I’m in San Francisco again – my new boss and I have a meeting with a client on Monday, and after my little adventure back in October, I decided to come out a day early so acclimate a bit better. (Fortunately, a loophole my company’s travel policy covers the extra day.)

Anyway, some thoughts from the road (which I would have posted earlier, if not for the fact that Chicago O’Hare is, apparently, the only airport in the US without pay-for-play WiFi hotspots in the terminals):

• Checking in online has its advantages. When I printed my boarding passes last night, I was able to switch into rows without someone in the middle seat. For a change, my luck held out, so both flight segments were reasonably comfortable. Of course, as each plane boarded, I couldn’t help but look longingly at those big, comfortable, empty seats (emphasis on ’empty’) at the front of the plane…
• On the Newark to O’Hare leg, I was seated directly behind a mother and a 6 month old in a carseat. If, two years ago, you had said to me, “Hey, M-D, how’d you like to be stuck behind a crying child for two hours with no hope of escape?”, I’d have instructed you to take a sharp stick and jab it in my eye, because that would have been preferable. And yet, today? I wasn’t even phased by it. So it looks like I have a certain two-year-old to thank for teaching me some tolerance. (Don’t worry, Cindi – I’ll repay in kind by teaching you how to be snarky about movies.)
• Of course, having a good pair of sound isolating headphones helps too. They’re a bit pricy, but if you spend any time flying (and enjoy being able to hear your music over the airplane ‘hiss’), they’re worth the money. (They’re not ‘noise-canceling’, per se, but they block out nearly all outside sound. So you’re not going to want to wear them on, say, the NYC Subway.)
• On picking up my rental car, I came to the realization that I’ve completely forgotten how to get into the drivers side of a normal passenger car. They’re so low to the ground! (I suppose I’ve been spoiled by my Explorer – it’s a slight step up, instead of a huge stoop down, and the driving position is more of a natural sitting position, and less of…well, the best comparison I can come up with is this – it’s like sitting upright on your bed with your legs straight out in front of you. Or like using a rowing machine at a gym. Either way, it’s not terribly pleasant.)
• This bullet point is directed at CalTrans: If I’ve said it once, I’ve said it…um…well, once – you have to give at least some warning prior to major decision points on freeways! At least twice on my drive from SFO to my hotel, I ended up in the wrong lane because there was no clear warning of a fairly major decision point. Of course, nearly all the interstates here are spurs or loops of I-80, so one way or the other, you’ll eventually find your way – but that’s not the point!
• So seeing that I didn’t get into the hotel until after 5pm (local time – 8pm EST), I was already pretty damned tired. What’s more, I noticed that the traffic headed back towards San Francisco was pretty horrible. So I grabbed some dinner and caught an early (for me…although technically it wasn’t – DAMN YOU, TIME ZONES!) show of “Syriana”. It’s a hard movie to describe, story-wise, except to say that it does a nice job of summing up the situation in the Middle East, while presenting a whole host of new questions. (And, if you’re a Trek nerd like me – Dr. Bashir!) It’s incredibly well acted, and there are no shortage of powerful moments – but given the number of intertwining plot threads, this is NOT a movie to see when you’re already half asleep. Still, I highly recommend it, right along with Participant Productions’ other recent film, “Good Night, and Good Luck” – both incredibly timely films, but in different ways.
• Speaking of Trek, one more thing about “Syriana” – in looking at the IMDB cast list, I’m noticing that there are a lot of characters with the surname ‘Khan’, which is to be expected since much of the movie takes place in the Middle East. I’m just saying, if I were more awake earlier, I’d probably have noticed that. And secretly hoping that whoever the ‘highest-ranking’ character was in the room would respond appropriately.

That’s just about all I can muster for tonight. I’m sleeping late tomorrow, then meeting up with Jessa – she mentioned something about the Dickens Fair…hey, I’m open to just about anything. (No, really. Stop laughing.)

Kristin & Jessica outside Ti Couz

From my business trip to the Bay Area late last month – I didn’t have a chance to upload the photos (well, photo, really – the rest are environmental-type pictures) until last night, but I didn’t want to let it go any longer.

Also, I wanted to give Kristin and Jessa their due, since this photo’s already rolled through my Flickr badge. We met for dinner that Sunday night at an outstanding little crepes place in the Mission District called Ti Couz, which I believe is French for “wrapped goodness”. Hopefully I’ll get to spend more time with them on my next trip out there – whenever that happens to be.

Sidenote: Thinking about Kristin & Jessa got me thinking about SXSW 2006. As strange as it might sound to say this in November, I’ve already booked my trip, and I’m glad I did – apparently, there’s another conference in town at the same time as SXSWi in ’06, and because of that, the Hilton Austin is completely sold out. Last I checked, the Hampton Inn on San Jacinto still has some availability, but if you know you’re going, don’t wait too long to book your hotel…

I’m sitting in terminal 3 of San Francisco International Airport (SFO, in case you’re an airport nerd or something), waiting for my 11:45pm (PDT, naturally) flight back east. I’ll have more on my whereabouts for the last couple of days in a later post, but for now, I wanted to get an observation out there…

I don’t know how it happened, but somewhere along the line, cell phones gave people a licence to shout in public. I personally try not to do it – if someone tells me they can’t hear me, I’ll call them back. But that’s me – I don’t like the world at large knowing what’s going on with my parents’ new house, or what movie Darren and I will be seeing on a given night.

I’m sitting near the podium at gate 63, and there’s a woman about 25 feet to my left, playing with her cell phone. While she’s fussing with the phone, she’s speaking to the man she’s with (we’ll presume they’re husband and wife) at a normal vocal level. But the second she took a call on that phone, I swear, I thought her husband had gone to get something to eat, and she was shouting instructions after him. A subtle (ha!) glance to my left revealed that, no, her husband was right there, and she was in fact shouting into her cell phone in much the same way that Donald Trump shouts the “previously on…” voiceovers on The Apprentice (“Madge, this airport is yuuuuuuge!”), totally oblivious to the fact her voice is carrying across this fairly empty, reasonably quiet terminal, as though a megaphone were being held in front of her mouth. It’s as though I’m going to be stuck on the same plane as Inconsiderate Cell Phone Man‘s mom.