Monthly Archives: January 2005

A Jet-lagged Friday

E-Mail Musings

The day is about half over and that’s a good thing. All I have to do is
somehow stay awake until about 10 pm before bed. That should get the body
clock mostly reset. It’s always been interesting to me that traveling
westbound is easier to adjust to than traveling eastbound. I’m sure there
have been studies and theories about this and will look them up someday..

I’m only here a couple of days before I’m off to Orlando, Florida for IBM’s
Lotusphere convention. I leave very early Sunday morning and fly back on
Friday morning. After that I think I’ll be here for a while before the next
trip.

There is a lot of snow on the ground here in Pocatello. The storms that
came through shortly after I departed for Belgium left behind a goodly
amount of snow. The days afterwards were very cold so most of that snow
still remains. There is still opportunity for more snow and we need it. The
snowpack in the mountains is still below normal.

Nina bought a “student desk” at OfficeMax to put in the sitting room by the
front window. She wanted a place to read and study. I put it together last
night. It was a much bigger job than either of us expected. Assembly took
more than three hours. The desk looks nice and will be a good addition. It
certainly helped keep me awake and moving around until after 10 pm last
night.

The Apprentice was on TV while I was building the desk. I’ve not
watched the program much before and was quite amused to see the
advertisement on the top of taxi that drove the “fired” guy away.
“Hotjobs.com” was the advertisement on the top of the taxi. It used to be
“monster.com” sponsoring the taxi.

Sponsorship for projects on the The Apprentice has become a hot
commodity. Last night BurgerKing was prominent in the show and a couple of
BK senior execs were on the show. Great advertising for the company. I
wonder how much they paid for the opportunity? Are other “reality” shows
doing the same thing? I would not be very surprised!

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Sent from my BlackBerry Wireless Handheld

Weighty Matters

Body Stuff

I guess getting food poisoning should have some side benefit! I weighed this morning and the results: -4 pounds and a 4.5% decrease in body fat. Now all I have to do is hold the line next week while I’m in Orlando at Lotusphere.

Home and Somwhat Slept

General

The connection in Atlanta was very tight, however immigration and customs went very quickly. When I got to to the boarding gate for the flight to Salt Lake City, boarding was almost finished. Someone was sitting in my seat and the flight was very full. Turns out he was in the wrong seat which was a very good thing otherwise I likely would have had one of the two remaining middle seats. The air was very turbulent the entire trip and the flight attendants stayed seated the whole trip. I kind of dozed a couple of times and finished my book. We arrived in Salt Lake City about 20 minutes ahead of schedule.

The airplane full of people, including me, arrived, but my luggage didn’t. The connection must have been too tight. The baggage people at Delta assured me the bags would be on the 9:30 flight from Atlanta. By this time it was 7 p.m. and I need my breathing machine to have any kind of useful sleep, so Nina and I elected to wait in Salt Lake until the 9:30 flight arrived. The day was definitely getting longer!

Our neice Ashlyn also joined us at the airport. She’ll be staying at our house for the next several months until her next semester at BYU-Idaho starts in May. To pass some time we drove uptown to a Chili’s restaurant and had dinner. I went back into the baggage claim area at 9:15 and the Atlanta flight had just landed. A few minutes later my baggage came down the chute onto the baggage carousel, a welcome sight indeed. We loaded up and headed north to Pocatello. Other than some occasional very dense fog, the trip was unremarkable indeed. Bed was a welcome sight as well. I had been up and going for 26 hours by this time.

It’s now Thursday morning and I’m headed to the shower and to work. It’s good to be home.

Airborne and Headed Home

E-Mail Musings, Travels

1:40 pm Belgium time 2.5 hrs underway:
Airplane food is not very good under the best of circumstances. Today’s
menu was very poor and even the best choices for me were not very good. It
is just as well as food isn’t my biggest interest right now. Only problem
is, I need a mint to clean some of the taste out of my mouth. The lavatory
is empty so I’ll take my “passenger amenity toothbrush” and go make my
mouth taste better for a while.

2:25 pm Belgium time. We’ve travelled 1689 miles in 3 hrs 24 minutes and
have 6 hrs 17 minutes to go.
The cabin lights are out and most folks are sleeping. I’m reading a book,
New Spring by Robert Jordan. Across from me a fellow who works for
Rolls Royce is putting together some kind of a status PowerPoint show that
shows costs and revenues all going the wrong way. I don’t think I want to
be him in that meeting! The lady next to me is kind of snoozing and kind of
watching a movie. She’s some kind of a consultant in the paper and pulp
business and has over a million miles with Delta. The flight attendant
mentioned that when welcoming the woman on board. The woman replied that
those were the Delta miles and that she had a couple million more on other
airlines.

Three million miles on an airplane is astounding. That’s more than 6 round
trips to the moon. When I was in the Air Force I flew more than 3,000 hours
in the backend of C-130’s, most with headsets on trying to make some sense
of the Chinese radio traffic we were monitoring. That would be about
600,000 miles and about 125 twenty-four hour days. These jets today fly
much faster so she’s probably spent more than 250 days of her life inside
an airplane and another 60 days waiting in airports on airplanes. That’s a
lot of airport and airplane food.

3:50 pm Belgium Time, 4 hrs 50 since we left and 4 hrs 50 to our arrival in
Atlanta. We’ve come 2,170 miles.
We’re on a much more southerly route. We went southwest out of Brussels
towards Paris and then out over the Atlantic Ocean rather than out over
England and Scotland. I suspect this is a little shorter routing. We have a
50 mph headwind and a groundspeed of 500 mph.

The flight attendants make regular trips through the cabin bringing water.
I’ve had a couple of bottles and will drink at least one more. The lady
next to me is sound asleep with a light snore. The guy to the right is a
Vice President and is plowing through e-mail. He has something to so with
fuels and consumption.

Music and a good book are comfortable things. I’m listening right now to
Loreena McKennitt on my iPod and reading. If the seat was a bit more
comfortable, I’d be set. The airplane has lots of little things that need
fixing. Two of the seats in Business Class have no seat padding installed.
It looks like they’ve been cannibalized to fix something on another seat.
Such is life on a nearly bankrupt airline.

5:10 pm Belgium time. 6 hrs 8 underway with 3 hrs 31 left.
The remaining flight time has decreased slightly as we’re nearing the US
coastline. Maybe the winds have lessened? The dynamic flight map says we
have 1,568 miles to go to Atlanta. As we burn off fuel, the airplane gets
lighter and flies faster. We’ve also turned a bit more southwest and
climbed from 33,000 feet to 35,0000 feet. The display just said the
headwind was down to 40 mph.

There is a bit more activity in the cabin. About half of the passengers are
awake and reading or watching the TV monitors. Lunch will be served in
about an hour and a half.

Dang, I pressed Send instead of Save as Draft. I’ll get to learn how some
other features work in this little computer.

7:00 pm Belgium time (11 am in Pocatello) and we’re over the US mainland
about 30 miles from Newark now at 38,000 feet. We’ll kind of follow the
coast south to Atlanta from here. We’ve slowed down — 454 mph groundspeed.
Arrival is still estimated to be 2:41 EST (about an hour and 35 minutes
from now). I’ve been up go to the bathroom and have most everything packed
away. Lunch will be in a few minutes and a hamburger is on the menu. I
wonder what airline food would be if companies who know how to feed and
satisfy the public actually had the catering contract?

Airbus unveiled their new huge airplane — a double decker with the ability
to carry up to 850 passengers. Imagine clearing customs with that many
souls at a time! The initial configurations will have lots of free space,
stores, workout center, and such. It won’t last long. The Boeing 747
started that way and it wasn’t many years before that space was filled with
seats and paying customers.

8:18 pm Belgium time (12:18 in Pocatello). We are about a half hour from
disembarking. The hamburger was edible but would have been thrown out at
any respectable burger joint. This leg is close to an end. Last time
through Atlanta the immigration and customs worked very smoothly. Here’s
hoping it will be so today!

Time to queue this for sending upon arrival.

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Sent from my BlackBerry Wireless Handheld

Awaiting Departure

E-Mail Musings, Travels

Boarding has started and the flight is scheduled to leave in 40 minutes.
I’m in seat 3E; middle two seats, aisle, right side. The flight doesn’t
look to be very full. In this Business Class section that seats 36 there
are 9 of us. A couple more will join later in the boarding process but
nevertheless it won’t likely be more than half full.

The scheduled flying time is 9:43, which is a bit longer than normal. We
must have some serious headwinds to contend with. The woman seated next to
me has arrived and has put her stuff away. Another 5 Business Class
passengers have arrived as well. She just loaded up on pills and may have a
cold. Dang!

We’ve introduced ourselves. No cold, just some allergies. The front door is
closing. We’ve 21 people in Business class. We’re not scheduled to leave
for 20 munutes, but are going to start early. I like it!

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Sent from my BlackBerry Wireless Handheld

On the Bus

E-Mail Musings, Travels

I’m on the bus to the airport from the Holiday Inn. That turned out to be a
bit of a trick. The bus leaves every 30 minutes. But, there are two busses!
One goes to the airport, the other takes people to various businesses in
the area. No mention of which bus is which, except that at 8 a driver came
into the lobby and said (in Dutch) “airport”. A whole crowd of people
surged out of the lobby and I followed in the middle of a group. Got on the
bus and the driver started asking for destinations: “Cicso,” “NATO,” “DHL,”
and then me, “Delta.” Big commotion. About five of us were on the wrong
bus. The driver jumped off and stopped the other bus. We five got onto the
right bus and are now safely on the way to the Brussels Airport and back to
the US.
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Sent from my BlackBerry Wireless Handheld

Next to Last Day

E-Mail Musings, Travels

The weather has changed! Rain and clouds have rolled in. The day was very
grey. It is in stark contrast to the weekend — a weekend that hasn’t been
all that wonderful. Today I’m feeling much better and not as well as I will
feel tomorrow. That is definitely goodness.

I moved to a much better hotel in Gent (the Sofitel Belfort). The
difference between the two hotels is simply amazing. The price is almost
twice as much (particularly when I include the cost of parking), but the
difference in services and amenities is also more than twice. For instance,
the availability of English-language newpapers. It is good to get
re-acquainted with what is going on in the world. I think my
experimentation on hotels is coming to an end. I may look at another hotel
here in the area but the looking in Ourdenaarde is over.

This week is also a week of a couple of sad anniversaries. Traci was born
and died on the 15th of January and Trevor died on January 18th. The week
helps me remember how fragile this life is and how suddenly it can come to
an end. Perhaps that’s why a bad weekend at my age is such a waste. There
are far fewer weekends left in my life than I’ve already enjoyed. Traci, we
never knew you and have that opportunity to look forward to. Trevor, we
miss you terribly and the reunion will be sweet. We love you both!

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Sent from my BlackBerry Wireless Handheld

The Battle of Waterloo

General, Travels

LionHill

The Duke of Wellington came out victorious and the victors always write (and possibly rewrite) history. Following the battle of Waterloo, Wellington consolidated his army. The Prussians, meanwhile, pursued Napoleon and eventually captured him. The description of the Prussians at the visitor’s center was that they were “vengeful”. Based on what all Napoleon had done to them, I think they had some right to be seeking vengeance. The pyramid-shaped hill was built by hand, one peasant basketful of dirt after another. The walkway to the top is barely visible on the right side of the hill and some folks can be seen on the staircase. It was far more climbing that I wanted to do!

Napoleon had escaped from prison and rounded up a huge army. He headed north towards Brussels in an attempt to cut off the Prussians from meeting up with Wellington’s bunch. Unfortunately, Napoleon was at least a day late in this venture. The Prussians arrived in the late afternoon and caused Napoleon to have to fight on two fronts. The result was defeat. Off Napoleon went to exile once again. This time he did not escape and died in 1821, some six years later.

For such an important battle, there isn’t much readily available to describe or interpret the events leading up to, during, and after the battle. Waterloo is in French-speaking Belgium and perhaps that has something to do with it — a battle the French would rather forget. I had a pleasant drive down, a nice couple of hours looking around, and a nice drive back. As I was leaving the parking lot, a couple walking along the other side of the street flagged me down and wanted to know if I was headed into town. They had been out on a walk and the four kilometers back to the train station was now more than they wanted to do. I had them climb in and off we went to the train station. They are living in Brussels. He’s from Berlin and spoke better German than English. We had a nice chat for the short drive into the city. They said that this was going to be their Sunday activity when the weather was reasonably descent — take the train out of town somewhere and go for a walk. Their goal is to walk as far as from Brussels to Paris by early summer. Good for them and I hope it all works out. I can also sympathize with getting as close as 4 kilometers and not be able to walk another step!

I’m now in the hotel lobby in Gent. The Sofitel has installed wifi access in the common areas of the ground floor in the hotel. The cost is 10 euros for 2 hours — that’s about $6.50 an hour, a pretty steep rate in my opinion. I’d like it a lot better if the access was available in my room, but this is certainly better than nothing. While I’m writing this I’m downloading a whole bunch of podcasts. I haven’t been able to access any of them since arriving in Belgium as this access is blocked from work for some dumb reason. I’ll make at least one more swipe at downloading podcasts for the flights back home on Wednesday. Some of the downloads are pretty slow from here. It looks like the bandwidth from the hotel out to the internet isn’t very large.