QuestionMark Conference, Travel Day
13 April 2008Well, here I am in San Antonio, TX. Day one, the travel day, was quite error-prone. Let me break it down.
First, the airline decided that, since my wife was listed as needing a wheelchair, they would just go ahead and change our seating assignments to the front of the plane for both legs of the trip. I had originally signed up for the BACK of the plane because we like to wait until everybody else gets off before we deplane. That didn’t happen. The seats on the first leg were bulkhead seats, which gives the passenger an extra 0.00001 millimeters of leg space in exchange for not being able to keep your carry-on bag with you. Since there is no seat in front of you to place your bag under, you need to store it. OK, no big deal.
It was on this first flight that I suddenly remembered a strange physical anomaly that exists inside my body when I fly. For some reason, when I sit in an airplane seat, I get a sharp, stabbing pain in my right side, just below my rib cage. I think it has something to do with my 15+ years of slouching in an office chair in a nearly permanently crippled position. An airline seat forces you to sit up straight and face forward, lest you impale yourself on the arm rests or your neighbor. My body said, “No thanks to this perfect posture crap, we’re dealing some pain!” And onward we went. At least there was a layover, so the pain wasn’t too horrible until near the end of the second flight. Though we’re not technically ON the second flight yet. Oh no.
The second flight was delayed by an hour. No biggie either. Flights are delayed all the time, but it would pretty much guarantee that I wouldn’t make the opener two hours of the conference. It was just a 1.5 hour “Howdy do” anyway (see? I’m already using Texas talk!) and wasn’t any actual class meetings. So my second flight lands in San Antonio and I go to get the rental car. Oops. I forgot that even though there WAS A RESERVATION MADE with my name and it was paid for and everything, they still didn’t have a car for me when I got there. No biggie. They put me in a larger car (or in this case, a minivan) for no additional charge. Oh wait, did I say “No” additional charge? What I meant was, a nominal additional charge for the extra insurance coverage that I never rent a car without, which I’m also sure my company won’t compensate me for. Ugh.
Now that that’s taken care of we finally get a shuttle from the airport to the car rental place. Luckily, it is conveniently located a mere 912 miles from the actual airport (at least that’s how far it seemed.) So we get our minivan, and it’s a brand new Toyota Sienna (or whatever). The problem is: it’s so brand-spanking-new that, instead of an actual license plate, or even a temporary tag, it just has a yellow piece of paper in the window that says “no title vehicle”, meaning that this vehicle doesn’t even officially BELONG to anyone yet! Oh what a joy to drive that cop-magnet down the street it will be. And thank GOD I printed out a google map that directed us from the airport to our hotel. Oh, except for the fact that we are now nowhere near the airport since Budget rent-a-car seems to be deathly afraid of airports, so we don’t know where our map was supposed to start.
We eventually found our way through town on the narrowest roads ever created to hold cars. I think the actual law is that “crowding a vehicle” is defined as coming close enough to another vehicle that the transfer of atoms between the vehicles takes place. Other than that, you’re good to go. There are also a lot (LOT LOT LOT) of one-way streets in downtown San Antonio, just in case you did something foolish like get comfortable with how you’re driving in a new city, BOOM, a new one way street pops up. And guess which direction I’m going? So we finally find our hotel. I had seen it on google maps street view, so I kind of knew what I was getting into. But oh, how I wish google street view could turn into google pedestrian view and go inside these buildings. I mean, the Obrien hotel isn’t a dump by any means, but it does have a few strange little “quirks”. First off, they charge $10 a day to park in their lot, which is a small parking lot across the street from the hotel that shares the lot with a tiny one-hour-photo kiosk. That’s a little added charge that the representative at hotels.com “forgot” to put into her little spiel.
The inside of the hotel is “quaint” and “rustic” which are euphemisms for “tiny” and “old”. First off, there is really no free wireless broadband. You have to borrow a cable from the front desk and take it up to your room. She did say that there was wireless in the lobby, but I haven’t tried it yet. So we get up to our room and notice that there’s a balcony door. Cool. Except that it’s the only source of natural light, and the window is a full length pane in the door, so we don’t just want to leave it open because it’s not a one-way window like most reputable hotels put in. We notice a couple of other oddities about the door. First, there’s a gap in the top that’s letting air in/out. Secondly, the door opens outward onto the patio, not into the room, making it difficult to barricade. “But Justin,” you say, “why would you want to barricade your patio door?” Well, let me tell you Skippy. First of all, the door doesn’t close all the way, so it just pushes open. We finally figured out that the deadbolt will catch, but that doesn’t send me brimming with confidence. Also, the patio is just one large deck that’s shared with all the other tenants on the floor. And thirdly, the patio has the spectacular view of the dark, creepy back alley to the hotel. The things just add up to make me a bit uneasy.
The toilet wobbles a bit and gives you a feeling of relieving yourself on the SS Minnow kind of deal. The bathtub and shower are approximately 112 years old and are made from degrading pipe that leaks terribly. I’m glad I’m not paying the utility bills here.
So we went out and drove down tiny one-way streets until we found a Denny’s to eat at. By this time it’s almost 10:00 PM and we are very tired and very hungry. It takes this Denny’s (I kid you not) about 20 minutes to seat us, even though we only had a single party ahead of us. And, get this, they sat us BEFORE they sat the party that was there before us. Then it took another mere 20 minutes to give our order and a short 50 minutes to get our food. So, needless to say, I’m at the hotel now, writing this entry, seriously tired and wondering how I’m going to get to the convention at 7:30 AM. I’ll give you a hint: ain’t gonna happen, at least not that early.
So back to the hotel from Denny’s, my wife steps on a shard of steel in the parking lot, which penetrates her shoe and cuts a nice hole in the bottom of her foot. After some quick first aid we’re still waiting to see if it gets any worse.
One Response to “QuestionMark Conference, Travel Day”
April 14th, 2008 at 7:33 pm
I would STRONGLY suggest getting her a tetnis shot if she hasn’t had one recently. Tetnis is not the way you would like to spend your day.