McAllen Redux

As my reserve month winds down, I of course am glad it is almost over. No one likes being on call. Yesterday they called me in the afternoon with a three day trip. One leg to MFE (McAllen), 32 hour layover, three legs home on Monday.

Well, you would think that 32 hours in McAllen would be right up there with some of the other places like Birmingham and Omaha, but it actually proved to be quite enjoyable. This is my second layover here in as many months. The hotel is quaint and charming. It's actually a historic building and has lots of character. Of course I won't mention it by name for crew security reasons, but while part of a chain, it's not like your regular chain hotel.

I had a very pleasant day. There happened to be a Presbyterian church around the corner so I went there this morning for Sunday services. It's Reformation Sunday, so we sang lots of hymns from John Calvin (Father of Presbyterianism) and Martin Luther. It was a rather geriatric crowd but everyone was real friendly and made me feel welcome.

-Side note.... McAllen is primarily a retiree area....known for fantastic shopping..... Muchos mexicanos come across the border to shop here. There are more malls than you can shake a stick at. Given the close proximity to the border (8 miles) it's blossomed into a major retail area.

I came back to the hotel and spent some time on line. You just can't beat free High Speed Internet connections. I watched a Netflix movie I brought along.... "Madea's Family Reunion". It was OK.... not as good as "Diary of a Mad Black Woman". I got in a nice work out at the fitness center and then met my coworker Cindy and went to what has to be the best Mexican restaurant in the whole world, Costa Messa. I ate here for the first time in September on a layover and loved it. They bring out three different types of salsa and seasoned chips. For the main course, I had Enchiladas Suizas. There was no need to have the plate washed, because I all but licked it clean. Washed it down with a couple of Sol cervezas, and I was about as happy as you can get.

So now it's off to sleep. We have an early departure tomorrow. I will be glad when this reserve month is over, but what with this trip and the Tampa trip last week, I really cannot complain about the quality of trips I have gotten.

Last Minute Tampa Fun

So like I said before, I am on reserve this month which means that I just have days that I am available, and then days that I am off. On Friday afternoon I went and had my attorney friend Tricia draft my Last Will and Testament. Afterwards, we met up with her husband Mark (previously mentioned in the September blog about A Prairie Home Companion) and went to dinner. We had every intention of watching a movie after we got our pizza, but when I called in I had a trip assigned for the next day, and it signed in at 0500, which if I had a choice I would rather eat my own foot than get up at 3:00am to go to work. However, there was some good news in all of this, and that was the 19 hour layover in Tampa. I called my friend Jonathan and left a message that I would be coming to town and hoping we could get together.

The main reason I was so glad to get a Tampa trip was because I have been wanting to go and see my friend Bruce. He had an accident and broke his ankle, fibula, and tibia, on top of artery damage. Bruce's doctor described the injury as catastrophic and that he came close to having to amputate the foot. I've been quite worried.

I arrived in Tampa around 1pm and Jonathan picked me up at the airport. He and his wife Wendy were kind enough to let me stay with them, so I did not bother checking in to the hotel. We drove right out to Riverview to see Bruce and his wife Jen (who is pregnant). I was a little taken aback when I saw Bruce's leg. I had seen pictures, but to see it in person was quite intense. He has steel rods in his leg and foot to keep everything in place.

We sat and visited for a while. They have a bird named Houdini that lets himself out of his cage and flies around the house (which freaked me and Jonathan out) and then when he is done, he lets himself back in to the cage.

Bruce is going back in for more surgery tomorrow to do the final repair work on his foot. After that he has 8-12 weeks of recovery before he will be able to walk unassisted again. I am of course keeping my fingers crossed that everything goes well tomorrow.

When we were done with out visit, we stopped for tacos and then went to Davis Island, where Jon's in-laws live. They have a flat panel HDTV so we went there to watch the FSU-Miami football game. (I commented that it was 13 years ago this month that I drove down to Miami to go to the football game with Jonathan, during our freshman year of college - gosh, I am old.)

His friend Justin came over (former college roommate) as well as Jon's wife Wendy, their kids, and another friend, Brenda.

When the game was over (FSU gave it up to Miami at the very end - 38-29) we headed back to Jon and Wendy's house to cook out. Since I was going to be sleeping in their son Jake's room, they sent him to Jon's parents house so I got to have a quick visit with Mr. and Mrs. Brill as well. For dinner we had steaks, baked potatoes and veggies. It was pleasant enough so we sat outside. All in all, I thought it was a nice way to end the day.

Of course since I had been up since 3:00am, I was exhausted so I slept like a log. This morning Jonathan took me to the airport and after a flight to New York and then Nashville, I finally made it home.

As much as I complain and b!tch about my reserve months, every now and then you get a fantastic trip like this one.

And finally, a shout out to my friend Brucie. He finally made mention into the blog! I just wish it wasn't because of a catastrophic foot injury.

Stoned

So yesterday I had a car accident. It was the first accident I have had with a car since the spring of 1993 (15 frickin' years ago) when I backed into a concrete pillar at the Radisson Hotel Marco Island at an Interact convention.

I had to go to Starbucks that morning to meet with a young woman who wanted to get her Girl Scout troop linked up with the volunteer agency I am a part of. After leaving the meeting, I had to go to the airport to get a bid sheet because it is the time of the month where we put our trip requests in for the coming month.

I am driving down the road when this guy on a side street pulls out in front of me. I slam on the breaks, but it's too late in the game and I run right in to him.

He can't get out of the car because when I hit him, the driver side door was pinned shut. He backed up to the side street and I pulled off the road. He climed out of his mini-van from the passenger side door. Mr. Jones (the names have been changed to protect the innocent) looked like he was one of the folks who was at Woodstock. He managed to tie back what little graying hair that he had in a pony tail. He said he didn't see me coming (duh?!) and that he normally looks left, then right, then left again, but in this case he forgot.

So I got his insurance information and we exchanged phone numbers. As I am getting ready to leave, he starts talking to me about important points in ones life, and he reaches into his pocket. At this point, I am thinking this guy is going to pull out a gun or shoot me. He pulls out a handful of polished stones and says that he carries them around to remember when events like this happen. He hands me a black polished stone so I when I look at it, I will always remember the day he pulled out in front of me.

So not only did I have a car accident yesterday, but I also got stoned.

Thongs

The other day I was going to Atlanta and I was flying the #1 position, which works in First Class. We are full and late because of some severe weather from earlier in the day and everyone is anxious to get going. The agent is getting ready to close the door and this young girl, (I'm guessing mid-20s) comes up with a HUGE roller board suitcase. She has unzipped the extended part of the bag so that it is just bursting and as a result it will not fit in the overhead bin.

We explain that she will need to check her bag and the agent explains that because it is at departure time, it will have to go on the next flight. The young girl proceeds to have a temper tantrum right in the galley, so I tell the agent to just go ahead and close the door and we'll help her take some stuff out of the suitcase and get it to fit.

I hand the passenger one of our trash bags that we use for picking up after the service and tell her we need to take as much out of her bag as possible and place it in the trash bag. Once we reduce the volume of her bag, we can zip up the extended part and it should fit just fine. Of course she proceeded to tell me that it fits just fine the way it is on Air Tran, and I rather quickly replied without thinking that this is NOT Air Tran. I was doing my best to help her and she was being obnoxious.

So we open up her bag and it is literally filled with what must be a hundred pieces of thong underwear. I'm talkin' every color imaginable! So she transfers as much of her thong underwear into the trash bag and as she gets up to go back with her luggage, she leans over to pick up her stuff and I get a view of her butt crack. The chic is wearing NO underwear.

I'm guessing she doesn't like to wear it, but just lugs it around the country in overstuffed suitcases.

Go figure!

Armadillo Destruction

My yard is being torn to shreds by an armadillo. I have seen him a few times in my backyard. The other night I was putting some letters in the mailbox and I saw him digging in my neighbor's front yard. I chased him with a broom and hit him a few times, which kind of bothered me because I am an animal lover.

Well I'll be damned if he didn't show up in my backyard about 20 minutes later. I took his picture, which in the middle of the night must have blinded him because he took off running and kept banging into things.

Hopefully with the cooler weather that is coming, he will go into hybernation or something. This would be year three that I have had armadillo damage, so I am sure he will show up again.

It's very frustrating.

An Old Friend in San Francisco

This month I am on reserve, which generally blows because I have no set schedule. I am at the beck and call of the airline and basically wait to be given a trip. My first trip I was assigned this month was a three day trip with layovers in Austin and San Francisco. The worst part of the whole deal was that the last flight was an all night red-eye from SFO back home. The best part was that I had the whole afternoon and evening in SFO on a Saturday. I emailed the two people I know who live there, both friends from high school back in Florida: Ingrid and Virali. Ingrid was out of town in Seattle because she was presenting at a medical conference. Virali, however, was in town and so we made plans to meet up.

Because we arrived into SFO in the late morning and were leaving that same night on the red eye, we were at a short layover hotel near the airport. Virali came and picked me up and we went out for South Indian cuisine at a restaurant called Annapoora. It was good, although aside from the curry and chutney, I had no idea what I was really eating. It kind of reminded me of the Indian food I had in Malaysia when I would go and visit my friends Carla and Steven.

Since it was still more than 8 hours "bottle to throttle" we decided to go to a place Virali had seen on the way to the hotel called the Elephant Bar for a cocktail. We got lost trying to get back towards the area of the hotel because there was construction everywhere. Things were a mess.

We finally found the bar after wandering through the winding streets of Burlingame. It sat right on the water with a beautiful view of the city, but unfortunately, the bar had no outside seating. I ordered a gin martini (with pearl onions) and Virali ordered a Becks. All in all a nice way to spend the afternoon.

She dropped me back at the hotel in the mid afternoon, and I fell right to sleep. I woke up at 11pm and got showered and dressed and around midnight we headed for the airport for the all night flight home. The passengers are great on these flights because they sleep. The hard part is trying to keep yourself awake. I had brought a TAB (remember TAB diet cola) energy drink with me, but it somehow managed to explode in my lunch tote the day before, so I chugged a Diet Dr. Pepper and rode the caffeine wave the whole way home.