Tag: travel
Westward Ho!
Come this time next week, I’ll be preparing for a flight to Los Angeles on my yearly sojourn out of the Humidity of Tampa Bay and into smog (and drier, cooler temperatures) of LA.
Yet I’m curious about a few things — and would love some input…
For example, for those of you who have been to LA before (or perhaps live there), where would you suggest someone go for a good breakfast downtown? I’m more of a pancake person than eggs person, and I have heard and seen more offerings of omlets and egg specials than of a good stack’o’jacks. Sure, I could order room service at the hotel, but I’d rather get out of the building.
Number two, where would you go? My options are limited as I am depending on Metro to get around (no car) so while I can get to Hollywood, Long Beach, Pasadena and some points in between, getting out to Santa Monica or Beverly Hills is a bit more difficult.
And here is a complication that may or not be remedied through comments: I don’t own a laptop, right? I do own a Blackberry and can be kept abreast about problems with work or things that need to be done. If I DID need to get on a PC – where should I go? (Bonaventure business center?)
Smashed
One time of year I always love is when I have to depart from the sunny and just-too-damn-humid climate of Tampa Bay and wind my way to the original sprawl-town-USA locale of Los Angeles — which has actually started to go back to the concept of rail transportation and it makes getting around a snap compared to Cars-only-screw-pedestrians Tampa Bay. The trip takes place in the fall as part of my annual checkup and ABI tuning at the House Ear Institute near downtown LA.
I’ve stayed the last few years north of the Mid Wilshire center, not quite Hollywood, not Downtown, not Wilshire and not that great a hotel but it worked in it’s simplicity. This time around, I pampered myself and stayed downtown at the Westin Bonaventure. I haven’t stayed at a hotel that nice before and a three star rating from certain online travel companies seems cruel. At any rate, the location is extremely centralized — blocks away from subway access, shopping, Union Station (Flyaway is a blessed thing) and what not. It was a bargain compared to my normal hotel – so I paid a few extra bucks to stay there.
What I didn’t take into account was being out of shape in my post-op condition. I also didn’t take into account my unfamiliarity with the building would lead to blood, pain, and embarrassment.
2400 miles from home without anyone to hang out with – I go stumbling around the Galleria in the first few floors of the hotel and try to find a skybridge to other buildings and there shopping offerings.
Cuz what else are you going to do when you’re bored and have a little cash to spend besides shop?
So I find this exit to a skybridge — whoo hoo! — and start walking down a long corridor with skylights. I ignorantly think I am on the skybridge itself (the Bonaventure has several and ALL are uncovered) when in fact I am walking beneath the pool deck/patio of the building.
So I come to the end of that hall and find a pair of double doors saying thank-you, leaving-the-hotel, blah-blah-blah…. I can see a flight of stairs down and a flight of stairs up a short distance in front of me. I swing those doors open and walk a few steps — never observing the two steps down immediately in front of me.
Anarchy ensues.
I tumble and smash my face into a concrete-ornamental-edging at the side of the wall. I wither and moan in pain. I’m shaking, I’m bleeding, I think I’ve broken my nose.
2400 miles from home, no family in the greater Los Angeles area… The gimp-with-a-limp has worked himself ineptly into a fine mess.
I try my best to collect myself. Standing up — no, more like staggering to my feet. I get my bearing and see those stairs I missed, I also see the blood all over my hands and mutter a whiny “Oh shit” in response to this. I stagger up those steps back to those doors I mentioned… I find them locked from the outside. Imagine that.
Looking back, it feels like an eternity trying to decide what to do — go upstairs to who-knows-where or down to street level? I chose the former as to the latter and I find the pool deck of the hotel. I’m too shook up to really know if anyone who I passed spoke to me or even acknowledged me as I walked back to the hotel with blood flowing from my nose.
The fallout of all this is me walking bloodily to the lobby and asking for help, and the hotel springing to action to take car eof one of their customers. I appreciate the hell out of that but I’m stille mbarassed by being there while a convention was gathering and people checking in and out and what not. Of course, hotel security took care of that by getting me behind closed doors and takign care of me…
Probably the most anecdotal happening in LA in my time visiting the City of Angels on my lonesome. This would only have been better with company
In the Lap of Apple
I just bought a Laptop…. An old one at that but it’s an atempt to move forward in the mobile generation.
And it’s an Apple.
As someoen who’s been a PC user since his old man bought one about 15 years ago, I’ve only had brief interludes with Mac’s. Not just that but I’ve had zero to no experience with laptops as well. I’ve wanted to try out laptop technology but I haven’t. I’ve wanted to take advantage of wireless access points when traveling but I haven’t had the chance.
With plans on doing Press stuff at the St. Pete Times Forum this year, having a laptop will be a necessity. i’m just hoping this little baby is going to work out great.
Pre-trip bullshit
This is why I refused to travel with my father to LA —
Here it is, 6 and a half hours before the flight. 5 or less before we have to be at the airport… He has not packed a thing. He has not prepared one iota. He is sitting on his computer playing games, and earlier was busy watching TV.
To all of those who aren’t fucked over so much you don’t live at home and don’t have to deal with the same anal acts over and over again from family – I envy you.
Travelin' man
I’m still a gimp, as I like to say. But I’m going away on my own for most of a week in a couple of weeks. Maybe that can be taken as a birthday present for myself or just a desperate need to get away. That being said – I’m going away… Way away. Californi-a.
The big thing is that this is on my own. It’s rather sad that I’m going to be a quarter century old and this will be the first time I’ve been on a trip by myself or been at a distance from my family without having some caretaker looking over me (that usually being a nurse… hello nurse! ).
It’s part of that innocent quality to my life I guess. Never having to fend for myself. But at this point, I have GOT to get away. Away from my family and away from this house. Even if I spend the entire trip in a hotel in Hollywood, too afraid to do anything, it’s a hell of a lot better than being stuck in the suburbs.
I’m supposed to have a tuneup for the ABI (hearing device) and speak to my doctor out there as well with regards to my health. But that’s supposed to take half a day and I’m going out to Hollywood for five… Craptastic!
Stranger in a strange land
So the Lightning have one last game this season, and that last game is the true title game as the Stanley Cup Champion will be crowned after this game.
And Keith is heading down here tonight and will be arriving early tomorrow morning in Tampa to catch the game and stay a couple of day sin Tampa Bay.
It”s odd enough for me to deal with the fact the Lightning are playing for the Stanley Cup, it’s been a wild last couple of days and last couple of weeks as I have had several things change around me — which I never blogged in here .
But now I have to play International Host which I have never done before. Hell, i have never traveled by myself and can’t fathom how Keith is doing it – flying from Calgary to Tampa… I feel some insecurities because I’m still a gimp for the most part and he wants to take in some events here in Tampa and o course i want to show him around too… And doing that by car isn’t exactly how I planned it.
ON one hand, I wan tot meet him and show him the beauty of Florida before the Bolts kick the shit out of the Flames (and after :tongue) :biggrin, and on the other hand – now I know the feeling that others might feel when they are told someone is going to be visiting their neck of the woods to almost specifically meet.
But then again – it’s immaturity to look for a escape route – which I’ve seen in the past. Which I’ve participated in, in the past.
Pushing the Limits
Rehabbing is fun.
No I am not some muscle bound guy – anyone who knows me knows that isn’t the case… Yet I have been having a hell of a lot of fun working out and trying to get back into shape. I’m impressing everyone who sees me with how I am doing because of how BAD I was doing just a few months ago…
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Of course, in case you didn’t see it (and there are plenty who didn’t) you don’t know just how bad I was doing and how incapacitated I was. I’m chaffing at the bit now because I am thisclose to getting out of this oppressive life and DOING something again. Work? Travel? Either or appeals to me.
BUSY BUSY BUSY
So, I have just been a busy little bee, or just avoiding computers. j/k Well I guess I have been taking a break from things. Especially since I sit in front of one all day long at work. A vacation was needed, so I took one.
On Thanksgiving I stuffed myself silly. I love food as I posted previously. Yum. My fiance and I ate at my parents for lunch and his parents for supper. And since we didn’t like doing all this traveling all in one day, we kind of decided to just spend Christmas on our own, and maybe invite the parental units to join us instead.
So that was my weekend. Hope everyone had a good one.
Common Sense is not that common
I’m guessing that very few people who read this know who I am, so please allow me to introduce myself: My name is Keith (no, really) and I live in Calgary, AB. I’m Canadian, eh? No doot aboot it. I work as a field tech, which means I travel. A lot.
I’ve seen a lot of odd things in my travels. But an incident that occured two weeks ago takes the cake. In the parking lot of the store I was working at, a man chased a hat that blew off his head, underneath a moving semi, with predictable results.
Just like that, a life snuffed out, all for a baseball cap. I didnt see the incident itself, but everything after. The failed attempt at life support, and the shocked reaction of everyone around.
Seriously, what causes a man to run under a moving truck?
The scary part? It was submitted to the darwinawards.com website, and REJECTED because it is too common an occurance.
Man is a dumb, dumb, dumb animal…
Hearing Beyond the Door
Sometimes you never want to face up to someone’s argument when you are on the opposite side of the door of an issue when it’s full of bullshit speculation. At least that’s how I am feeling right now. I do not want to put up with someone trying to argue for an outlandish plane system in order to save Albert Whitted Airport in downtown St. Petersburg and at the same time the guy keeps sending out his opinions to me (his desires) as facts. His bending of the facts to give people the idea that they very much should support his effort.
He wants to piggy-back a space-age-plane-transit idea on the Florida amendment for High Speed Rail. An amendment that is already neglected, maligned and considered a waste due to lack of support from the government.
He’s a pilot that doesn’t want his airport (personal airport) in downtown St. Petersburg closed. He wants political support to save the airport… Yet the airport isn’t anything grand. In fact I learned to detest it when I went to the Tall Ships festival last year (and got buzzed over and over again by private planes)….
The city of St. Petersburg is losing tons of money with this airport and if they need / want to close it – so be it.
Yet my new “friend” wants not only the airport to stay open but a new “Mega Airport” to open in Florida to FURTHER support air transit.
Right…
In a state that’s already bowed to too much development and has not centralized it’s cities, air transit and complex air plans are only going to further encourage sprawl by letting distant places seem closer. That’s the last thing I want. I’d like to see city centers become just that with RAIL connections to the suburbs. Not distant suburbs several dozen-to-hundred miles away get connected by a plane-taxi like service.
It’s groovy, it’s space age, it’s a plan that everyone would have wanted for the 2000’s to be — easy travel by air — but it’s not plausible. Not now. Not in this state. Not in this ms-developed county.
What good is ranting if no one hears?
Feeling sickly right now – have been for a few days. I think it’s allergies. I HOPE it’s just allergies….
At any rate, I vented about Ferry travel the other day — not just on der Stonegauge but through Bayciti.net’s comments — and suffice it to say I think that he idea is sound. And I expect no one in government to even think about the idea.
….so Im taking the idea to government.
I’ve printed out copies of a letter to the Clearwater City Council and the Mayor just to send out feelers over the idea of Ferry transit between Clearwater and Clearwater Beach. I plan on ammending the letter and then printing out copies and sending it along to HARTLine, PSTA, The Hillsborough and Pinellas MPO’s, and other government officials…. ALl because I’m tired of having ideas and having them sitting in my head or in a blog….
To be continued.