Trip Report

Traveling to New Haven by Amtrak: very good. Sitting next to work associate that stunk of curry on the train: awful. I'm going on a rant for the next few paragraphs, so skip if you don't care. After spending countless hours in planes and rental cars sometime with work associates, I prefer traveling alone. There were plenty of vacant rows in our car and he had to sit next to me. He could have taken on of the seats in front, behind, or in the other side of the aisle. But no, Mr. Curry had to sit next to me. And it was his breath and body odor. And he made it a point to talk and talk to me during the entire ride. I was reading Wired before he boarded. Couldn't he see that I was trying to read it? Argh. He's a nice guy, but I need my space.

Once we arrived, I picked up the rental car. I drove and he took it upon himself to navigate. I had MapQuested all of our routes. However, he managed to misinterpret almost every one of the directions. Argh! For the return trip to the train station, he wanted to hurry up so we could get the earlier train than we originally planned to take. But again, he misinterpreted the directions and we barely made it on board. Now, we're in the dining car instead of Business Class because he didn't want to check in before boarding. No sleep for me. I gave him my issue of Scientific American to keep him busy while I write this out. The plus side to this is that I'll arrive home 2-hours earlier.

Traveling time is my time, not someone else’s. I've traveled with previous bosses and business associates who just continuously talk about work or just to complain about work. And I've run into salesmen that I know from work that think the 3-hour flight is a 3-hour sales call. Argh! I was once on a flight to Europe with one of the project managers in a previous job. He got drunk before boarding the plane and fell asleep once on board. Good, I thought, he won't bother me until we arrive. No dice. After dinner (which he missed since he was sleeping) I was trying to get some sleep, he wakes up and thought it would be a great time to bother me with stuff that could wait until the next day. He reeked of alcohol and was loud enough to wake up a few others around me. I told him a few times that he was being too loud and that we should wait until later. No dice. Finally the stewardess came over and told him to go back to his seat and be quiet. What a pain in the neck.

There are some benefits to traveling. I get to drive all kinds of different rental cars, do a lot of people watching (great time of year to see lots of women's legs and feet!), read, and see new places. You see the guts of a city. Some of airports and train stations may be architectural monuments, but they're usually located in the armpits of a city. Sometimes you can see things that you wouldn’t normally see. For example, along the train tracks in this section of whatever city this is, there are a lot of old warehouse/industrial buildings. On the exterior of one of them, about 20 ft up the brick exterior are several stone statues that look like workman, painted blue uniforms, and I think sledgehammers in their hands. Someone a long time ago put some thought into adding this architectural detail. How many people today walk or ride by it and never notice it? Things like that make my want to puke when I see boring big-box buildings like Wal-Mart, Lowes, and Home Depot. Even the row homes in the cities, decayed as they might be, at one time had some interesting details. Then there are the miles and miles of rusted-out junk lining the tracks. It wasn't like this when they built it.

Anyway, soon I'll be home and tonight hopefully have a proper fuck. I brought some issues of Leg Show and some lingerie with me to help me relax last night. I meant to do another review of the last couple issues. I was found that typing with one hand was very inefficient - I couldn't write, stroke, and turn pages at the pace that kept me in that happy place. I'll get around to it this weekend perhaps. If you care to know, they certainly did their job J! This also brought to my attention that I need to go shopping for some new things – a bra or two, a pair of heels, and a new blouse or two.