Travel
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Sarah is a huge fan of the Amazing Race, and I like to eat so since we were going to be in Los Angeles, we signed up for this event. Sarah persuaded her friends Brooke and Ben to come to this. I was hoping that Brooke would drive, but I ended up renting a Zipcar for the occasion. I wasn’t thrilled with the after party, and neither were the other participants, but eating our way around West LA was a lot of fun. I was very pleased with Naan Stop Truck and Lardon (and its “Baco”), and I’m glad that Coolhaus has a New York truck so I can have it when I want.
The only thing that sucked was the difficulty of the challenge. I appreciate that the clues needed to be hard, but it was basically tailored for those people who participate in the other events staged by these people.
(Via Thrillist.com.)
En route to LA at the moment, and it’s been a while since I’ve had the inflight cocktail off the business class menu on United. I was a big fan of the Sunrise Sunset cocktail that was around last year, and I even made it a few times at home. Although the Delta version with bourbon was much better.
The current cocktail on the JFK-LAX route is the Cross Country Madras, which is a tweaked version of a madras. (A madras is basically vodka, and equal parts cranberry and orange juice.) The inflight version replaces the vodka with dark rum, and has a bit of a kick. Let’s just say that I slept pretty soundly once airborne, which was great given that I was on the 6:30 AM flight and barely got four hours of sleep the night before.
Although I’ve never been a fan of DirecTV, even if it’s the one feasible entertainment option on board a flight when there’s no inflight WiFi, the fact that all three screens in row 8 of Sunday night’s red eye flight between Portland and Houston made me hate the contraption even more. First, when we sat down, the screen displayed an error message “DCHP Connection Lost” on a bright white screen. Then, once the cabin lights were turned off so we could get a little sleep, the screen was still completely illuminated. To make matters worse, the screen would turn off intermittently, reboot, and then display the intensely bright error message for several minutes. It was worse than a flashing neon sign, because those signs are a lot further than three feet away.
The inflight crew tried their best to turn off the system, but they said that there was nothing they could do to fix our screen. A polite letter to Continental Airlines is in progress.
During this most recent trip to Portland/Vacation Run, we went to the kickoff party for the Portland Distillery Row Tour & Passport. The tour took us to several distilleries in the Southeast section of the city, where there exists a cluster of distilleries. Having been to seven or eight distillery tours in Kentucky’s bourbon country, we were familiar with the distillation process. One of the processes necessary to make bourbon is the aging process. Bourbon needs to sit in a barrel for at least two years, by law, and realistically should age closer to seven years. The upstarts in Portland don’t have that luxury yet so they have to either make spirits that don’t require aging, such as vodka, gin, or rum, or they have to sell it unaged. With whiskey, we’re talking what distillers call “white dog” or less affectionately as “moonshine.”
In a few years or so, maybe the distillers will save some of that “white dog,” put it in a barrel, and let it age for a few years. It might be the beginning of a new industry. Also, this budding tour will be a lot more interesting and, thanks to those the “angel’s share” escaping from those damp oak barrels, a lot more fragrant.
This was my first mileage run–cum–long weekend vacation with Sarah. Sure it took almost 12 hours to get from one place to another, but it netted us over 6,000 miles for about $215. The only bummer was that it required a train trip to Philadelphia and a bus ride back to New York.
We found an even better deal to Portland in June, from LaGuardia to Portland, via Houston again, for $170. Wow! Too bad I couldn’t route through LA and had a chance to see my parents for a few hours. Oh well.
This is a few weeks overdue, but I finally had a chance to edit and post a few photos from my early-March trip to LA. The basic premise behind that trip was to go to my nephew, Alex’s first birthday party. It was initially supposed to be at the local Shakey’s, which believe me was exciting because I miss mojo potatoes. But his parents, God bless ‘em, took itupon to themselves to do it at Alex’s maternal grandpa’s house, which needed a lot of preparation.
The party was a success. And there was an even a keg, which did not go to waste, I assure you. Alex opened about 200 presents. And everyone had plenty to eat.
At the end of it, I said “good bye” to Alex, knowing that I wasn’t going to see him again before I flew out the next day. As if he understood me, I said to him, “Bye nephew. I had a good time seeing you, and I’m glad I got to see you so much this year. I’ll try to come out around Easter, but I can’t promise that.” Sarah and my mom saw me say my goodbyes, and they both almost cried watching it.
After I got back, I have to admit that I did miss everyone. Man, I’m getting sappy in my older days.
This happened in late last year, during the Christmas–New Year’s break.
Right after Christmas, Sarah and I took a two-day trip to San Diego. We elected to take the train from Los Angeles to San Diego, figuring that it would be a little cheaper and a lot more pleasant than driving. And, certainly, it was a great way to get down to San Diego. The views from the train are pretty great, at least during the day. There’s free beverages, WiFi and power ports, if you upgrade to business class. That gave me the opportunity to go through and publish the nearly 1,000 photos I took. And it only takes about two and a half hours, which isn’t bad considering the distance.
On the return trip, we checked our bags, and sure enough, there was almost no problem. It wasn’t delayed. It didn’t take a detour to Albuquerque. But it didn’t come back in the same condition. As you can see in the picture, the handle was torn. Not completely torn, however. It was hanging on by a thread, and it didn’t take much to rip it off completely.
In our haste to catch the connecting light rail train to Little Tokyo, we didn’t notice the damage until we arrived at the hotel. Since we left the station’s premises and didn’t raise a stink, we couldn’t make a claim against Amtrak for the damage. Oh well. That’s yet another travel lesson learned.
Update: It turns out that this particular Samsonite bag has a very stiff handle, making it prone to tearing with not much stress. A similar bags met the same fate by my pulling and twisting the handle.
This year marks the tenth Thanksgiving that I’ve spent on the east coast and without my family. I usually see them at Christmastime, anyway, so the high airfares, travel headaches, and a transcontinental roundtrip flight in a short number of days makes the trip not worth the hassle. Not only that but in the days when I used to take classes, I used to have too much work to go all the way to Southern California only to come back in a few days.
So to commemorate this auspicious milestone, I thought I’d try to remember what I did in lieu of being with my family over the decade. In certain years, I didn’t have much of a choice, but other years, I probably could have gone out west but chose not to. Let’s review….
2001
A couple of months after the September 11 attacks, getting on an airplane didn’t seem like such a hot idea. Kent and Marie were hosting a Thanksgiving Dinner in Washington, DC, that year so I took a ride with Seth and his family on the Wednesday before Thanksgiving. That ride took eight hours, nearly twice as long as should it take, and I vowed never to travel on the Wednesday before Thanksgiving ever again.
2002
In a misguided attempt at being self-sufficient and neighborly, I held an” orphans” Thanksgiving dinner at my apartment. Three people showed up, and I ended up with leftovers for over a week. Afterward, there was an East Village bar crawl with my friend Chad and some girl he was dating at the time.
2003
My first year taking a comprehensive exam. The weeklong ritual for PhD students seemed like a pain in the ass, but it was actually a lot of fun. I never had such productive weeks in my graduate-student career, if thirty pages of writing in six days counts as extraordinary feat of productivity. I heard that the current crop of PhD students only have to do two of these, while we had three. When I heard this, I jokingly asked whether they got researchassistants, too. (They don’t, but seriously….)
2004
This was my second year taking a comprehensive exam, and I was equally productive. During these two years, I spent most of the week at the now-closed alt.coffee shop on Avenue A. My dinners would consist of cheap pizza and sandwiches, and usually by Thursday evening, I would be in good enough shape to make the $3.00 Guinness pints at Mona’s on Ave B. I didn’t have turkey in either 2003 or 2004, and I was fine with that.
2005
The first (and only annual) Peter Luger dinner with David, Peter, and Lisa. This was clearly a step up from pizza and sandwiches, and I didn’t spend it in total isolation. I could help but feel the satisfaction of eating steak while my colleagues were toiling away writing their comprehensive exams.
2006
Justin and I tried to recreate the Peter Luger experience, but we couldn’t get David or the rest of the Sabatinos to join, so it was a dinner for two. We went to Alberto’s afterward, where a buck of European graduate students were having Thanksgiving. (It was cute.) I seem to remember that we watched The Ali G Show for most of the night. (It really was 2006!)
2007 and 2008
I’m putting these two together because they’re essentially the same, and they kind of blur together in my mind. The weekend before, I went with Sarah to Kentucky for the Weitlauf’s “Fake Thanksgiving” celebration, which is the most brilliant idea ever! On the day itself, we started the day by having a Thanksgiving dinner at the Bianculli’s home in Port Washington. After eating way too much, we then went to an evening dinner at Will and Jill‘s on the upper west side for a second Thanksgiving dinner. In 2008, I varied the routine a bit by going on a “Turkey Trot”-type bike ride before eating so much food.
2009
Slept in on Thanksgiving morning and again went to Will and Jill‘s. Ate way too much Tofurkey, and it was my first Thanksgiving in three years where there was no turkey. Actually, only for about half of the decade did I have turkey on Thanksgiving. And I’m okay with that….
2010
To be determined…..
The birth of my nephew has given me a pretty big reason to see my family more often than ever before. It’s not like I’m going out there every week (or even every month), but it’s more than my customary once a year trip. Those transcontinental flights to LA have added up, and I found myself creeping close towards United basic elite (“Premier”) status.
After this past weekend’s jaunt, I ended up with 24,996 miles flown this year. That’s right, just four miles short of Premier status! That’s fewer than the six miles I live from JFK!
There’s some solace because I have two more round-trips coming up, one in November to Kentucky on US Airways, and one more to LA in December. Those will clearly put me over the 25,000 mile mark (even above 30,000) but still nowhere close to the next (50,000 mile) level. Unless I do some clever mileage runs, but I don’t know if I want to spend 40 hours on a plane in the next two months.
With all the hype of the Lost series finale on May 23, Sarah and I went to Los Angeles to see the finale with 2,000 other Lost fans who packed the Orpheum Theater downtown.
The finale party was bankrolled by Global Cash Card’s founder Michael Purcell, an admittedly “crazy” Lost fan, and hosted by Jay and Jack, a father-and-son podcasting duo who host my favorite Lost podcast.
The party was held in the eighty-four year-old former vaudeville and motion picture palace, which recently underwent top-to-bottom restoration. In addition to screening the 153-minute finale of the series, Michael Emerson entertained the audience for over an hour with a very courteous question-and-answer session.
