Work Travel: Dallas edition.
So, this project I’ve recently been recruited into has servers at a bunch of different sites around the country, and that means work travel, which is something pretty new to me. Last week I took 3 days with a colleague and went to Dallas to do a partial node installation in a datacenter a little ways outside of city limits.
Well, the install went pretty well, with a couple minor hangups. The first one of those is that I’m huge, and riding economy class is no fun for someone like me. I basically can’t ride in window seats, and am pretty constrained in the aisles.
We flew out from Dulles to Dallas-Fort Worth airport on a McDonnell Douglas Super-80 (2-3 seat layout, width: 18, pitch: 33 or so). I was on the aisle seat of the 3-side, so right in the middle of the plane pretty much, and didn’t have anyone next to me. That flight was pretty tolerable … I had enough legroom, the seat was a little crowded but comfortable enough, and I wasn’t all up in anyone else’s space.
The trip back was a bit rougher. We flew back on a 737-800 (width: 17.2, pitch: 31-32). I was supposed to be in a window seat in a normal row (as opposed to an exit-door row), but it didn’t quite work out that way. The people whose space I was destroying were nice enough to switch seats with me so I’d have the aisle. A little more space there, which was nice, but the trip was still pretty uncomfortable. Incidentally, we flew into Reagan on the way back.
Dulles airport is an interesting place. The “moon buggy” shuttles to the terminals are like crazy bus/train hybrid things, which is neat. The terminals themselves have a lot of light and airspace, and generally feel open and fresh. Seating in the terminal waiting areas is also surprisingly comfortable.
DFW airport was sort of annoying to me. It’s laid out in these crescent-shaped terminal halls, such that you can’t really see what’s more than about 200 feet down the hall from where you are. The ceilings are kind of low, and the place is generally aesthetically unappealing as a result. Not a lot of air, not a lot of light, and no sense of visual openness, even though it’s one of the largest airports in the country.
Reagan is a pretty interesting place, because it’s like right in the middle of everything. It’s got a metro station pretty much built into it, which is insane. The architecture is interesting, with these huge odd-colored vaulted cathederal-ish ceilings in the inbound terminal. It’s bright and visually interesting inside, and I liked it for the little bit of time I was in there.
The city of Dallas (or I guess the Dallas metro area) was pretty “meh”. Honestly, we didn’t get a whole lot of time to spend in the city itself, or doing much of anything … we got in late Wednesday, spent a lot of Thursday doing work, and left early Friday morning. But what I saw of it was pretty shockingly exactly like the rest of America that I’ve seen … there were Wal-marts, K-marts, Best Buy and Circuit City and Office Max and Radio Shack stores, auto malls, all the usual uninteresting crap. The notable differences were the existence of a place called “Whataburger” (or, as my colleague ruefully noted at the end of his lunch there, “what burger?”). We also had some barbecue at a place a couple miles from the hotel that was pretty decent, served by a woman who wielded her carving knife with the sort of expertise that filled me with a simultaneous respect, fascination and borderline fear. Other than that, not a whole lot to say about it.
Our next trip takes us out to Minneapolis, the tail end of next week. It looks like they regularly fly Embraer ERJ-175’s on that route (which look to be 18.25 width 31 pitch seats, according to the info I’ve found). Never even heard of one of them before, so that should be interesting… sounds like the seat’ll be a bit more roomy width-wise at any rate.
So, that’s the wonderful world of travel. Really sort of … just there. Per diem is pretty nice though.
November 2nd, 2008 at 5:25 pm
I loved per diem when I was on travel for work. I’d always manage to come out with a profit, due to scrounging around to find the absolute best food deals.
I’m glad you survived the plane rides. Really, they’re not that comfortable for anyone, and I’d imagine much less so for you. The train is better by leaps and bounds. When I took the train from Santa Barbara, CA to Vancouver, BC, I had a luxuriously spacious seat with copious amounts of legroom and no one sitting beside me. They also had a very nice observation car where you could go just to sit and look out the windowed sides of the car, or chat with other passengers. It’s not as fast as a plane, but the trip is so much more enjoyable.