Tales of travel
Good morning, friends.....hope it's not raining where you are.
I've just returned from a major event for my company that was held in the Dallas area over the past few days, ending yesterday. If you've visited here for a long time, you know that I often will recount my travel experiences in this space, and, since I'll again be traveling a bit in my work, I'll resume that practice with some observations today.
First and foremost, my current company is not based in Dallas, but chose to hold this major event there because of its central location and the abundance of flight options into the area. Since our event included over 1,400 attendees, it made sense to do this.
But I used to work for Dallas-based organizations and have watched the Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport evolve over the years. It looked to me that the evolution is completed for now, and that was a nice change. My last instance of traveling there was in the fall of 2015, and the concourses that I visited were marked heavily with construction. Not so this time. To the relief of passengers.
This airport does have one feature I found intriguing and yet infuriating. When you go to move through security, you see a stack of bins for the stuff you have to take out of your bags (laptop computers, liquids and your pocket contents). At DFW they want everything in a bin, including your bags, and have large bins. That's good. But they're dispensed by a system that is at least faulty. And the process is accompanied by some confusing TSA instructions and you add that to the volume of passengers and you have a process that is easily disrupted!
Before this large event this past Friday through Sunday my work group had two days of meetings. And it's seldom hard to tell who arranges the group dinners (outside of the hotel, fortunately). I suppose we all do things in our own image and this was no exception. The person who selected both restaurants chose places that were far too small for our large groups and were, shall we say, rustic. One of these venues was built of cinder blocks (but recently, not an old building) and appeared designed to look like your grandmother's unfinished basement.
I boarded my flight home yesterday and was settling in and between a wanted-to-be-chatty seatmate and a screaming child directly in front of me (who fortunately calmed down completely once the plane became airborne) I was convinced that I would have a less-than-wonderful experience. Luckily that wasn't the case.
I must look like I know what I'm doing, as several people in the airport asked me where to go for certain things or what stop to take for a certain terminal. I'm not sure, except I was still wearing my business casual outfit from the meetings when these people encountered me yesterday.
My wife is trying to persuade me to buy a new set of noise-cancelling headphones and a new suitcase, since I'm again embarking on regular travel. Not sure I want to do either. I bought the Apple AirPods some time ago and like them very much. You've seen them, they look like the earphones that come with a new iPhone, but without the wires. I frankly don't remember the wired version feeling this comfortable or sounding this good. So I'm undecided about that.
Regarding the suitcase, I invested in a new bag in 2008 when my travel last ramped up. Have beaten the daylights out of this bag since, with ample help from the airlines. Invoked the company's lifetime warranty twice and paid a leather repair shop to stitch up a broken seam another time. It's not expandable, but I managed to get clothes for my five day trip into it this past week. The wheels still roll smoothly and quietly, the handle still telescopes, and nothing falls out. So another on-the-fence issue.
I'm traveling to northern Ohio this Thursday, this time by car because of the need for greater schedule flexibility on Friday. So that should also bring some interesting stories. See you after.
I've just returned from a major event for my company that was held in the Dallas area over the past few days, ending yesterday. If you've visited here for a long time, you know that I often will recount my travel experiences in this space, and, since I'll again be traveling a bit in my work, I'll resume that practice with some observations today.
First and foremost, my current company is not based in Dallas, but chose to hold this major event there because of its central location and the abundance of flight options into the area. Since our event included over 1,400 attendees, it made sense to do this.
But I used to work for Dallas-based organizations and have watched the Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport evolve over the years. It looked to me that the evolution is completed for now, and that was a nice change. My last instance of traveling there was in the fall of 2015, and the concourses that I visited were marked heavily with construction. Not so this time. To the relief of passengers.
This airport does have one feature I found intriguing and yet infuriating. When you go to move through security, you see a stack of bins for the stuff you have to take out of your bags (laptop computers, liquids and your pocket contents). At DFW they want everything in a bin, including your bags, and have large bins. That's good. But they're dispensed by a system that is at least faulty. And the process is accompanied by some confusing TSA instructions and you add that to the volume of passengers and you have a process that is easily disrupted!
Before this large event this past Friday through Sunday my work group had two days of meetings. And it's seldom hard to tell who arranges the group dinners (outside of the hotel, fortunately). I suppose we all do things in our own image and this was no exception. The person who selected both restaurants chose places that were far too small for our large groups and were, shall we say, rustic. One of these venues was built of cinder blocks (but recently, not an old building) and appeared designed to look like your grandmother's unfinished basement.
I boarded my flight home yesterday and was settling in and between a wanted-to-be-chatty seatmate and a screaming child directly in front of me (who fortunately calmed down completely once the plane became airborne) I was convinced that I would have a less-than-wonderful experience. Luckily that wasn't the case.
I must look like I know what I'm doing, as several people in the airport asked me where to go for certain things or what stop to take for a certain terminal. I'm not sure, except I was still wearing my business casual outfit from the meetings when these people encountered me yesterday.
My wife is trying to persuade me to buy a new set of noise-cancelling headphones and a new suitcase, since I'm again embarking on regular travel. Not sure I want to do either. I bought the Apple AirPods some time ago and like them very much. You've seen them, they look like the earphones that come with a new iPhone, but without the wires. I frankly don't remember the wired version feeling this comfortable or sounding this good. So I'm undecided about that.
Regarding the suitcase, I invested in a new bag in 2008 when my travel last ramped up. Have beaten the daylights out of this bag since, with ample help from the airlines. Invoked the company's lifetime warranty twice and paid a leather repair shop to stitch up a broken seam another time. It's not expandable, but I managed to get clothes for my five day trip into it this past week. The wheels still roll smoothly and quietly, the handle still telescopes, and nothing falls out. So another on-the-fence issue.
I'm traveling to northern Ohio this Thursday, this time by car because of the need for greater schedule flexibility on Friday. So that should also bring some interesting stories. See you after.
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