It's not the destination...

It's the journey.

I may have, on occasion, mentioned that I don't always have a clear idea of
what I am doing or where I am going. While this is par for the course, and
the odd change to the schedule is to be expected, This week was the gold
medal of diversions.

If you were to sum up all the the standard problems I bitch about, twist
them into some sort of artistic representation of what this whole road
warrior thing looks like and, say, to turn it into a movie, you
would come up with something close to what I experienced.

See it wasn't just one bad experience. That sort of plot device is too
short and kills the character in the first act. Instead this was just a
slow decline of one bad vignette after another where, if I was writing
this, the hero would either defeat the gorgons for the third and final

In the background we can see that all the flights are delayed and he is
waiting standby for anything that will make his connection.

Cut to : The usual cramped seat in the back of coach and the comical farce
that is people trying to fit supersized bags in undersized overheads.

Cut to : Arriving at the far end of a terminal in Chicago, the
connecting flight is leaving from the far end of another terminal. Begin
the Long Walk.

Cut to : The toilets. Focus on the intermittent fluorescent light
overhead. Pan down to the Old Guy at the sink. He has had one of those
operations that leave him with a hole at the base of his neck. He is
hacking badly and doing his best to clear the hole and his throat.

Cut to : Waiting at the gate, all the flights are delayed again.

Cut to : Drinks service on the next plane. He has free drink vouchers.
Just as the Flight Attendants get to him, the plane hits turbulence and
they seat the staff for the duration of the flight.

Cut to : The Hero getting out of the plane after midnight and walking down the
long terminal. He is at the last gate. The terminal is a ghost town.

Cut to : Him trying to get past other passengers to old and deaf to get
out of the way.

Cut to : Those same passengers overtaking him later in a golf cart.

Cut to : Waiting outside for the rental car shuttle. Standing right next
to him is a Businessmen, smoking a cigar. Our hero is downwind from the
smoke. Pull back to reveal that the area is completely empty. There is
no-one else around.

Cut to : Arriving at the rental lot, It is windy and cold. His car is
a convertible mustang.

Cut to : The clock in the car says 1am. He is on a deserted country
road. The driving directions seem meaningless.

Cut to : The hotel. He is looking down a very long corridor. The room he
is given is at the far end of the building.

Cut to : The next morning, there is no breakfast on the hotel.

Cut to : He is back in the car, A coffee shop can be seen in the
distance. But the road is blocked by sequential 'no left turn signs'. No
matter how much he turns, the cafe is getting no closer.

Cut To : The cafe parking lot, as seen from inside The Mustang. Focus
on the BMW parked diagonally. It is taking the only 2 parking spots left

Cut to : The dashboard of the mustang. A coffee is in the cup holder. The
clock shows that he is late, He is speeding.

Cut to : The lobby of an office. He meets The Customer.

CUSTOMER
You're 8 hours early, we aren't doing anything until 6pm.

Cut to : Back in the hotel room, the hero is reading email :

MSP may catch fire again.

Need you back there next week for a few days

Need to delay trip to UK by 1 or 2 weeks

Cut to : A chain restaurant in a mall, around it is nothing but carpark
and cars. It is late evening, his work is done for the day. Our hero
parks in an empty spot miles from anything. It is still cold and windy.
He gets out of the convertible. The restaurant is called the 'Bahama
Breeze'.

Cut to : The Hero, he is sitting at the bar, reading the menu. He speaks
to the barman.

HERO
What do people do here ?

BARMAN
Drink

Fade out.


Tags travel,philly,hotel,restaurant,bar

Viral Marketing

Apparently, more than one person reads this blog.

So I want to try an experiment in Viral Marketing. The process is fairly
simple. It is like a chain letter, but without the guilt or any hope of
making large amounts of money.

I want you to find 3 other people and tell them about the blog. If they
like it, get them to tell 3 other people. If you have a really short
attention span you could just cut and paste the following:

---

Dear <fellow-surfer-of-the-net>,

I found this blog from some
<fool|guy|dot-com-victim|frequent-flyer> who seems to spend a
lot of time on the road and finds the <odd|interesting|bizzare|humorous>
side of what it takes to bounce around the country.

http://rftp.blogspot.com/

I thought you might find it
<interesting|useful-research|worth-plagarising|good-for-blackmail>.  If
you like it feel free to spam your friends and get them to read it as
well.

Share and enjoy.

---

Actually come to think about it, Tell as many people as possible, I'm
curious to see how far this can spread.

Can someone wake the man in the corner ?

Detroit, or Ferndale, or Troy, or wherever the hell this place is.

All I know is we are doing about 90 miles per hour on the freeway in the
general direction of somewhere civilized while I try and make a hotel
reservation over the phone. However, as we have no real idea where we are
at present I'm playing a geographically oriented version of '20 Questions'
with the reservation agent :

"We have a hotel in Troy"

"How far is that from here ?"

"Where are you ?"

"Um, Plymouth. No. Northville. I think. We just passed the 96."

"Ok, let me look"

"Oh. No. We're actually on the 96. I think we passed the 275. We're
heading east..."

And on it went.

We were only doing this because all the hotels in Ann Arbor were full.
There was something interesting going on in town, but they wern't going
to tell us what it was and we weren't allowed to sleep there. So we had to
try our luck in the suburbs of Detroit.

Eventually we just cut our losses, got some hand waving directions from
the agent and, an indeterminate time later, checked into a motel in the
middle of nowhere and went to get something to eat.

That's when we found The Party.

Walking into the first most decent place we could find we decided that we
would just settle down for one drink and a nice meal. We were sitting in
what was, at the time, the quiet end of the bar area debating what to
eat when we noticed that it was getting increasingly more crowded. Almost
unpleasantly so. After we had moved our table about three feet and the
waitress had tried to squeeze her way past for the fourth time, we finally
bailed her up and asked what was going on.

Oh, yeah, sorry about that. You see tonight is kind of special"

"How so ?" I asked.

"Well, one of the regulars here died the other day.

"He died ?"

"Yes. He was a really nice guy. He used to come in all the time and would
always sit here at the end of the bar. He was often in my section.

"Really ?"

"He was like only 40 or something, it was really sudden. So all his
friends are here to, well, say good bye."

Now I was honestly curious, I had to ask.

"So, how did he die ?"

"Oh," She said. "Liver failure."

WTF ?

On the inside I know we were both screaming to say something like "What,
liver failure? Are you out of your minds ? Are you having any guilt
issues right now ?". But on the outside, we did our best to keep our
composure.

My sales guy nearly sprayed his drink all over the table and tried not to
laugh. I tried keep a straight face and change the subject as
quickly as possible. I think we ordered more water for the table just to
make her go away.

As I watched them order another round of tequilas, I wanted to be
incredibly cynical and ask something like if any of these guys were in a
gun club. I wanted to know if when someone accidentally killed themselves
did they celebrate by getting together and shooting each other
in the foot.

"This might have killed Frank, but look, I can still walk."

But I figured that might get me thrown out. Instead, we ate as quickly as
possible and got out of there before either of us said something
embarrassing or offensive.

I guess you just have to get back in the saddle.


Tags travel,detroit,hotel,restaurant