Category: Travel

We joke sometimes and say the hotel is our ‘home away from home’ – but it really is not, now is it?  Nothing in there is yours. You check out and clear out completely.  Here’s a picture of my hotel room this morning just before I started scrambling to get everything packed up.  (It’s actually been a very long time since I have left anything behind).   My basic hotel room rule is not to put anything away in a dresser, a drawer or a nightstand. That way I can do a 360° scan and grab anything that catches my eye.   Watch out for those white items on the white bed linen, though! They can hide in plain sight.  But white is a plus for an iPhone charger and its cable and head phones, though.  It makes those stand out in the shadows of the hotel room.

I have a very early flight out to Denver – 5.20 am – so I have to ‘hit the sack’ here.  My bags are packed, my shoes are polished and my shirt is ironed. No time for any of that when I wake up! I see it’s heavy going in the north east with all the snow that has fallen over the weekend.  I’m sure there will be flight cancellations and delays in that part of the country.

I am at Denver airport.   Our work week at the site is done, and we are on the way home. (More work from the home office tomorrow). There was a lot of traffic clogging the freeway out here, but not because of weather.  Just too many cars!  The Denver travelers are grateful for the mild temperatures and absence of snow and ice this week.  We could walk outside to go to lunch, and not worry too much about travel delays and flight cancellations.

I got to ‘sleep in’ until 6.30 am today.  I had a teeth cleaning and check-up scheduled at the dentist for 7.30 am. It was raining and I thought I would take the car to the dentist, come back to the house and have the taxi (to the airport) pick me up there.  But at 7 am I discovered the car was dead as a dodo – man! I thought, how strange, since it started perfectly fine on Saturday. (Time for a new car? is always the question).

Anyway, I saw on my iPhone that the next no 10 bus with its stop close by my house was just 4 minutes away, so that became Plan B, and got me to downtown (the dentist) in good time. The taxi picked me up at the dentist at 8.30 am, took me home to pick up my luggage, and off to the airport we went.  The 11 am flight was delayed by 30 minutes, which was a good thing for me.  (Not so good for the people with tight connections in Denver).  Another taxi from Denver airport to downtown, and it was 4 pm by the time I rolled into the office.   What a day.

It was a low-key day at work for me here in the Denver office.  The Bronco fans were very disappointed with their team’s poor showing at the Superbowl (of course).

It was bearable outside as I stepped out of the taxi from Denver airport (bearable = 20 °F/ -6 °C). But maybe I’m only saying that because it’s going to get a lot colder over the next few days!

I am at Denver airport, and it looks like I will be able to get out of here just ahead of several inches of snow that may accumulate tonight and tomorrow morning.  Locations around the city of Denver expect 6 to 10 inches of snow by Friday afternoon – not a good outlook for continued operations at the airport, I would say.  The airport is some 25 miles west from the city.

‘Time to ride’ say the banners here in Denver : a reference to the Denver Broncos’ mascot, and their Superbowl match-up on Sunday Feb 2 against the Seattle Seahawks.

There was a little snow on the ground this morning; just enough to make it too cold and too difficult to walk to the office – especially with one’s roller bag luggage in tow. 14° F ( -10 °C) is definitely too frigid to be out and about! My name is not Robert Scott or Roald Amundsen!.  We managed to hail down a taxi to take us to the office, though.

It’s Martin Luther King Day, but only about 1/3 of employers recognize it as a holiday, so I traveled out to Denver.   My return air fare was a ridiculously cheap $137.  That’s about the same as the 20 min taxi fare to Seattle airport this morning plus the 40 min taxi fare to the office in Denver after landing. The airlines’ computer geeks supposedly maximize the profit on every seat, on every plane, on every route .. but it sure seems like they were not profiting from my fare!

As the statistics tell us : it’s much safer to fly for two hours than to drive for two hours, and Thursday night proved that point.   On the drive home from Seatac airport I was half-asleep in the back when my taxi driver stirred with a fright and grabbed his phone.   Maybe he forgot to phone someone really important, I thought.   But no : he was dialing 911. There was a driver in a white car facing south on northbound I-5 in the shoulder lane.  So luckily she had managed to get to the shoulder – but man! how on earth did she manage to use the north-bound off-ramp to drive south?  Was the fog partly to blame? It really wasn’t that thick.  Anyway, there was nothing on the news, and there is nothing on the WSDOT blog, so I trust that she got help and that the situation was remedied.

I am at Denver airport. It’s Thursday and so most of the travelers on the project – and me – are heading home tonight.  The office people here plan to wear something orange tomorrow to support the Denver Broncos in their bid against the New England Patriots for a place in the Superbowl final.   (And Seattle’s Seahawks play against the San Francisco 49ers this weekend.  In Seattle, the colors to wear are blue with a little lime green trim).

My colleague and I tried a new taxi service smart phone app; this one is called Metro Taxi.  It’s just a little easier to order a taxi than using the phone and yelling one’s name (and sometimes its spelling) into the phone for the dispatcher.  And here in Denver there seems to be a 5 minute or longer wait time for a dispatcher every time I call the cab company.

My early morning flight out to Denver today went without incident (because I was sleeping most of the way).  It was a different story trying to get to Denver downtown from the airport, though.   The one part was our mistake (my colleague’s and mine) : agreeing with a friendly guy to share a taxi to the city to save a few dollars.  He was dropped off first, and the detour added about 30 mins to our trip to the office.   The other part was not our fault, though.  The entire I-270 highway was closed in both directions from 3 am to 1 pm.   Turned out a fugitive was shot in the early hours of the morning by the local police (non-life threatening injuries), and the highway was closed in both directions for an investigation.   So what should have been a 30 min ride, took 1 hr and 40 mins stuck in traffic.  Oy vey.

The travelers (‘road warriors’) on the project were all very happy to call the first work week of the year done! and we can go home! on Thursday night.  So off to Denver airport to go home.

Travel-wise, the week had a rough start with the severe weather.   We stayed at a Hampton Inn right across the street from the offices where we work, which was very convenient, given the cold weather.   Next week we are back at the Hilton Garden Inn, some eight city blocks away.

The polar vortex flinging extremely cold arctic air and snow over North America made for lots of canceled and delayed flights today.  My early morning flight out to Denver was canceled, and the next flight out was delayed by several hours as well.  So the sun was setting in Denver by the time we arrived there.  There is some snow on the ground here, but not a lot.  And the temperature may actually reach 50 °F (10 °C) on Tuesday.

I made it in .. was a little tired and uncomfortable during the flight, but Lufthansa took good care of us.  Great food, on-time and good service.

I’m at Munich airport.  A quick stop in Frankfurt, then Lufthansa will take me to Seattle from there.  It’s a good thing we fly over New York and Chicago without stopping!   I see the winter storms Hercules ans Ion will bring strong winds, snow and brutally cold weather to the Midwest and eastern parts of the USA.

I arrived in Munich.  The Marriott hotel by the main train station did have a room for me for an early check-in at 8.00 am in the morning.  So I had my European shower (the kind where you are very careful not to spray water all over the floor, because for some mysterious reason the showers all over Europe only have half bath-length and open-ended partitions.  (But it’s not a complaint, just an observation).

I am at Johannesburg’s Oliver Tambo airport. I have to wait a few hours for my flight to Munich. We leave tonight, and I fly just about due north, so hopefully I will get a few hours sleep.

The flight is scheduled for an early morning arrival there, and they may not have a room for an early check-in for me at the hotel .. in which case I will feel compelled to use the time to wander around in the city for a few hours!

My brother’s family and I ran out to the Victoria & Alfred waterfront in Cape Town this afternoon.  We spent some time at a Leonardo Da Vinci exhibition.  It consisted of wood constructions of his designs, and electronic displays of his anatomy drawings and of the Mona Lisa* and The Last Supper.  Then we had a beer and fish and chips at Ferrymans pub to bid 2013 good-bye.

*Of course : the real Mona Lisa was still safely ensconced in the Louvre!

I did a little Christmas shopping on Tuesday here in the town of Stellenbosch where I stay with my family.  I am still adjusting to the new time zone and the summer temperatures!

With the students from the University of Stellenbosch gone for the summer break, there is less traffic and a lot more parking available.  (The academic year in South Africa runs from February through November).