Tropical Trinidad

Not much has been going on this month with work. Most of the trips have been short two day trips with quick layovers, not really a chance to go out and do anything. I have enjoyed working with my two co-workers, Moa and Irune, though. We had been planning however for our big 30 hour layover in Port of Spain, Trinidad and Tobago, in the British West Indies. I had never been there before. A 30 hour layover is a long time in terms of an airline layover, but not really long enough to get out and do something. I emailed my old friend from high school. Marina, and got some advice from her about things to do, but given our time constraints, it would have been a challenge.

The trip also consists of long flying days on the first and third day, so it means a late arrival the first night and very early departure the third morning. We left home base in the late morning and flew to Cancun, Mexico and from there made our way to Miami. An interesting side story: we had about 35 Cubans who were immigrating to the United States via the I.O.M (International Organization for Migration) an organization that helps people legally enter the United States. Ironically, we flew over the island of Cuba on our way to Miami so I snapped a picture since it was a clear day. When we landed in Miami, I remember telling one of the refugees in Spanish, "welcome to the United States and your new home" and she burst into tears. It certainly makes me grateful for being born in America.

After exiting customs in Miami, we stopped at La Carreta, for some world famous Cuban food. Any crew member who travels thru Miami is a fan.

Our flight to Port of Spain was scheduled to be full, but there was a plane at our gate with a major mechanical, so we just waited nearby to figure out what was going to happen. We finally got a plane and a gate and made our way onboard. I went out and helped pull tickets in the departure lounge (which I think is easier on the nerves that trying to help people find a spot for all their bulky luggage on the plane).

We were all set to go, but were still missing a passenger, but his bags were loaded, so they had to start a bag pull, which means going thru all the checked bags to get his off. Just as they located his luggage, he showed up (of course) so then they had to reload the bags and we were finally on a our way, but about a half hour late.

One of the things that I was not expecting was so many ethnic Indians on the plane. As it turns out, Trinidad, along with Guyana and Suriname, has large ethnic Indian populations. These folks are the ancestors of people who came over from India in the 1800's to work for the British and French.

By now, were were getting tired. Three flight legs a day is more the norm, but with customs and the delays, it was starting to show

Moa on the other hand was full of energy, perhaps because of his love of the Pittsburgh Steelers.

We landed close to midnight in Port of Spain and took the van to our layover hotel. Last week, the Summit of the Americas was held here, so the traffic was insane and there were so many people visiting the island, that they had bring cruise ships in to offer extra rooms for people to sleep. All of that had moved out by now, so things had settled down back to normal.

We kind of caught a second wind, perhaps from the warm tropical air. I had bought a bottle of Little Penguin Shiraz, my favorite red wine, so we went down by the pool and had some wine and enjoyed the evening.

It was decided we would all sleep in, so we made plans to meet in the lobby at 12:30 and go find a place for local cuisine. Given the large Indian influence here, a lot of local foods had traditional Indian elements. We were on a hunt for something called Roti. It is like a big burrito or wrap, filled with curried meat, veggies, and sauces. The hotel suggested we go to Ariapita Avenue, a main street in town, near the hotel, to a place called the Curry Corner. It was suggested we take a cab since getting there was complicated and we were new to the island. $15 dollars later and a less than 5 minute cab ride and we were there (we quickly discerned that we would walk back to the hotel).

Irune and I had the chicken Roti with string beans, spinach, and chic peas. Moa had the lamb Roti. I don't know if it was the fact that we were so hungry or the wonderful smells coming out of the kitchen, but it tasted soooo good.

I am always on the look out for local sodas (i.e. Inca Kola in Peru, Guarana in Brazil, Irn-Bru in Scotland). I think the Trinidadians (is that even a word) were big fans of orange soda because they kept asking for it on the plane the night before. So I tried a Solo Orange soda with my Roti and it was very good. The even serve it in a glass bottle like the old days.

After telling the ladies at the Curry Corner how stuffed and satisfied we were, we made our way back out to Ariapita Avenue and decided we would walk off our meal and try to walk back to the hotel. We knew we needed to get around a soccer stadium and a four lane highway, but how hard can that be?

The architecture of the buildings was a mix of all different styles. I snapped a couple of shots as we were walking down the street.

The sun was up in full swing, so we were getting a little warm on our walk and decided to stop for some beers and listen to a little music. We ended up a place called The Crobar. It had a nice covered patio and with the breeze, it was very enjoyable. We were just going to have one round of Carib beer, but the barmaid said if we paid in U.S. dollars, the minimum purchase was 20, so we ended up having three rounds. The Carib beer was good. Very light.

Apparently there was a contest, where if you looked under the "crown" (bottle cap) you could win cash and prizes, but our barmaid brought the bottles out minus the crown so she is probably driving around in my new car or spending my winnings.

I guess there must have been some protesting going on about the banking issue. It is even a big deal here too.

The forecast that day did call for rain, and we saw the sky getting a little dark, so we decided it was time to figure out how to get back to the hotel. We knew the general direction we needed to be heading. We cut down a real nice little residential street. The houses were very nice, although like a lot of places here, we noticed bars on the windows. A sign of the times perhaps?

After running across four lanes of traffic (they drive on the other side of the road here) we made it back to the hotel. We had bought a bottle of rum in Duty Free the day before, so we spent the early evening enjoying cocktails before retiring for the night. Our pick up was a 5:15am (EST) which is hard when you live in the Central Time Zone. (The week before, the pick up was 3:30am because of all the traffic and road blocks associated with the Summit of the America, so we should consider ourselves lucky).

I had wanted to hear some live music, which we never did manage to find, but Moa and I got to have our picture taken in front of some Steel Pan statues on our way to the departure gate, so that counts for something.

The flight home was the reverse routing of the way there, so we went first to Miami (again to La Carreta, this time for Pollo Imperial) then Cancun and finally home. A long day, but a great trip!

Ahoy Matey!

I had the honor of attending a high school prom last week. My ladyfriend, Kirsten, is part of a group of educators that coordinate the Lewisville High School Grand Ball, which is a prom for students with special needs. It was a fun filled evening with a pirate theme!

There is a school club called Circle of Friends, which groups regular ed. and special ed. students together, and they host the event each year. Numerous local businesses donated everything from the tuxedos and gowns, to flowers, food, music, and limos for the students. Each special ed. student is escorted by a regular ed. student, and the most touching part of the evening for me was when we all gathered the watch the students arrive at the school and their escort came up to the door of their limo to welcome them. Everyone clapped.

The teachers and students had been working for weeks to build the sets and put the decorations together and Friday after school, everyone descended on the cafeteria to help put everything in place, working into the wee hours of the morning.

The night of the prom there was over 500 people in attendance and it was great to see the students cut loose and have some fun.

Below is an article the Dallas Morning News ran about the event... aarrgh!

http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcontent/dws/news/city/denton/lewisville/stories/033009dnmetspecialball.3bb02f8.html

Vistas Dominicanas

I have had rather uneventful layovers as of late. Aside from the usual mechanical delays, nothing really out of the ordinary. I did have a Santo Domingo layover recently, a place I had not had a layover at in over 7 years. Sadly, we are no longer at our downtown location in the middle of all things exciting and Dominican.... we are by the airport now. I did snap a picture of the Caribbean Sea from my hotel window.

The next night we were in Santiago, Dominican Republic. I had never been there before. It is the more colonial "Second City" in the middle of the island. My hotel room looked like a whorehouse with lots of red velvet and dim lighting. It is a Casino hotel, but I really don't gamble so the free voucher for roulette and the free drink coupon (I am still on the Lenten Sobriety Pledge as my friend Bruce calls it) were of no use to me. I snapped a picture from the foyer of downtown though.

Hopefully some more exciting trips lay in my future.

Strolling down Memory Lane

I recently got back from a 32 hour layover in Tampa, FL. I always tell people I am from Tampa since I lived there from 1986 until I went off to college in 1994, but the truth is I am a native of Sarasota, FL, where I sprang forth from the womb in 1976 and lived until moving to Tampa. I really cannot remember the last time I was in Sarasota. I think it might have been once I turned 16 and I could drive and I went with my sister Jennie to visit my friend Andy. That would be 1992 or 1993.

Given that we were scheduled for such a long layover, I thought it would be a good idea to rent a car and drive down to Sarasota and revisit some places from my past. I got the idea from my father, who is a flight attendant for a rival airline that we won't name,(but they LUV everyone) who recently had a long layover in Fort Lauderdale and went up to Boca Raton to see the haunts from his childhood and visit the cemetery where my grandparents are buried.

As luck would have it, my good friend Bobby was the purser on my trip last week and he decided to come along on this little adventure (of course now the pressure was on to make this interesting).

We landed in Tampa from San Juan, P.R. late on Friday. Bobby and I were up and at it at 8:30am on Saturday to pick up our rental car. I had made a reservation at Dollar, but Bobby just had to go with National so he could get his Emerald Aisle points, but after arriving at the airport we learned that National is one of two rental car companies that is not actually on airport property so we had to take yet another shuttle bus to the actual rental site (it was actually no big deal, but I had to put this here just to make a jab at Bobby).

We started off with a stop at McDonalds for a drive thru breakfast as we did not want to throw down the small fortune it would cost to eat at the hotel. We made our way over Tampa Bay to St. Petersburg because I wanted to head down to Sarasota by going over the Skyway Bridge. This bridge was an important memory of my childhood. As a child, my parents and I would go over the original bridge to visit my grandma and grandpa in St. Petersburg. In May of 1980, there was a terrible accident and the southbound bridge collapsed when a freighter ran into the structure in foggy weather. I think anyone living in Florida at that time remembers the Greyhound bus that went down along with six other cars killing 35 people. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sunshine_Skyway_Bridge#The_Blackthorn_tragedy) As a small child, this terrified me, and I remember after the accident, anytime we went over the bridge, I would close my eyes until my parents told me we were over it. I can still remember the sound the tires would make as we drove over the metal grating of the bridge's floor. Of course the old bridge has long since been demolished and replaced with a much larger and safer bridge.

Before going over the new bridge we stopped at the last bit of land on the St. Pete side to take some pictures. It is here that the Blackthorn Memorial is located. On January 28, 1980, this Coast Guard cutter was involved in a collision in the bridge's channel that killed 23 seamen. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USCGC_Blackthorn_(WLB-391) I have no memory of that, but it happened the day my grandfather died, and my parents can remember seeing the wreckage from the accident as they were driving over the Skyway Bridge to head up to St. Petersburg to be with my grandmother.

We took some photos here and then as we were about to leave Bobby stepped in an ant hill (twice).

After making our way over the bridge (I did not close my eyes this time) we stopped at the Skyway Fishing Pier on the south side of the bridge. It is what is left of the approaches from the old bridge after it was dismantled. You can get some great shots of the new bridge and a lot of people go fishing there. Bobby tried to chat with one man who was fishing and wearing a shirt that said "Virginia is for COAL Lovers" but the man was not interested in talking to Bobby, possibly because Bobby was wearing his "Obama Surfs" shirt that he bought on a layover in Honolulu. I found that rather humorous. Two extremes.

After leaving the pier, we headed south into Manatee county and down to Sarasota. I had decided we would have lunch at Yoders' Restaurant. Sarasota is home to a small population of Amish and within their little community is this fantastic restaurant (http://www.yodersrestaurant.com/).

They specialize in "comfort" foods and fantastic pies. I had Beef Stroganoff and Bobby had the Pulled Pork (I obviously abstained from the pork products) and for dessert I had the famous Peanut Butter pie (I gave up chocolate desserts for Lent) and Bobby had Chocolate Cream Pie. Words cannot describe how incredibly wonderful my dessert was so I will just leave it at that.

After we stuffed ourselves royally and walked around the restaurant's little shop (I bought a Christmas mini snow globe for my lady friend Kirsten, mainly because I was told that anytime I find anything with her name spelled correctly, I was to promptly buy it and who would have guessed that they had one left that had her name on it.... the Amish think of everything), we made our way to my house in Country Place, the subdivision I lived in from 1979 to 1986. As we entered the subdivision, we saw a Miscobie duck near the lake. These ducks used to scare the crap out of me and I remember them biting me when I tried to feed them bread and cheerios.

I mainly wanted to see if the Maple Tree that my dad and I planted in 1983 was still there (we had named it Mr. Maple). The house looks completely different and has obviously had some exterior renovations (it is now 30 years old). It is now a cream color, has a brick circular driveway, shingles, and tons of landscaping. When my parents built the house it was white with blue trim and had white Spanish tiles on the roof.

None of the original people from my street are there anymore (save for one family I believe) but there was a man who lived next door to my house who was working in his garage and I asked him if I could walk thru his yard to go to the back and see if my tree was still there. Sadly, Mr. Maple is no more (Maple Trees do have a short life span, so I would like to think that he was able to live out his whole tree life). I was able to get a few shots of the backyard from where the tree would have been of the windows that were my room, adjacent to our swimming pool.

After soaking in all the changes, we headed out of County Place and towards Gulf Gate Elementary School, where I got my learnin' from Kindergarten to Fourth grade. The school looked completely different.... they must have actually torn down the entire thing and rebuilt it from scratch. I was appalled, so much so that I took pictures on my iPhone and emailed them to Andy and Kate, two of my oldest friends, and fellow Gulf Gate Tigers. Kate was already aware of the changes, but Andy, like me was saddened. About the only thing still the same was the mascot.... the Tiger.

From there we proceeded to Cass Street and Gulf Gate Woods. This was the first house my parents built after they were married. I never lived here, but I wanted to take a picture for them. As I was trying to do so, the lawn man who was treating weeds in the yard asked me what I was doing and when I told him my parents used to live here and I wanted to take a picture, he told me he wasn't comfortable with that, so I snapped a few shots and made my hasty departure (although I think Bobby was ready to rumble).

After leaving Gulf Gate Woods our next stop was Siesta Key and Birdsong Lane. This was the house I lived in from birth to 1979. I don't have that many memories of it (I remember the orange shag carpet, the time I put the car in neutral while my mom was washing it and rolled into a mailbox, and a neighbor lady's dachshund named Tar Baby) but I still wanted to check it out.

The property values here have really skyrocketed, not because the houses were anything special, but because they are located on Siesta Key and in close proximity to the beach. I was surprised to see the house next door for sale for $499,000. I can only imagine what it was selling for before the market tanked?!

After leaving Birdsong Lane, we made our way down Ocean Blvd. and parked in what we hoped was a gravel parking lot because Bobby was craving a Guinness. We stopped at a bar called the Siesta Beach Club that had Guinness on tap (seeing as I had also given up alcohol for Lent, I had a Becks NA beer).

From there we made our way down to the public beach. Bobby wanted to get some beach time in and you couldn't have asked for better weather, so we took a little break and relaxed here.

I think Bobby was not expecting the water to be as cold as it was, but he braved the cold and went swimming. I laid down on a towel and relaxed, enjoying the salty air and the pleasant breezes. (The little speck beyond my feet is Bobby in the ocean). It's moments like these when I really like my job and how past Christmas' in Caracas and snowstorms in Omaha totally were worth it if it got me to this point.

I wanted to get back to Tampa before it got dark because I wanted to drive by my Tampa house and snap a picture, so I had to forcibly pry Bobby from the beach so we could begin our drive north.

We managed to arrive back in Tampa before sunset, and drove thru my old neighborhood in Temple Terrace so I could snap a picture of my house where I lived from 1986 to 1994 when I moved away to go to college (my parents and sister moved to Texas shortly thereafter).

After leaving Temple Terrace, we headed down Busch Blvd. to Mel's Hot Dogs. It's a dive that I used to frequent as a kid, but they serve the best Vienna Beef hot dogs (Chicago Style). Anyone from Tampa knows this place.

I had "my usual" (even though the last time I ate there was probably 15 years ago), a cheese dog with fries and a side of beans.

After stuffing ourselves sufficiently, we made our way back to the off-property rental car site and were fortunate that the hotel van driver was willing to come directly to the location to pick us up instead of having to go back to the airport to catch the hotel shuttle.

This little adventure lasted over 12 hours and we were exhausted, but it was great to see places from my early childhood. Everything looked smaller than I remembered it. I guess when you are a kid everything looks bigger.

The wake up call that Sunday was a rude awakening though as it was Daylight Savings Time, and so we lost an hour of sleep, waking up even earlier than we are used to before beginning a 12 hour duty day and heading home.

6,421 miles for the best noodles ever!

I'm not senior enough to hold a full schedule, so I mostly fly what is called vacation replacement, where I get a portion of the trips a co-worker will not fly due to vacation and then days where I am obligated to fly. This month's vacation line gave me Maui trips, but I traded one with my friend Leatha for her Tokyo trip. It worked out for her, so she could get the weekend off, and it worked out for me as I netted an additional 10 hours of flying.

We arrive into Tokyo in the late afternoon, and we are pretty much exhausted from the 14 hour flight over, so most folks go down to the little crew cafeteria in the hotel basement. The highlight is Magic Salmon, which for some people isn't so magical (some people claim they get sick). This time though I strayed and did the Tofu Garlic, which was served over cabbage and veggies. A few Kirins from the self-filling draft machine is always a must as well.

The best thing for me about Tokyo though is the Ramen Bayashi Noodle Shop in the town of Narita, where we layover. It's very popular with the crews of many airlines that layover there, so much so that the place is decorated with pictures, model airplanes, stickers... basically all sorts of airline paraphernalia.

I was able to talk two of my co-workers, Gay and Cheryl, into going to town with me the next morning to enjoy the noodles and stroll around for a while. The weather was brisk, but it was sunny, so it really made it pleasant to be outside.

After a hearty helping of Chili Pepper Noodles, a suggestion from my friend Bobby, we had to walk off the food so we went to the hardware store so I could get my automatic bottle opener. I am not really sure HOW is works, but basically you place it over your bottles, push down, and it opens them automatically. We continued to stroll around town, including the area down by the Narita-san temple and then meandered on back to the train station where the hotel bus comes to fetch us.

We had some time to kill so we went to the grocery store nearby. The one thing about the noodles that gets me is the sodium factor, so I needed some juice or water to rehydrate. The Japanese sell this sports drink called Pocari Sweat (I know, who wants to drink something with the word sweat in it?) http://www.pocarisweat.com.ph/ and I wanted to stock up on rice crackers and some other sundries for the flight home.

I was taken with a product in the pet aisle.... little baggies to collect dog droppings. Nothing really out of the ordinary about it, but the packaging was rather strange, as it was a picture of a dogs butt.



After heading back to the hotel, I tried to take a nap before our afternoon pick up, but could not sleep so I watched a Woody Allen movie I had rented from Netflix.... Vicky Christina Barcelona, which was pretty good as far as Woody's movies go.

The flight home was only 11 hours and though we were pretty full, it went by fast.

Maui

I am just back from a layover in Maui. If I had to pick between Honolulu or Maui, I would pick Maui hands down. There is not as much to do, but it is more relaxed, laid back, more natural. Honolulu reminds me of growing up in Florida, except there are volcanoes.

Our flight over was fine. Due to some misunderstandings about life raft capacity, the planes we utilize on this 8 hour flight apparently have more people onboard when full than our rafts can handle, so they cap the total number of passengers, lap children, and crew to a specific total. As a result, we have several open seats, so it isn't packed to the gills, which makes everyone a little less tense.

We landed at Kahului airport around 4:30pm and made our way to the hotel, which is over in the Kihei area of Maui. The hotel is undergoing renovations, so I got one of the new rooms, which was nice, and on a side note, I was kind of high the whole layover because everything still smelled of carpet glue.

I changed clothes and went across the street to the beach to watch the sunset over the water. There were a lot of people there, so it must be a ritual that happens every evening. The weather was actually a bit nippy. I then proceeded down to Maui Thai (http://www.mauithai.com/) to grab some Pad Thai to go and went back to the hotel to watch a little TV and then turn in. I think I was asleep by 8pm (remember that Hawaii Standard Time is four hours behind Central Standard Time), because for me it was more like midnight.

I woke up at 6:30am and met my co-worker Tim down in the lobby. We planned to go to a little dive he likes called the Kihei Cafe (http://www.tripadvisor.com/Restaurant_Review-g60632-d615203-Reviews-Kihei_Cafe-Kihei_Maui_Hawaii.html) for breakfast. It was an enjoyable walk down to the restaurant. The air was still nice and crisp and it was kind of neat to watch the island come alive in the morning (I think that is the tackiest thing I have written on this blog). I ordered a big honkin' stack of buttermilk pancakes. I could have gotten macadamia nut and banana on then, but with my crazy texture issues with food, I just stuck with plain old pancakes. They had coconut syrup for the cakes, but I opted for boring old maple.

After our nice meal, we walked off the breakfast and then made our way back to the hotel. I went on to the ABC Store. There is just one on this part of the island, versus Honolulu, which has an ABC on every fifth store front in Waikiki. My friend Debbie wanted coffee and I wanted to send some postcards. My friend Bruce sent me a postcard from a brewery in Milwaukee so now I feel obligated to send him one wherever I go.

I went down to the beach and read War and Peace for a little while (my New Year's Resolution) and do a little whale watching. This area is full of Humpback whales this time of year, so you can see them surfacing on the water and the spray coming out of their blow holes. I didn't want to bake, so after a while I went back to the hotel to take a nap before our pick up, since our flight home is an allnighter. Just as I was about to drift into sleep, the fire alarm went off, so that was the end of my nap. I walked down to the Local Motion shop and got my mother a decal for her new BMW (the local motion sticker is a tradition going back to a Honda Accord in 1987) and then came back and got showered, dressed, and packed and went down for pick up.

We had nutty passengers on the way home. One man, obviously starved for attention, put on his eyeshades and pretended to sleep walk to the back galley, where he needed some water to "take a pill". He then proceeded to tell us that he used to work for TWA and was even a flight attendant at one point when the TWA flight attendants went out on strike. The three of us sitting in the back replied that we would never cross a picket line, and then he got testy and stormed off saying he didn't have a choice, but then he would come back to the galley every hour or so and act like he was begging for water. Nuts!

The highlight of the trip was when we landed and I was notified upon the opening of the door that I had been selected for a random drug test. Of course, I had just gone to the bathroom, so I started chugging water so I could fill the cup.

Never Underestimate the Power of Facebook

Today I enjoyed lunch with what is one of my oldest friends, Kate. Nothing out of the ordinary about having lunch with a friend, with the rare exception being that the last time we hung out was 23 years ago. Our paths first crossed when our moms had us in the same playgroup when we were toddlers growing up in Sarasota, FL. In 1986, I moved to Tampa, and of course lost touch. Ironically, Kate's family moved to the Dallas area a few years before my parents relocation to the Big D in the 90's. Thru the social networking power of Facebook and our mutual friend Andy, we have gotten back in touch. We met for lunch today since Kate is in town from Brazil visiting her family.

The point of this story: The power of Facebook should never be underestimated.

1986

2009