imagine how flustered I was, since this locale only gets in like 4 flights a day, and I knew if I missed my flight I was pretty much delayed a whole day.

So I arrived to the gate huffing and puffing to find that flight was delayed 30 minutes. And I was relived. When the 30 minutes were up, however, they told us we were going to have another 3 hour delay because they needed to get us a new plane – which they had to fly in from another state.

At noon (now two hours later) they offered us all $10 meal vouchers – most folks had already wandered off and fed themselves. I had stayed behind talking with other road warriors about our destination and the places they like to eat there. We took our vouchers, got some food, got back for boarding and arrived at our destination only 3 hours late.

I can tell you that I am not looking forward to my flight home… I only hope they don’t screw that one up too. At least that is direct.