The recent revisitation spate (Louisville and Minneapolis revisited)
So last week and this week I’ve got back-to-back travel schedules. The Louisville trip was to move the hardware out of the original rack that was too shallow (so the back door wouldn’t close, which the management at the site didn’t like) into a new one. Drama ensued, because the new rack was round-hole and we didn’t bring round-hole mounting hardware to make it work. But a bit of creative on-site fab work on the part of one of the people there had us retrofitting the old rails into the new rack, in a slightly kluddgey but ultimately effective way.
Flights were direct on USAirways/republic, out was on an embraer erj170, which is pretty good for seat space but not great for legroom. Return was on an erj145 (the 2-1 seat layout). Tiny seats and I couldn’t even pretend to stand up in the aisle, which had a clearance of maybe 5 foot 8, so I was practically crawling in it. Not something I intend to aim for…. I’ll stick to the 2-2′s in the future if I can.
Louisville itself was uneventful — we spent a lot of time onsite, and went to Buck Head’s again for one dinner (it was pretty good). Watched some curling. Really, not much to say there.
Right now I’m in Minneapolis. This is the first solo business trip I’ve taken, so I guess that’s a bit of a milestone. I’m on this trip to install a dev server on the site here, so it should be pretty easy.
Flying in out and back are all southwest, via midway. I was initially uneasy about flying Southwest, because of the no-assigned-seating thing (fearing a long line-up and a big free-for-all scrum), because of the whole we-only-fly-737s thing (they spec out as having some of the smallest seats in US airframes), and because of the very recent, very salient, very relevant-feeling Kevin Smith “too fat to fly” episode. I’ve been sort of yo-yoing in the 350-360 range pretty much since the days got short… something like seasonal depression or something I guess.
Well, it turns out that so far, so good. You do online check-in on southwest, and get into it fairly early, and you end up in the A group and find a place to sit. Flying in the middle of the week, middle of the day, seemed like both flights so far were running between 1/2 and 2/3 full, so all the middle seats were open, and while the seats are certainly no 777 seats, they’re also not as bulky as big modern seats, so the seats themselves don’t take as much space as the seats on a lot of other planes. I was actually, just barely, comfortable on both the trip from IAD to Midway and from Midway to MSP. Nobody gave me crap about being big, and with the open space I could pretty easily spread out after takeoff. So that was cool, I guess.
Anyway, so now I’m chillin in a Fairfield literally across the parking lot from Mall of America. I wandered around there tonight to find food (ended up just grabbing a slice at Sbarro). Mall of America is almost surreal … it’s definitely pretty huge, but other than the massive surplus of materialism, the most striking thing I noticed was the food courts. Every one of the standard-issue mall type food court spots was waving samples at everyone walking by. It’s such a buyer’s market getting cheap food on a weeknight, you could hit the two courts sampling and leave full without spending a dime. It’s also kind of a trip how they have like 3 or 4 roller coasters (including one that looks pretty goddamned intense) right in the middle of the mall, where most malls put the food court. To say nothing of the store with the 9 foot tall vases. I wish I had brought my camera on this trip.
Oh, also, Minneapolis in February…. not really a good idea. Just saying. It’s pretty bitter now that I’m acclimated to the mild winters of temperate Maryland.
Right, so … tomorrow onsite, then tomorrow night red-eyeing it back to dulles (again via midway). Might follow up the post, might not.