Salt Lake City

A picture of downtown Salt Lake City. This is just a couple of blocks from our hotel. Nice downtown but seems that it has had a rough go of it since the Olympics. There are lots of empty store fronts.
Nearby to this shot I was priveleged to eat what has to have been the best omelet ever made. It was a Mexican omelet with chorizo and green peppers and onions and pepper jack cheese. It was magnificent!

I took a quick tour of the city on the UTA which is Salt Lakes light rail train and rode it all the way out to the University of Utah. THE UTES! I would think that the students would get tired of chanting the school letters. U-U-U-U! It gets repetitive fast!

This is for Rita...it is a pic of the library in Salt Lake. Pretty impressive building if you ask me! It was snowing while I was there but if you look back at the end of the street you can see it starting to clear off. The Mountains rise right out of the city and makes for a spectacular view.

This is for Reid....here it is...The University of Utah Utes Football Stadium.

Duluth...does it get any colder than this?

Well, the obvious answer is yes. Just the day we were there, it was far colder just up the road in Embarrass, MN as well as International Falls, MN. Both places are off my winter getaway lists.
Duluth has a surprisingly pretty view of Lake Superior. There are a couple of webcam sites that you can check out to see for yourself! http://www.lsmma.com/webcam.htm When I checked the link they were experiencing some focusing issues but are working to resolve them. I wanted to get some pictures of the lake for the Blog but the weather dictated otherwise. The biting cold and the climb up incredibly steep inclines kept it from happening.
Another cool feature to Duluth is the interconnecting buildings. Much like Minneapolis and I'm sure for the exact same reasons, Duluth has build itself so that most of the city can be walked while inside. Buildings are connected with skywalks which are full of restaurants and shops creating a mall feeling right downtown. This allows people to move from car to office without facing the reality of temps that sometimes reach -50 with wind chill. It is also an economic boost to the city as people simply wouldn't shop in those temps if they were forced outside.
I do have a couple of pictures bot Blogger isn't letting me upload today for some reason. Once I get that figured out I'll add them.

Feel free to add comments! Would love to hear what you think!

Medical Emergency at 35,000 feet

Yesterday I had one of the more frightening experiences I've had in a while. I was working lead on the final day of a three day trip coming from Houston to Detroit. I was up doing my pre-meal beverage service when a lady in the back of the cabin began waving at me frantically. Before I could get to the back of the plane, one of the other flight attendants saw the woman as well and responded. He found her husband unresponsive in his seat.
The gentleman resumed consciousness but was incoherent and unable to communicate. The third flight attendant paged for a doctor while I informed the flight deck. Fortunately we had a doctor on board and our training kicked in. Every year in annual recurrent training we hear about incidents and how suddenly all your training comes right back to you. I had always wondered how true that was, but found it to be very true. While a passenger and I moved the gentleman to the floor the other f/a's were busy bringing the phalanx of emergency equipment to the scene.
All passenger aircraft carry defibrillators, oxygen, heart monitors and a stash of medicines designed for use by medical professionals. Suddenly all of this equipment was there and ready for use, I was truly impressed at how quickly my coworkers responded!
The doctor on board asked that we get the plane on the ground quickly and the Captain got us down in a hurry. We landed at Little Rock and taxi-ed right up to the gate where paramedics met the flight. The gentleman and his wife were removed and taken to a local hospital. No word on his condition or what triggered his event but I'm sure he is in good hands.
Once the appropriate paperwork was completed (which surely was designed by a consortium of carbon paper producers) we taxi-ed back out and took off for Detroit where I was met with yet another mountain of paperwork. All in all though, I think I'd prefer filling out the paperwork instead of causing it.

San Antonio

Here I am on a gray afternoon in San Antonio. The home of The Alamo, the Riverwalk and El Mercado along with the San Antonio Spurs of the NBA.

We landed about 10pm last night in a fog as thick as London. On the ride to the hotel the pilots mentioned that we were at bare minimums for landing which meant we nearly couldn't land. This morning was a bit better as the heaviest fog had burned off and the rain had stopped. It is still gray but warming up nicely. Sure beats the weather we've been having in the Northeast and Midwest.

I set my alarm for 8am so that I could get an early start. The Alamo opened at 9am and I wanted to be there near the opening time to avoid crowds (this would prove unnecessary). My cohorts decided against joining me so I ventured out alone. I arrived at The Alamo just about a half hour after opening. The crowds were very light as I found to be the case all through the city.


Here is the main entrance to the facilty. It is surprisingly small and feels overwhelmed by its surroundings.








This is one of the internal walls at The Alamo. Notice the flocks of people out and about in the city on this Monday Morning.











Fortunately, The Alamo is located directly across the street from Ripley's Believe It or Not, Ripleys Haunted Adventure and Guiness World Record Museum along with the Plaza Wax Museum. That way, you can be easily distracted from actual important historical events and head directly to these garish tributes to commercialism. This gives The Alamo the same feel as the corner of the Haight and Ashbury in San Fran as that interesting spot in history is overrun with Gap and Ben & Jerry's.



Here is the Riverwalk Center. A shopping mall at the end of the Riverwalk. It is gorgeous but again, it seems to be absent of human life.













Interesting statue in San Antonio. It has a name that has escaped me now. It symbolizes friendship, somehow. At this point in the walk I was pretty sure that the Rapture had occurred and I'd been left behind (not that THAT would surprise me). Notice that this is yet another picture in downtown San Antonio on a mid morning Monday and NO ONE is around.









Convinced that I had missed the Rapture, I raced to the nearest church, San Fernando Cathedral. The church was celebrating its 275th anniversary as throngs of people flooded through its gates....oh, well....I guess not really.
















Here are a couple pictures of the GWBush Texas Economic Miracle. Notice the bustling streets, overflowing store fronts and ...oh wait...nah. Not happening here.























Here ya go! Texas sized Tourist Tacky Trinket Trap! And again..notice the people! This is El Mercado, one of the "must sees" of San Antonio. Evidently everyone had already seen it before I got there. MORE THAN 30 STORES STUFFED WITH CRAP! I got my "San Antonio" bumper sticker here to add to my collection of bumper stickers.








Here is a nice park near El Mercado. The statue is of Benjamin Rush Milam. The famous Col. is buried here. As you can observe, everyone had evidently seen this "must see" as well.









All in all, San Antonio is a fair place. Granted, the weather was less than ideal and it was in the middle of February so it isn't exactly hot tourist time but I would expect the locals to be out and about a little bit as my walk took me through the business heart of the city. Still, I had no problems navigating around as I seemingly had the place to myself. I'm not in any rush to get back to explore the city on my own time but I'd probably be interested in getting out and about if I was back here on business.

Hope you enjoyed! Stay tuned for the next edition!

Introduction to My Blog

Howdy all. I thought that it would be a neat thing if I started blogging and adding some pics of my travels. I hope that you enjoy this and get some neat travel ideas out of it as well or at least some cool pics.

I recently started carrying my camera around so that I could document some problems that we are having with our hotels...mainly waking up covered in those little orange Japanese lady bug thingees at the Holiday Inn in Linthicum, MD the day after Christmas (I WILL name your hotel in my blog if you fail to address issues or if your service was exemplary, I am legally entitled to opinions and will have documentation of the issues). The company seems nonplussed by my verbal complaints so I figured if I took pictures of it I'd have a bit more leverage. If worse comes to worse, they'll find their way onto my blog. It'll probably get me fired but I'm not sure that is a totally bad thing.

I hope you enjoy the tour!