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.

Why such a harsh stance, you ask?

Well, it’s a revelation I just came to earlier today. It’s taking an opinion I had regarding computers to the sports media world. I sort of get it now… I think.

In the past I’ve attempted to explain to friends why Apple computers are more secure than Windows computers. A lot of it has nothing to do with the operating system itself. It really just comes down to simple numbers. To do the most damage go after computers with the largest install base, Windows. Taking this same argument to the sports media world has the same affect. To infuriate the most fans go after teams with the largest fan base, predominately New York area teams.

A lot of this frustration culminated last night while watching the TNT broadcast of the Knicks game. This whole concept of having former players as analysts has to stop, because they’re really no good at it and bring very little to the table. Here’s a few snippets from last night:

I can not root for that team! – Kenny Smith speaking of the Knicks.

I must have missed the part where analysts started rooting for or against specific teams. It’s an embarrassment to your field when you make these types of statements. Even worse, he said multiple times.

“That was a vet (veteran) move” – one of the in-game announcers.

When Garnet injures a player (Carmelo) by pulling / holding his arm, that does not qualify as a veteran move. That, along with the countless moving picks, just goes to show the Celtics can’t actually keep up with he Knicks without stretching the rules of the game and getting a little help from the men with whistles. Really, the only way the Celtics keep up with the Knicks is by yucking up the game of basketball. It’s sad really. The same can be said about the Bulls without Derek Rose.

Those analyst comments don’t even take into account Charles Barkley, who might be the least interesting man in the world. His analysis is much like his golf swing. If you haven’t seen his golf swing, search for it on YouTube. Although, I have this idea he’s a closet Knicks fanatic, because he’s always “kicking them in the shins” like a 7-year old.

I bet there are a lot of people that are a glutton for punishment and, until today, I was one of those people. But it’s time to take a step back from the madness… at least for a little while.

As mesmerizing as Revis was on the field, he was painful to deal with off of it. He whined. His agents whined. And they did it all through a 50 megawatt smile and with the help of a few select local scribes. How many holdouts is enough for a player of Revis’ status? Hard to know, but I’ll tell you what – I’m not paying that guy 16 million this year just for him to want 20 million in two years and miss all of training camp to make sure he gets it.

There’s this idea that Revis was a leader in the locker room, which I’ve heard countless times on ESPN the last few days. I beg to differ. Revis is (was) a distraction. He was with the Jets for 5 years. During 3 of those years he either held out of training camp (twice) or threatened to hold out of camp (once). And this obviously brought out the press to discuss the matter ad nauseam. I had had enough a couple of years ago when he was the talk of the town during the HBO show Hard Knocks for holding out of camp. During these years he’s voiced his displeasure with Jets management / ownership in public or through his agents, yet was given a pass by most of us (including me) due to his unique talents. Now that he’s signed on with Tampa Bay he’s still whining about how the Jets lied or didn’t treat him right. You know what, I’d love to be in a position of being paid millions of dollars then turning around claiming I wasn’t treated right. Boo hoo!

Well, Mr. Darrelle Revis, I give to you the online equivalent of a backhanded slap in the face… I’m going to unfollow you on Twitter!

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.

Words can’t describe the high I was feeling around noon on Friday watching the NCAA tournament. I had picked 15 of 16 games on Thursday and the first 4 games on Friday. Things were looking good… then Kansas State lost. It wasn’t a bad loss considering my history of picking games in the tournament, but it was a swift punch to the gut the way I was feeling. I went on to pick 29 of 32 first round games, an unofficial personal record, one that will be difficult to match in future years. The Kansas State game was the only disappointing loss during those first few days. I mean, who would have guessed Harvard, a 14 seed, would beat New Mexico and FGCU, a 15 seed, would beat Georgetown. I wasn’t high on either of the losing teams, but I’m sure most people that take filling out the bracket seriously wouldn’t have picked those upsets.

Side note: I realize the Round of 64 is technically the second round, but I don’t count the play-in games.

The second round was par for the course using history as a guide. I lost another 4 games, leaving me with 10 teams heading into the Sweet 16 games. The good news is I have all four Final Four teams in tact. I’m also liking my pick – Duke – to win it all after watching the first couple of games. Only time will tell. One thing I am hoping for is continued excitement. This tournament has already exceeded last years tournament in fun factor.

This weeks picture is a cropped screen print from the blog stats page taken late Wednesday, March 20, 2013. During the 12 days prior to March 20^th the blog was viewed between 1 – 10 times per day. On Tuesday the number of views hit a recent high of 32, Wednesday it reached 50, then yesterday it went even higher to 62! What’s interesting is when you consider the search engine terms that resulted in people reaching and viewing my site. Did somebody say March Madness?

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.

There were a triumvirate of airlines taken during this trip. First off, I’m tempted to never fly US Airways again. My original flight was scheduled to leave on Friday, March 1^st @ 2:10 PM and arrive in Syracuse @ 11:50 PM, with an hour layover in Philadelphia. Well, about 3 hours before my flight was scheduled to leave I received a phone call stating my flight was delayed from Los Angeles and I would not make it to Philadelphia in time to catch the flight to Syracuse. My understanding is there were mechanical issues causing the delays. My only option to get to Syracuse was a red-eye leaving at 10:30 PM… and a middle seat. So now I went from a late day flight with a window seat to an overnight flight in a the middle seat. No options to upgrade, no free baggage, nothing (but more on that later). I managed to get about 3 hours of sleep on the flight with the help of some over-the-counter medicine. After arriving in Syracuse I had enough time to take a shower before going to the game, making the whole afternoon a tiring experience that screwed up my sleep patterns for the remainder of the trip. I’ll give US Airways credit for having somewhat comfortable seats on their planes, making things slightly better, but not enough from my perspective.

While waiting at the airport for the initial flight, disgruntled as I was, I tweeted the following:

Dear Twitter - Remind me to put @USAirways on my no fly list. Very unpleasant experience and I haven't even gotten onto the flight yet.

—
Konstantine (@konstantine_p) March 02, 2013

I got a response apologizing for the inconvenience and requesting that I submit a complaint. Well, you don’t have to ask me twice! It resulted in a $100 credit towards my next flight with US Airways. My initial thought is too little too late. The credit isn’t enough for a free flight, which means I’ll have to spend money to fly with them again, something I’m not sure I want to do. Then again, it is $100. If I have to fly, might as well save the money.

The remaining flights on Monday with United and Thursday with Southwest didn’t have too much drama involved other than some minor delays, so I’ll just stop there.

The Candlewood Suites was my home for the week. Nothing new from the previous 4 years. However, there was a new eating establishment in the area… Noodles & Company. So yummy. I’ll have to take part in eating there again when I go back in a couple of weeks.

Well, if you’ve read this far, you deserve a treat.

Happy St. Patricks Day!