a weblog of whereabouts & interests, since 2010
I am at Salt Lake City airport waiting for my late night flight back to Seattle. I saw this eye-catching ‘Union Station’ neon sign close to our hotel in Ogden on Tuesday night. The station is now a museum with restaurants. I had time to stop by tonight on the way to the airport to take a few pictures, and here they are.
Ogden lies at the foot of the Wasatch Mountains, about 10 miles east of the Great Salt Lake and 40 miles north of Salt Lake City. I still have to go and look for the newly renovated Ogden Utah Temple of the Latter Day Saints and of course, take a closer look at the Great Lake.
I am in Pittsburgh, with a stop in Denver this time. The flight for Denver left Seattle at 5.20am this morning .. uff. The TSA security check point opened at 4 am, but the special short line for Mr Very Important Frequent Flier (me) was not open that early, so I had to wait in the ‘long’ security line with everyone else.
The hurricane is now a ‘post-tropical cyclone’ and the worst seems to be over now that it has made landfall – but there is still a lot of wind and rain associated with the massive storm sytem. United Airlines have not canceled my flight out to Chicago (and on to Pittsburgh from there) so I will try to get to Pittsburgh tomorrow. Pittsburgh is right outside the white cone in the rectangle that where it says 8 PM Tue! And no, I’m not stubborn : I have client meetings to go to that have not been canceled.
It takes all Sunday to get from Seattle to Pittsburgh : there are no direct flights! (Boo! to the airlines). So I got up early this morning for an 8.15 am flight and have made it into Chicago’s O’Hare airport. It’s another hour or so before I will go on to Pittsburgh and I will arrive there at 7.30pm. Pittsburgh is on East coast time, so the time zone change moves the clock forward by three hours.
The weekend edition of the Wall Street Journal reports that Zimbabwe’s economy is doing better, four years after they started pegging the Zim dollar to the US dollar, and with a coalition government in place. ‘Zimbabwean safari guides are known as the best on the continent’ says the article that covers safaris in Hwange National Park. Visitors get up close to elephants (presumably NOT to lions and leopards) on foot. As for myself : I have vivid memories of the African safari experience from Botswana. I will never forget the one time when I went for a short walk into the bush on my own (with no weapon). As I approached a clump of bushes, the birds went quiet, and a sixth sense made me feel something was about to happen. I felt the hairs on my neck stand up straight .. the next moment the bush exploded and a big buck crashed out of it, scaring the living. African. daylights. out of me. Man! at the same time, what a relief it was!
I thought I left Seattle with plenty of time at 9.30 am to make my 1.30 pm meeting, but I made it with almost no time to spare. The offices of our client’s company was very hard to find. And since I had to be back in Seattle on Thursday morning, I did not stay in Vancouver afterwards, but just made an escape from the southbound Vancouver traffic to get back to the border. (Aw. I would have loved to walked around the city and take some Vancouver pictures, but it will have to wait until my next visit).
I am driving up to Vancouver on Wednesday morning for work. The official Google estimate of the drive time is 2h 42m but we all know that life is not that predictable. There is traffic, and there is a border crossing between A and B on the map! I could have flown, it’s a 50 min flight, and I could have taken the Amtrak train, but in the end it all comes out in the wash and it’s going to take 3 or 4 hrs to get there. And the car will let me stop on the way and drive around in the city a little bit (Canada drives on the right side of the road the way we do in the States).
It was a sombre day in the USA with the 11th anniversary of 9/11. Here are three pictures of the same downtown Pittsburgh scene from my hotel room window Monday night and Tuesday. The very tall building on the left that runs out of the picture is the headquarters of US Steel. It has 64 floors and was completed in 1970. Its outside is steel and it is called – quick, want to guess? – the Steel Building. The Gulf Tower next to it with the colorfully lit top at night has 44 floors and was completed in 1930.
Downtown Pittsburgh is at the confluence of the Allegheny and Monongahela rivers, which form the Ohio River. The city was founded in 1758 and named after British statesman William Pitt. Pittsburgh no longer has its famous steel mills within the city limits but is now instead home to an economy based on healthcare, education, technology and financial services. There are many theaters in the cultural district downtown, and I ran into stunning architecture and building adornments there on Sunday as well.
I have to be in Pittsburgh on Tuesday, and it’s too far to make it to Seattle and back. So I took a 1hr30 min flight out to Pittsburgh on a United Express jet (about 30 seats).
I tried one more time to get into the 9/11 Memorial, but the only slots available were late Saturday afternoon, and I didn’t make it back there to go inside. (At the base of the tower a group of 9/11 conspiracy theory believers were making their case. Man! Give it up). Late morning in Manhattan there were gusty winds, with showers in the afternoon. I learned on the news two tornadoes touched down at the edge of New York City! — but no serious injuries were reported.
It was a long day at the office and we went out for dinner, so I did not have too much time for gallivanting around New York City and gawking at the buildings and the people !
It’s been a long day since I got up at 4.00 am Seattle time to make my 7.00 am flight. We left Seattle a little late, and there was light rain in New York City when I arrived, but everything went according to plan. I had dinner with a colleague and then we went for a short walk to Times Square. We also went down to the World Trade Center site. The 9/11 Memorial had already closed, though.
I leave very early Tue morning to go to New York City to attend a training course set up by my firm (yes, the old dog can still learn a few new tricks). I will arrive at Newark Liberty airport, and I need to get right into Manhattan. I will take several trains to get there : Newark Airtrain shuttle to the Newark Airport station, the New Jersey Transit to Penn Station in Manhattan, and then the New York subway train to get me to two blocks of the hotel.
I am still opening my little souvenirs from Japan. I found this world map with a set of Doraemon refigerator magnets in Tokyo, and felt compelled to buy it (because I think it is cute, not because I plan to travel to every country in the world!). Doraemon is the intelligent robotic cat (from a manga series created in 1969), who travels back in time from the 22nd century to aid a schoolboy, Nobita Nobi.
Everything after the Narita Express train ride to the airport went very well : picked up the stowed suitcase, get the luggage out of the way at the check-in, buying a last souvenir at the airport shops and stamps at the airport post office, and onto the plane. It was 9 hrs to Seattle, and I got in on Saturday morning after leaving Tokyo on Saturday afternoon.
I’m out of clean clothes, my camera’s battery is almost dead and the charger is in the bag I 
left at the airport – and I did what I wanted to do in Tokyo! I’ve got my ticket, and about to go downstairs to check out. A short trip on Tokyo Metro to Tokyo Station and then on the Express to the airport.
I had to go check out the area around Shinjuku station .. lots of people, lots of places and a nice vibe. It is warm even at night (of course).
Alright, so I tried !.. but couldn’t make it up to the Skytree’s observation decks (there are two). I got there a little after 12 noon and the line was so long that they sold tickets for 4 pm. School is still out here, so everyone was out in full force. To make matters ‘worse’ there is a whole Skytree Town built at the Tree’s base : souvenir shops, stores, a food court and an aquarium as well.
