Successful sightseeing

Middle Ages Brewing Co., Syracuse, NY

Today, on the long drive between Albany and Rochester, NY, I managed to complete my goal of eating/drinking at all three of the Dinosaur Bar-B-Que locations in the state of New York: first Manhattan, then Rochester, and today Syracuse. A small victory in the life of a Program Manager, but a victory none the less.

Also, it happens that my aunt suggested that, while I was making that pit stop in Syracuse, I check out the Middle Ages Brewery. It's a great little place with a medieval theme to its interior decoration, and I just happened to get there with about twenty minutes before the beer tasting was closed for the day. Good beers, but what else could be expected from a brewery where all the batches are measured and made by hand? Oh, did I forget to mention that it's about a two minute drive from the original Dinosaur Bar-B-Que location?!


After a week of miserable, rainy days, my presenter and I enjoyed the mostly-clear skies and beautiful sunset on the rest of our journey to Rochester, where we'll end this oh-so-short four day week.

Next week is Spring Break, so I'll catch you on the flip side.

Weekend in Hotlanta

It ends up that there are only two airlines that make a direct flight from Nashville to Atlanta: Delta and Pacific Wings (their subsidiary, Tennessee Skies, in this case). Pacific Wings actually only has 9-seater prop. planes and flies out of the Nashville executive airport...sweet! I'm excited as this will be my first flight on a real "small scale" prop plane and certainly my first trip through an executive airport.

Not our plane, but you get the idea.

No crazy security lines, plush waiting room accommodations, free hot chocolate and Otis Spunkmeyer cookies; and REALLY nice restrooms are just some of the perks of flying through such a small airport. What a different experience that I shall not yet claim as "bad" in any way (we'll see what turbulence in a 9-seater plane feels like).

C'mon, Hotlanta, show me what you got!

Just a Little Philly Time

To start off this week of travel, I flew from Chicago to Philly, not a long flight at all. I got in early and, instead of the instructed cab ride, I got a rental car and headed into the city for a few hours of remaining sunlight (yes, that's right, sunlight in Philly!).

Being a Sunday afternoon, I was actually able to find some good parking and was incredibly eager to head to some of the locations participating in this year's PHILAGRAfiKA to see some great works on paper, which I wrote about in an earlier post. I ended up walking all around the Rittenhouse Square area of the city, which is just wrought with art galleries, small shops, and other nice things; a livable section of the city, actually.

A quick trip by Gallery 339 (fine art photography) and The Print Center, among others, yielded no results since most art galleries are only open from Tuesday through Saturday. There were a few events scheduled for earlier in the afternoon, but my arrival time from Chicago put me in a bit later than I needed.

Overall a good trip through the city, with a quick jaunt down South Broad Street before watching the US Men's Hockey team tie up the score against Canada through a restaurant window with some valet parking staff.

On the way back to my rental car (thankfully no parking ticket was issued for my expired meter), I stopped at a local dessert shop called Scoop DeVille, which was fan-tas-tic. Their ice cream blends (cookies & cream with peanut butter chip cookie dough, for me) are to die for. It's definitely going up on the Program Manager Restaurant Blog! That cup of heaven kept me awake on the drive out to the Cherry Hill area for a restful night at the Hampton Inn out in Voorhees. Love that place. The week is cruising along at a quick pace (as they all do) and my weekend stayover in Atlanta with Ciara will soon be upon me.

Philadelphia's Scoop DeVille sweets shop

Don't judge me.

Last week, another one of my many on-and-off double presenter weeks, I found myself on the east coast (big surprise), specifically in Harrisburg, PA. Now, this particular evening was after a long day, but luckily not a super long drive, so all four of us (yup, one presenter had his wife along for a few days) got to the hotel at a decent hour. I wasn't particularly hungry when we arrived, so the other took our minivan and went out to dinner at a local micro brewery while I hunkered down in my room. While they were away, I started exploring the hotel to find out where our presentation rooms would be the next day only to come upon quite a nice surprise:

A totally free, if not slightly sketchy, dinner! A group had been meeting in this room where a full buffet dinner had been served and had left not long enough ago for the food to yet get cold (this is how I can justify myself). Plenty of chicken and mushrooms atop some fettuccine; fresh salad fixings, desserts, sodas, and other yummies with no hotel staff in sight! Luckily for me, I had earlier noticed that my sleep room had both a microwave and fridge, what luck. Needless to say, I had plenty to eat that night (and a little for lunch the next day) with a few trips up the back staircase to my room.

These days where I get to my destination early are quite heaven-sent. Being productive and happening upon things like this are my relief from the tension of double presenter weeks.

Stormageddon, Part 2

So, apparently this thing that's happened is being dubbed Stormageddon. Cool name. Last I wrote, I had gone through a bunch of crap just to get from Detroit to my hotel in Harrisburg. Well, the craziness that started while I was in Michigan just got even worse as I got to PA.

After getting less than two hours of sleep, I go out to the meeting room to start setting up for the day's presentation. It didn't take long to realize that the banquet staff the night before had booked it home early to avoid too much snow; we had been moved to a room WAY too big for our 35-person seminar and WAY too dirty to have been cleaned after the wedding party who-knows-how-long beforehand. Luckily, one of the waitresses from the restaurant decided to come in and volunteer, even though she had no banquet/event experience. This let us get a pot of coffee brewed.

The day goes by, no participants show up, we cancel the seminar, and I spend the afternoon on the phone with the office to get travel details ironed out. The highways get shut down due to a state of emergency, our flight gets canceled, and, to top it all off, no cab companies in the area are open. We get scheduled for a train from Harrisburg to Philly and I bribe the owner of a cab company to get her and her husband to use their personal 4-wheel drive SUV to get us into town (thanks, Pam!). Before we leave, we find out our train has been canceled, but the next train, over two hours later, is still a 'go.'

We get to the train station and try to pass the time and not freeze too much. I napped while listening to the Fanboy Radio podcast (thanks, Dan) and my presenter caught up with some phone calls. The last train of the night finally comes and we board with the TWO other passengers...on the ENTIRE train. I've always wanted to ride a train long-distance, so I was pretty pleased to get to do this on the company's dime. Amtrak actually has some pretty cushy commuter cars, so it was at least comfortable.

We wait almost an hour at the Philly train station to catch a SEPTA train to the airport, but then find one of the only cabs running in the area instead. Shared the cab with a couple that had been waiting for that train for over two hours, drive down some one-way streets the wrong direction, get turned away from the highway by the National Guard, and finally get to the hotel.

I get two nights at the Hampton Inn and will hopefully get on a direct flight to Seattle tomorrow evening to start my week-long vacation. Time to kick back and get stuff done (we'll see how this website redesign goes...).

What a day!

I began today in Detroit at the oh-so-excellent Embassy Suites over in Southfield. What a great place, especially if you show up for each evening’s manager’s reception. My presenter and I knew there was some snow in the forecast, so I kept an eye out on our departing flights all day. Just around 2:30, only fifteen minutes before she let out for the day, I come to find out my two flights for the evening were canceled. Grrrreat. However, a quick call to my manager gave me an opportunity to get on an earlier flight going through Newark to get to my destination at a reasonable hour.

We get to the airport, I return the rental car, and get booked on another airline just in time to get my bags checked and go through security. Then the fun begins.

Switching from my canceled flight with US Airways to a new itinerary with Continental, at the Detroit airport, requires a terminal change, which means I had to sprint outside and catch the next shuttle available. I get there with less than ten minutes to spare before the baggage check deadline and get through security with no problems (or lines, for that matter). I have just enough time to grab a quick sandwich from Wendy’s before rushing to the farthest terminal, only to find the plane is delayed, but in-transit.

An uneventful flight into Newark was a pleasant surprise. Not so pleasant was arriving to find my connecting flight was delayed an hour. Not too terrible, but not great considering the new departure time was 10:00 p.m. with slightly more than an hour’s travel time. All seven of us passengers that didn’t give in and make the 2.5 – 3 hour drive from Newark to Harrisburg had to sit in the back three rows of this small prop. plane in order to balance out the weight. We must’ve sat on the tarmac waiting in line to de-ice for at least another half an hour before taking off.

Finally we get to the Harrisburg airport, which is much nicer than I had imagined. As things end up, the airline lost my personal luggage (the tech. case showed up alright) and, after waiting forever to talk to someone about that, I was the last passenger in the airport. At this point, all taxi cabs and rental car agents are gone. Totally gone.

After calling a few cab companies that were all closed due to the snowfall, I find one that had a single guy working that didn’t mind coming to pick me up (he wasn’t even supposed to be working the airport route). With the snow and dark roads, we eventually made the twenty-six mile drive to get me all settled in my hotel room by 3:45 in the morning. What a day! We’ll see if anyone shows up for the seminar in a few hours, especially considering the estimated 10” of snow expected by morning.

Locked Out

Last week, I learned what NOT to do when having a late night arrival at a hotel then getting a room on the ground floor: lock yourself out.

So, after a long-delayed flight out of Detroit to Kansas City, my presenters (yup, two of them, again) and I check into the Courtyard Marriott and I get a free upgrade to a jacuzzi suite (sweet!).

Upon entering, I immediately close the security bar on the front door (force of habit by now) and go to drop my bags on the floor, bed, or wherever. I then notice that the hotel has a nice courtyard between the sleep rooms and the adjoining conference center (Adams Pointe). I step outside and, as I close the door behind me, I notice the security bar starting to fall into place as my room keys are both still on the bed. Crap.

The front desk staff helps me get another room key and, by this point, I had forgotten about the lock on the front door. Not for long, though. Now I've gotten myself locked out of the room TWO different ways. Great job, genius.

With some dedication, wire coat hanger, and frozen fingers (why did I have to leave my jacket inside, too?), I managed to jerry-rig the sliding door's lock out of place. By this time, it was almost 12:45 a.m. and I hadn't even started unpacking.

Not a good start to the Kansas City visit, I'd say. The next day proved to be a bit better, especially with the sympathy from the front desk landing me a free mini-bottle of wine to enjoy at my next destination.