Category: Travel

The ‘Wild Bangkok’ Thai restaurant here in downtown Denver is nicely decorated inside .. and they serve up frosty Singha beers in Singha mugs.  I was on my own : a welcome moment of respite after a long day of talking to lots of people.   I enjoy the cold beer while the summer is still lingering before its final goodbye.  It was a day of sunshine here, welcome weather after the historic 100-year flood in the Boulder area that destroyed some 120 homes.  The roads around Boulder are extensively damaged, so much so that people have to be airlifted out.

I had to get up with the early birds (or even before them) for my early flight out to Denver.  At least I got some sympathy from my project manager here in Denver when he learnt I took the 5.15 am flight.  ‘Whoah!  There should be a law against that – for flights to leave that early’, he said.

We had Seattle weather all week in Denver (rain), and Colorado weather in Seattle, I think. (Wednesday’s high in Seattle of 93° F/ 34°C was a record high for this time of year).

On the drive out to Denver airport this afternoon, some off ramps from the freeway were closed due to standing water, or flash flood water.   The flooding is worst in Boulder, not too far northwest from the city of Denver.

I made my very early start, waiting at 4 am for the TSA to open their security lines, boarded at 4.40 am, and arrived at Denver airport 9 am local time.   Got the rental car (you have to wait for a shuttle bus that goes to the rental car lot), and drove into the city.  It’s a good 40 min drive to the offices, and my Google Map’s turn-by-turn directions led me astray.  So by now it was 11 am.   Our project manager introduced me to about 30 people, and I sat in four meetings, which made for a very long day – but it’s very nice to have the whole Denver downtown to explore.    And hey, I have a shared office and they had my computer all set up.

My ‘Thinking in Numbers’ book has arrived, and I think I will like it a lot from what I have read so far.  I have to make it an early night because the flight leaves frightfully early (5.15 am) in the morning.   I am going to Denver – and yes, I know I was just there for my stopover back from Toronto!   My new project is at an oil company headquartered in the city.   The last time I helped an oil company convert their information systems to SAP in was in 1999.   The crude oil price at the time dipped down to $18 a barrel.  These days it sits at $110 per barrel and is heading higher.

When traveling back to the USA from Canada, all the customs formalities are done in the Canadian airport, before one even sets foot in the USA.  My Global Entry accreditation that I did for my trips to China is still valid (it is $100 for 5 years), and it came in handy today.  I could bypass a very long line at the passport control by scanning my passport, looking into the camera, and providing four fingerprints.   I was very tired, and the flights felt very long : one to Denver (3 hrs) and one to Seattle (3 hrs).

So there we were Friday, seated up in front facing a panel of about fifteen client team people listening and looking at to our presentation for 45 minutes (I only did 4 of the 26 slides).  Then there was an Q & A for the next hour and 15 mins.  We were not perfect (who is?) but we think we did well. We stumbled on one question, and was a little too vague on one or two others.   So we shook some hands, and piled into the van back to Toronto.  We felt good about our effort .. but for now it is out of our hands.  I  stayed over, only going out to Seattle on Saturday morning.

My travels on Tuesday went without incident.  I stopped over in Chicago; and made it through Canada’s customs at Toronto airport without getting sent to the ‘problem with passport’ checkpoint (even though I have a US passport now, they black-marked me for ‘trying’ to get to the Canadian side of the Niagara falls in 1995 with my South African passport).  Of course there’s French everywhere.  Fin de trottoir, goes the French for ‘end of walkway’ in the airport, for example.  I only arrived at the hotel in downtown Toronto after 10.00 pm.  It’s always a challenge to get a decent bite to eat at that time on a week night, but there was a Tim Horton’s (Canada’s more-or-less equivalent of Starbucks, a fast casual restaurant known for its coffee and doughnuts) open right by the hotel.

Our Marriott Courtyard hotel is in Layton, between Salt Lake City and Ogden.  It’s on Antelope Drive.  We leave the hotel too early to get breakfast or even coffee in the morning, so we checked out the Starbuckses closest to the hotel.  The two green balloons at the top right is where we are, on Antelope Avenue.  That’s when I noticed there is an Antelope Island in the Salt Lake; turns out the whole island is a State Park.  So now I have to find time to drive out there on the water with that ‘Syracuse’ road to go and check it out. Google Maps is always there to provide a preview, of course (and spoil the fun of discovering it for real a little bit. We live in the information age and nothing seems to be completely hidden away anymore!).

It is 6 am on Monday morning at Sea-Tac airport and I am in the ‘Sky Priority’ lane to try to get in ahead of my fellow passengers.

How did I get to be a Delta ‘Sky Priority’ Platinum member, since I have flown mostly on United the prior year?  Well, you apply for a ‘status match’ with your new airline. Your new ‘preferred’ airline grants you a temporary elite status* match for three months to see if you are actually bringing them enough flying to justify your temporary status.  (If you don’t, your elite status disappears and you have to earn it the hard way with a full year of flying enough miles). So while my new Delta Platinum status did not get me upgraded to the luxe first class seats this Monday, it did help me get out of the middle seat in the back of the airplane to a seat further up to the front on the aisle, and with more legroom.

*Please don’t be too jealous of my ‘elite’ flying status.  All it means is that I fly a lot, and that I sometimes Iuck out and sit in front of the plane !

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I took a walk late Sunday afternoon and then had to pack since I’m heading out to the ‘salt mine’ in Salt Lake City again in the morning.  I am pressing a new suitcase into service that I have actually had for a long time, bought it at a sale. Part of the reason for the new suitcase is that I had a melt-down in my suitcase last Thursday while the rental car was parked in the sun all day with our luggage.  I tucked a whole slab of chocolate into the side of the suitcase – and of course it was no match for the inferno in the car’s trunk.  It liquefied and stained several items of clothing.  (I got most of the stains out to my surprise. I used club soda to rinse it, scrubbed it as best I could, and then used Tide detergent and my washing machine’s ‘extra hot’ sanitary cycle).

Monday/ Correction re: chalkboard : it’s Montana.  I said Washington State. Thanks to Bryan for pointing that out.  I was not paying attention! There is no jagged Puget Sound coastline in this outline.

The Marriott Courtyard hotel where we will come to and stay in for the next several weeks from Monday to Thursday is comfortable.  I finally got used to the noise of the air-conditioner in the room as well.   I set it at 74°F (23 °C), but even then it turns on and runs frequently.  The day temperatures have come down from Monday’s extreme highs to the low 90s (33 °C).

Monday saw 107°F (42°C) where we work out in the deserty area by the Great Salt Lake, reported my colleagues when I met them at the hotel on Monday night.  A very far cry from the opposite extreme of -8°F (-22°C) when I was here in the dead of winter! Today (Tuesday) was a little less scorching, but the mountains were still shimmering in the heat, not high enough to carry any snow at all at this time of year.

It is mid-morning on Monday and I am sitting in the South Terminal of Seattle airport, with very clean teeth. (Fresh from the dentist at 7.30 am this morning to get my chompers cleaned).  I see it’s going to hit 97°F (36°C) in Salt Lake City today.  I hope I don’t melt or get toasted too badly out there – the weather in Seattle has not been anywhere near that, for the most part this summer.  It starts out most mornings at 55°F (13°C), with a high of 75°F (24°C).

 

We made it!  We had more than three hours at Heathrow’s Termical 5 before the flight back to Seattle -but the experience at Heathrow was a good one.  Everything works well and the security check point was efficient and not nearly as onerous as the ones here in the States.  After arriving at Seattle airport, it took more than an hour to get through passport control at US Customs.  And there was more waiting at the taxi stands : the lines were very long.  So we opted for the light rail train from the airport to Mount Baker station where our friend Steve came to pick us up.  Thanks Steve!

We’ve gone ‘full circle’ and arrived at Southampton this morning.   We left our checked luggage outside the door last night, and all 3,000 (and more) of us will be taken to the airport, or just to London.  Believe it or not, there is a number of people just staying put on the ship – they are going on another cruise, on the same ship !  This ship goes up to Norway as well, so that might be the one that they are on. So there is a busride to the airport, and then our flight will leave Heathrow early afternoon and get us back to Seattle about the same time on Thursday.

 

It was a long day, but interesting to see the Normandy beaches made famous by the D-Day landings on June 6, 1944.  Our tour guide was Amelié (a very French name, and she spoke with a very French accent).  Our first stop was at the village of Arromanche, where the temporary harbour and vehicle landing strips were built.  The British landed there. Then we stopped at the large American Normandy Cemetery and Memorial that overlooks Omaha beach.    It’s actually American property, given to the USA by the French government.   Then we made a stop down at the Omaha beach and one more at Utah beach.  We had one World War II veteran in the group (you have to be  say, 85 or older if you were a young man at the end of the war).

So .. the voyage around the British Isles is coming to an end!  Tonight it’s packing up, and off to Southampton and directly to Heathrow airport from there for the  flight back to Seattle.

We’re in the English Channel, or shall I simply say The Channel, so as not to offend the French too much who may equally claim the name to be La Manche.  (The French term has been in use for a longer time than the English one, actually).  We’re heading toward the port of Le Havre in the north of France.  I’m signed up for a long bus ride to Omaha Beach where the famous Normandy landings in World War II happened.

We arrived in Edinburgh on Monday morning, but (somewhat shockingly) there was no dockside to moor at.  Part of the problem is that the 18 storey tall cruise ship could not pass under the Fourth River Bridge, an engineering marvel of stone pillars and steel trusses that was constructed in the 1890s.    So the tender boats got us to shore for our excursion to Edinburgh castle, the city of Edinburgh and the royal Brittania yacht (Queen Elizabeth’s yacht for state visits, commissioned in 1954 and only retired in 1997).

It was a gorgeous sunny day, the best so far this year, said the locals, and the Edinburgh castle was crowded.  We filed into the castle’s museum to see the Scottish crown jewels : not as impressive as the ones in the Tower of London!  a crown with gold and pearls and some diamonds (I think), and a big square stone called the Stone of Destiny. (It played a central role in the crowning of several Scottish kings and at times, have been lost for many decades in the mists of time and legend).

I would have loved to see more of the city.   The city has lots of grreenerry (imitating our guide’s Scottish accent), and the very modern building housing the Museum of Scotland that was designed by a Spaniard was not on our list to do.

Monday night we set sail for Le Havre on the French coast, but we will need a day of sea in the North Sea to get us there.