Category Archives: Travel

Notes from past travels and future travel ideas.

New York, NY

View of NYC skyline from Queens, NY as the sun was going down.

This past weekend I visited New York for the third time this year, which might be a record for me since leaving the state during 2002. However, each visit this year has been rather quick, with this trip lasting from just Friday to Monday. The timing of the trip was primarily to attend a wedding, but also coincided with the Greek Orthodox Easter, allowing me to spend time with family for the holiday. It all made for a full weekend.

The wedding was the highlight of the weekend. The reception was at Water’s Edge in Long Island City, Queens, NY. The place had a pretty sweet view of Manhattan, as you can see in the picture above and below. There were a few friends from my college days there, one of which was a house mate during my junior and senior year. Another college friend was someone I played the occasional game of basketball and tennis with… we were both quite competitive back in the day. I also made a point to meet some new people at the wedding, seemingly befriending a large contingent from the bride and grooms summer trips to Fire Island.

View of the NYC skyline as the sun hides behind the buildings.

There wasn’t a whole lot to Easter Sunday. We visited extended family in Queens to celebrate the holiday. There were two lambs roasted outside with many sides to munch on. I personally find the whole process of roasting the lambs disgusting. As a result, I tend to stay away from eating any part of the lamb, something that some family members find offensive, for lack of a better word. I’ll never really understand why some people get offended by what others prefer to eat or no eat. It’s just food. Anyway, it was nice to see some family members that I don’t get to see very often.

This was also my first experience flying Virgin America, which I will say has been a mostly positive experience. The check-in process was smooth, although I’ll never be a fan of charging fee’s for checked baggage, which added $50 to the total cost of the flight. The seats are relatively comfortable with adequate height and width to support my height and frame. The free Dish Network service is also a nice bonus, but thecost for in-flight is a bit over the top at $10 for just an hour of service. That’s a bit much and, as a result, I didn’t cough up the money for internet service. After arriving at JFK early for my flight Monday I was treated to stand-by on an earlier flight. They even gave me a heads up to request seating to “comfortably accommodate my height” when requesting seats at the gate. That resulted in an exit row window seat for the return flight. That made this experience that much better flying with Virgin America.

View from the flight as we flew over NYC on the flight from Los Angeles.

The trip was yet another example that sometimes it’s not necessarily where you live, but the company that you keep wherever you live. As much as living in NYC doesn’t appeal to me much anymore, I always seem to have a really good time with long-time friends.

One side note regarding the trip. I decided to leave town without my work computer in tow. I can’t remember the last time this happened, but it was probably more than 10 years ago. The only carry-on for the trip was my iPad and Bose headphones. Surprisingly, the world didn’t end with my computer back home.

Friday, May 3, 2013

Virgin American Flight #406

10:40 AM Los Angeles, CA (LAX) to

7:00 PM New York, NY (JFK)

Travel Time 5 h 20 m

Monday, May 6, 2013

Virgin America Flight #407

10:40 AM Los Angeles, CA (LAX) to

7:00 PM New York, NY (JFK)

Travel Time 6 h 15 m

Indianapolis, IN

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Monday, March 25, 2013

American Airlines Flight #2442

11:15 AM Los Angeles, CA (LAX) to

4:20 PM Dallas, TX (JFK)

American Airlines Flight #3018

5:50 PM Dallas, TX (JFK)

8:55 PM Indianapolis, IN (JFK)

Friday, March 29, 2013

American Airlines Flight #5094

5:20 PM Indianapolis, IN (IND) to

5:35 PM Chicago, IL (ORD)

American Airlines Flight #1617

6:20 PM Chicago, IL (ORD)

8:50 PM Los Angeles, CA (LAX)

Travel Time 6 h 38 m

It seems I skipped a week updating the blog. Just to give you an idea how exciting it is to fly around the country I give you the picture above. Exciting, huh?! Ok, not really. That’s why I take matters into my own hands to make the flight as entertaining as possible, no matter how uncomfortable the airline makes the flight.

Speaking of uncomfortable, I stand by my statements last October following my trip to the Dominican Republic. American Airlines seats are the most uncomfortable of any airline I’ve flown. The seats lack any width, space in front of the knee, and are really short up the back. The seat back barely reaches my shoulders. There’s even a piece that extends up from the seat top to provide extra hight. That piece only reaches the middle of my neck. It’s uncomfortable. I can’t say it enough. And don’t get me started on their commercials touting their super comfortable and spacious first class seating. What a farce!

I’ve recently read a few articles regarding what people bring with them on flights and thought that would be a good discussion topic. First of all, I’ll tell you what I rarely bring and that’s my luggage. My commuter bag and whatever fits in it is all that comes with me. The rest gets checked-in. It’s just too much of a hastle to bring luggage through security and on a plane, assuming there’s room in the overhead bins for the luggage.

There are two mainstays to my shoulder bag other than the business computer; an iPad and Bose QC15 headphones. If required to pick one or the other as essential, I’d have to go with the QC15′s. In theory, if there was no iPad, I’d at least have my phone to listen to music. The iPad is usually filled with about 10 GB of music, a couple of movies, some books, and some magazines. I finished a book of short stories called Ford County (John Grisham) on the flight to Indianapolis. I don’t read too much while flying though, that book has been on the iPad since last spring. I then watched Zero Dark Thirty on the flight back to Los Angeles. The movie was better than I was expecting.

That’s it for business travel for a little while, at least through the end of June. However, there will be a personal trip to NYC during early May.

This weeks photo comes from one of my favorite restaurants in Indianapolis, bd’s Mongolian Grill. I’ve now been to this restaurant each of the last 5 years during my travels to Indianapolis and, yet again, it didn’t disappoint.

Syracuse, NY & Indianapolis, IN

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This weeks photo comes from a place I’ve visited each of the past 5 years – Indianapolis, IN. This might be the first time I’ve been there when it snowed more than just a flurry here and there. I’ll probably backtrack on this next statement if/when I live in a colder climate, but I miss having snowy conditions every now and then. The trip was preceded by a stopover in Syracuse, NY, which I highlighted in last weeks photo. You can read about that here. There were 6 flights during the 2 city tour, so I’ve made it easier for your reading pleasure. If, by some stretch of the imagination you want to read about the 6 flights taken and tidbits from the trip, click the “Continue Reading” link below. For those of you that are sane, thanks for reading. We’ll catch up again next week.

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Photo Friday – Spring Training 2008

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The past few years I’ve been somewhat consistent posting about my travels for both work and pleasure as well as posting during each week of the fantasy football season. Well, it seams travel has slowed down lately, so there isn’t much to post about between now and the start of the regular season. As such, I’ve decided to start a Photo Friday theme. Every Friday I’ll post a picture that has some sort of meaning in my life. It might be a picture from travels during years past. It might be a picture from the previous week. It might not even be a picture I took, but something I saw online and found interesting or funny.

This week I’m going back in my time machine to February 2008. That “spring” I went to Port St. Lucie, Florida to see one of my favorite sports teams get ready for the upcoming season. That was also the first year Johan Santana pitched for the NY Metropolitans. He went on to pitch the first no-hitter in Mets history during the 2012 season. Although his stats haven’t lived up to expectations, pitching a no-hitter was special for the history of the franchise. This picture was taken during his first batting practice session on February 22, 2008, assuming the information on my camera was set correctly at the time. You can read more about that trip here.

Feel free to recommend certain topics for pictures to add. I’m open to anything and have over a decade worth of pictures to choose from.

New York, NY

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Lady apparently likes licking my head.

Friday, January 13, 2013

Delta Flight #1262

11:30 PM Los Angeles, CA (LAX) to

07:44 AM New York, NY (JFK)

Travel Time 5 h 14 m

Monday, January 16, 2013

Delta Flight #87

07:00 PM New York, NY (JFK) to

10:38 PM Los Angeles, CA (LAX)

Travel Time 6 h 38 m

It seems I’ve taken a little break from the blog. I’ve actually taken a break from almost all types of online social activity recently, only taking a few minutes here and there to post a quick blurb on Twitter. However, in keeping up with a common theme from the past couple of years I’m inclined to take some time to write a long overdue post about my trip to NY last month. The trip was very quick lasting only two full days, not counting the bookend travel days. The reason for the trip was personal… for the most part.

There wasn’t a whole lot accomplished during the weekend trip. I stayed with my parents on Long Island and devoured a pizza from Colosseo’s on Saturday. The Sicilian pizza with extra cheese is still my favorite. All other pizza’s from around the world are just playing second fiddle to Colosseo’s.

The flight was with Delta Airlines, which was a change from the usual routine with Southwest Airlines. It helped that Delta had a red-eye flight, something I’m usually not a big fan of, but was needed for such a quick cross country trip. I was able to get some sleep on the flight to NY with the help of some behind the counter medicine. That same medicine didn’t seem to do the trick on the way back though. Just goes to show how uncomfortable I find flying.

The timing of the trip was apparently perfect. There were some flurries the Monday morning before heading back to the west coast, but I was spared having to deal with the enormous amount of snow that fell in the tri-state area a few weeks later. Although, there’s a part of me that would have liked to be there to take it in.

Due to flying during night hours I was unable to get a decent picture from the window seat of the plane. I’ll see what I can do during my next trip, which is scheduled for the end of this month when I will visit Indianapolis for the 5^th straight year. Until then, I can’t promise too many posts to the blog unless something comes to mind.

Sacramento, CA

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Monday, January 7, 2013
Southwest Airlines Flight #3058
08:20 AM Los Angeles, CA (LAX) to
09:40 AM Sacramento, CO (SMF)
Travel Time 1 h 20 m

Friday, January 11, 2013
Southwest Airlines Flight #2085
03:55 PM Sacramento, CO (SMF) to
05:15 PM Los Angeles, CA (LAX)
Travel Time 1 h 20 m

This year I’m going to add a new wrinkle to the travel posts by uploading a picture taken from the flight, assuming I’m able to get a window seat. The picture to the right was taken close to LAX and, if you look closely, you can see my current residence in Venice, CA. I can’t remember the last time a flight travelled along the California coastline back to LAX , which we did for a good 15-20 minutes.

This was my first business trip of the year and first since losing my Southwest Airlines A-List status. Luckily, even though I left from LAX early Monday morning, the process of checking bags and getting through security wasn’t all that bad. Let’s hope for much of the same going forward.

We stayed at the Hampton Inn located in Rancho Cordova, CA, a little southeast from downtown Sacramento. There isn’t a whole lot to do in Rancho Cordova, at least not near the hotel. We trekked to a Buffalo Wild Wings on Tuesday night, but left the best dinner for Thursday night… Noodles & Company. At some point during the past 10 years I grew a not-so-healthy infatuation with Noodles & Co. Their Wisconsin macaroni and cheese with parmesan crusted chicken and broccoli is quite yummy.

The next scheduled trip isn’t until the end of February, continuing the recent decrease in business travel, for which I’m not complaining.

Year in Review – 2012

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Early last year, just after the new year had dawned, I posted 3 separate blogs reviewing the previous year (2011). This year I’ve decided to lump the same 3 topics into a single, somewhat long, post. So get some popcorn to enjoy a little bed time reading.

The first half of 2012 ended of what might have been the toughest 2 year stretch of my adult life as my professional career was affecting my health and personal life. However, I was able to make some changes to get back to enjoying life the way I think I should… at the local watering hole. Just kidding, sort of. Now that the turnaround has started I’m hoping 2013 will turn out to be a great year.

Traveling Man

Last year I used travel itineraries saved in my inbox to determine where I had been during 2011. This year I kept a spreadsheet tracking my travels as they came and went, making things a bit easier to summarize now for all my loyal readers. Those of you that visited the blog during the year were also able to keep up following each of the various trips. I managed to travel a total of 92 days and 37,246 miles through the air during 2012. However, 27 of those 92 travel days were for personal trips. This was a decrease from 2011 when I traveled 106 days and 45,674 miles through the air, especially if you remove personal trips from the equation. Not included in the total days and miles were 2 trips to San Diego, a two day personal trip and a 4 day business trip, both of which I drove to. I reference those trips only because they required overnight stays at a hotel. Although I’m happy the travel days decreased last year, I was a little disappointed losing A-List status with Southwest. A small price to pay for a little more sanity.

Cities I visited during 2012 included:

Birmingham, AL
Denver, CO
Indianapolis, IN
Las Vegas, NV
Punta Cana, Dominican Republic
Sacramento, CA
Salt Lake City, UT
San Diego, CA

Goals

I set a standard group of 5 goals for 2010, which I decided to use as a baseline for 2011 and 2012, and will use again for 2013. The goals are pretty simple, with 1 overriding goal; work out 150 days during the year. This goal is supporting with 4 sub-goals regarding exercise and one other goal.

Total Hikes – 5
Total Destination Bike Rides – 5
Total Rounds of Golf – 8
Total Exercise Days (Cardo/Weights) – 132
New Vacation Destination – 1

Well, here are the final results:

Total Hikes – 0 (0%)
Total Destination Bike Rides – 0 (0%)
Total Rounds of Golf – 7 (88%)
Total Exercise Days – 25 (19%)
New Vacation Destination – Punta Cana, Dominican Republic (100%)

Outside of almost hitting my goal of 8 rounds of golf, all I can say is it was a bad year, having done some sort of exercise only 21% of the goal (150). Hopefully 2013 will turn out a little better.

I’m also adding a new mini-goal for 2013. During the past few years I’ve gotten to be a little lazy during the weekday morning, spending the first hour or two lounging in bed watching the news or a tv show. It really is just a big waste of time and a habit I’m going to try to break. This only includes weekdays though, weekends are for lounging. No reason to make any changes there.

Posting & Toasting

The blog incurred a big change during 2012, moving from the self hosted wordpress.org to the WordPress hosted site. This was mostly seamless to all of my (2) loyal readers, but required some effort in the back end to get things set up. This also resulted in some savings as I no longer have to pay GoDaddy to host my data, with WordPress only charging to host my domain name, which results in less cost and hassle.

Overall, this was probably my most consistent year posting to the blog as I had two main topics to post about, travel and fantasy football. Here and there I tried to add a few new topics, but nothing stuck. I’ll continue testing out new ideas and building on current ideas to make things more interesting. Then again, my posts are pretty boring, so things can only get better… assuming I at least keep posting.

Here are some interesting stats about the blog from last year:

17 – Most comments by a single reader (Joker36). I think he can do better during 2013.
89 – Busiest day on December 11^th;. This was the 2^nd; highest single day total to the 90 hits reached on October 26, 2010.
104 – Top viewed page belongs to the 2011 Fantasy Football Preview published on September 11, 2011. Considering the topic I’m a little confused as to why this was the most popular post during 2012.
428 – Number of page views during the month of March, beating out the best month of 2011 (November – 392).
2,995 – Total pages views, which is 88 less than 2011.
14,733 – Total page hits on the blog since WordPress started tracking page hits.

Overall it was a successful year for the blog and I look forward to more good years ahead.

Las Vegas, Nevada

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Tuesday, November 13, 2012		Saturday, November 17, 2012
Southwest Flight #663		Southwest Flight #2385
05:55 PM Los Angeles, CA (LAX) to		03:45 PM Las Vegas, NV (LAS) to
07:00 PM Las Vegas, NV (LAS)		04:50 PM Los Angeles, CA (LAX)
Travel Time 1 h 05 m		Travel Time 1 h 05 m

This past week I spent time in Las Vegas, Nevada attending an Information Technology Governance, Risk and Controls conference. Yeah, exciting stuff, if you’re into that kind of thing. The first day of the conference was probably the highlight, specifically the keynote speaker, a futurist by trade. It’s the first time I’d heard of a futurist as a profession. He spoke about where he thinks technology will be 8 years from now, in 2020, and used 8 years ago as a baseline for how things can change dramatically over an 8 year period. His history in getting to today was interesting. He has degrees in Physics and Creative Writing, which are two very different degrees if you ask me. As an undergradutate he was offered two internships, one with a small startup company and another with Rolling Stone magazine. He obviously went with the more high profile company, Rolling Stone, not knowing the small startup would eventually become Intel. I found that to be pretty funny. He obviously wasn’t a futurist when his career started. He went on to talk about different gadgets we’ll be using in 2020, noting that we as people will be the device, not so much the cell phones and other gadgets we use today. It was interesting to think the iPhone and iPad didn’t even exist 8 year ago. Although not as exciting, I did get a good chuckle when my former client hosted a session as Darth Vader on the second day of the conference.

The conference was at the Mirage Hotel and Casino, which is where I stayed through Thursday night. I then stayed at the Cosmopolitan the final night. As usual I hit the blackjack tables during my stay, ending up $70 the first night and breaking even the second night. There were also 5 free drinks during that time at the blackjack tables, making the overall winnings about $120 using my adjusted calculations.

It was another exciting trip to Vegas. That might have been my last business trip this year. Although I’m not sure if it was my last trip this year as I might take a personal trip some time during the month of December. We’ll see.

Salt Lake City, UT

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Monday, October 22, 2012		Friday, October 26, 2012
Southwest Flight #3862		Southwest Flight #30
07:55 AM Los Angeles, CA (LAX) to		07:30 PM Salt Lake City, UT (SLC) to
11:55 PM Salt Lake City, UT (SLC)		08:30 PM Los Angeles, CA (LAX)
Travel Time 3 h 00 m		Travel Time 2 h 00 m

I’m a little late with a few posts to the blog so I figured a late afternoon stroll to Starbucks with my computer might be a good idea. It also helps to get out of the house for a little bit since I’ve been “stranded” there today watching tv and doing laundry. Stranded is a term used loosely as it was a beautiful day here in Southern California.

It’s been about a week since I returned from a business trip to Salt Lake City, Utah. This was my first business trip since August, second trip to Salt Lake City this year, and third time in Salt Lake City during the past two years. It also might be my second to last business trip for the year. Just one conference in Las Vegas remains and that’s not a trip I’m going to complain about. Actually, I might even stay an extra day to enjoy the scenery.

Business trips in the pacific and mountain time zones are relatively easy compared to the east coast trips, which require a full day of travel just to arrive at the destination when taking the time zone difference into account. In all, the second half of the year has been a pleasure in that respect. I recently transferred offices, so my primary office is only 8 miles from home, making my daily commute a lot more bearable. And my only business trips from June through today have been to Sacramento and Salt Lake City. The shorter commute and shorter travel locations have improved my outlook on life, which had me a little stressed out earlier this year.

There isn’t much to discuss from the trip itself. The usual suspects were accounted for in the itinerary. Southwest Airlines was the airline of choice. I did make a slight rookie mistake when making the reservation with Southwest as I didn’t notice there was a “Southwest Layover” in Las Vegas, which basically means I never got off the plane, but a lot of other people did while others joined us for the trip to Salt Lake City. The layover added an extra hour to the trip. With the decreased travel it looks like I won’t continue my A-List status into next year as I’ll be three one-way flights short of reaching that requirement. I’m debating on whether to take a few quick and cheap trips during December just to keep the status. We’ll see when the time comes.

National Car Rental was the provider of automobile rental services. I forget what car was rented. It was an SUV, which sort of came in handy considering it snowed on Thursday. Somehow I thought to bring winter gloves on the trip, which came in handy when clearing the car of a few inches of snow. The snow didn’t stick to the roads for the most part. The only thing I question is the fact that the SUV didn’t have four wheel drive. I understand SUV’s not having four wheel drive in warmer climates, but I don’t understand why a rental agency wouldn’t invest in four wheel drive in mountainous areas where it frequently snows, Colorado and Utah being a couple of those locations.

The hotel we stayed at was the Fairfield Inn in Draper, which is about half an hour south of the airport. A few things to note for anyone that’s thinking of staying at that hotel. The first thing to consider is the lack of an elevator. The hotel is only two floors and the staff will ask to bring your luggage to the room, but I declined and carried muy luggage up a flight of stairs. Who are we kidding, I can use the exercise. The rooms themselves are clean, but be prepared for a not so quiet nights sleep if you need the air conditioner or heat running.

That’s it for now. My trip to Vegas will be from November 13^th through 17^th where I will be attending a professional conference. The conference actually lasts until Friday, November 16^th and I haven’t made any hotel reservations for the Friday night yet. I should probably get on that.

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