Sunday, February 17, 2008

Eight Day, Eight City, U.S. Tour

2/08/2008: Boston, MA
2/09/2008: Seattle, WA
2/12/2008: San Jose, CA
2/14/2008: San Francisco, CA
2/15/2008: Minneapolis, MN
2/15/2008: Detroit, MI
2/15/2008: Indianapolis, IN
2/15/2008: Dulles, VA



Here is the first stop on the tour. Because of weather, I missed my connecting flight by 10 minutes. So I had to spend a night in Boston, because JetBlue only flies one flight a day from Boston to Seattle. This is the picture of the room in the Comfort Inn near the airport where I spent that night.


I had nothing to do in Boston, so I went to the airport early. Unfortunately, that's where I found out that JetBlue wouldn't let me check bags earlier than four hours in advance. I took this picture while I was wandering around the airport looking for someplace to eat before security, since I couldn't check my bag. I never did find someplace to eat, but it killed enough time to let me check my bag.


I found out there was a shuttle from the airport to the subway, so once I checked my luggage I took the subway downtown to kill some more time and hopefully find somewhere to eat. I wound up getting a kielbasa from a vendor in Qunicy Market. The building featured in the center of this picture is Faneuil Hall. I am not sure why it is particularly historically significant, but there it is.


This is a statue of Samuel Adams in front of Faneuil Hall. I wonder how many more pictures are taken of this statue now because of the beer. Anyway, he made speeches in Faneuil Hall, which I guess gave it some of its historical significance.


From Boston I flew to Seattle, a day late, to support registration for TechReady. This was the main purpose of my travel this week.


This is a picture of my bed at the Sheraton. I was disappointed not to be staying at the Hyatt this time like I have several times before. The Hyatt is very nice. The Sheraton was OK. I don't have any complaints about the Sheraton, but it was not as nice as the Hyatt.


This is the view from my room.


The Sheraton does have a pool and a fitness area located on the top floor of one of its towers. This is the pool.


This is the view from that floor. There is some water in this picture.


This is a closer look at some of the water, as much as you can see from there.


The view looking down.


A view looking out over more of Seattle.


One last look at Seattle.


While I was in town for TechReady, I decided to go see Rambo. I'm glad I did. I enjoyed the movie.


From Seattle, I flew via Alaska Airlines to San Jose. I got to the airport early enough (but just barely) to catch an earlier flight to San Jose. That was the only flight I had this trip that was not significantly delayed. This is a picture of part of the sprawling Cisco corporate campus, what I could see from my hotel window.


What else I could see from the window was the pool . . . with people sitting around it . . . in February. They were wearing more or less normal clothes, not swimsuits, at least as far as I could tell. But still . . . .


While in San Jose, I stayed at the Crowne Plaza Hotel. It was OK. Here's the desk in my room.


Here's the bathroom.


And here's the shower. Not terribly exciting.


And here are the beds. I think all the rooms I stayed in had two beds, too. Again, not the best for me, because that generally means the beds are smaller, and I am not.


This is the cabinet with the TV in it. Pretty standard.


This is a picture of a highway in San Jose taken from an overpass. I was walking back to my hotel from a nearby shopping center called McCarthy Ranch. It took about 15 minutes to walk between the two.


I thought I was flying United to Indianapolis, but actually it was Northwest. So I had to walk through this deserted terminal at the San Francisco airport to get to the Northwest ticket counters.


The pictures are kind of blurry because I had to use my phone's camera this trip. My other camera was still being repaired when I left for this trip.


The original plan was to fly through Detroit to Indianapolis, but the plane couldn't land in Detroit because of a mechanical problem, so it had to fly to Minneapolis instead, where we switched planes. We got into Minneapolis around 3:30 a.m. local time, so this airport was also deserted.


Just another picture of the empty terminal. Between the deserted space at San Francisco and this empty airport, I was starting to feel like I was in the Sci-Fi Channel movie adaptation of Stephen King's The Langoliers.


From Minneapolis, we flew to the originally scheduled layover stop, Detroit. At the gates, they have very large television displays, which are much clearer in real life than in this picture.


Because the first leg of my trip was delayed, I once again arrived too late to catch my connecting flight and had to wait three hours for the next flight to Indianapolis. The only thing good about that was that it gave me some time to eat breakfast. I also wandered around the airport a bit and took a picture of this fountain.


This is a picture of a deicing truck at the Detroit airport. This was the reason we had to switch planes--whatever the mechanical problem was on the first plane, it meant that the plane could not be deiced properly. I think Minneapolis was at -3 degrees Farenheit when we landed, but there was no precipitation.


Finally, a few hours late, I landed in Indianapolis. This is (I think) a picture of the airplane I flew in on.


And last, this is me breaking FAA regulations to take a picture of Indianapolis as we take off headed for Dulles airport. I didn't take any pictures of Dulles this trip, but there are pictures of it in a previous blog entry. My eight day, eight city tour actually had me hitting five of those cities in less than 24 hours. It was a long day.


Sunday, February 17, 2008 

Category: Jobs, Work, Careers