February 25, 2009 at 11:02 pm
I’m no globe-trotting jet-setter, but I have stayed in plenty of hotel rooms in the past couple years. And I’ve never stayed in a room with as bad a bathroom as the Hyatt Hotel in Santa Clara, California.
How bad was the bathroom? Let me count the ways:
1. Sink
It’s bad enough that the sink sits up high, on top of the counter; everyone knows sinks should be below counter level. But look — the darn thing is sideways! Who’s the genius that decided we’ve been doing it wrong, all these decades of having the faucet to the rear of the sink?
2. Hot/Cold Faucet
Everyone knows that hot water is to the left and cold is to the right. That’s how it works when the faucet is behind the sink. So, in this sideways arrangement, you’d assume that pulling the faucet closer to you (i.e., to the left) would be for hot water. And you’d assume wrong. Not only is the sink sideways, but the faucet is also backwards; pulling the faucet closer (i.e., to what should be the left) is for cold water. Stupid.
3. Towel Rack
How do you explain putting the towel rack below the sink, where the water will splash all over the dry towels as you wash your hands and face? It’s a terrible spot for a towel rack, and it also means you have to lean a bit to get your face above the sink — you can’t get right up close to the counter.
4. Vertical Toilet Paper
Again, who needs years of familiarity with having a horizontal roll of toilet paper? Not the Hyatt. No, they have the TP sitting vertical, so all your learned muscle movements related to pulling and tearing the bum wipe are completely useless. Total fail.
5. Toilet Paper Placement
It’s not just the vertical stance, but also the terrible placement. You don’t really get a sense of the depth in this photo, but that roll of TP is way back against the wall, completely out of reach to anyone not named Plasticman. To get there, you have to turn your body, rotate your neck like Sybil, and contort your arm into a position that it wasn’t meant to form. I strained muscles I didn’t even know I had just reaching for some TP.
Why not put the TP near where the towel rack is (and hang it horizontally), then move the towel rack to the wall above the toilet … like at every other hotel on earth? And mix in a normal sink while you’re at it, Hyatt.
On the bright side, the water pressure in the shower was pretty good.
February 16, 2009 at 1:12 am
I have a lot of them coming up again this year. Not as many as last year, which was completely ridiculous. But still, it’s looking like I’m traveling at least once every month for the first half of the year.
And then the U2 tour starts in the second half of the year, so who knows what’s going to happen then.
Thing is … I think this may need to be the last year of so much work/business travel for me. I love going to the search marketing conferences and seeing all the great friends who I usually only trade emails with, but I practically go “off the grid” when I’m gone. The email backs up, and that’s a problem when you get about 200 emails per day (as I do). And I get no client work done, no personal work done, no U2-related work done, etc.
Most of all, every time I leave, I miss Cari and the kids more than ever. For a variety of reasons, I’m quite aware these days that our time is limited, and no one ever lay on their death bed thinking, I wish I’d spent more time traveling and working. I just don’t like being gone so much.
So I’m thinking next year I need to not be.
August 25, 2008 at 12:54 am
When I fly, it never fails: I always end up right near the loser who thinks the “Please turn off all electronic devices now” warning doesn’t apply to him. On one of my flights last week, the guy right in front of me kept talking on his cell phone for about three minutes — loudly, in a foreign language — after the crew asked for phones to be put away.
Then, on a different flight, as the flight attendant was walking down the aisle to check that everyone’s ready to go, I heard her say this in a loud, pointed tone of voice:
“No, you’re not turning it off. You’re sending a text. I’m not an idiot. Now please turn it off.”
Ha! Good for her, I say. I can’t stand the dopes who think the rules don’t apply to them.
June 25, 2008 at 3:01 pm
I have a friend getting married later this summer (Hi Phil), and finding a flight back east has become the biggest pain in the arse I can imagine. I’m trying to fly into either Philadelphia or Baltimore, and I almost always start on Orbitz because it lists lots of different airlines. (Kayak does the same thing, but Kayak mainly lists Orbitz fares when I search….)
So I check every day, usually a couple times a day, and have zero luck — prices are too high, or there’s a 10-hour layover in the Great Midwest, or this: crap price information.
I keep finding Northwest Airlines’ flights that are generally acceptable, like this one from earlier today:
Sure, I’ll leave at 6:00 am so I can get in early and relax. Price isn’t great, but Phil is only getting married once so let’s do it! Let’s hit that SELECT button and make that reservation!
I do that, and then I get this:
Ack!! That $619 flight has suddenly become a $1,400 flight. And worst of all, this has been going on forever. You’d think I’d learn my lesson and just skip the NWA listings, but they’re always the best combination of price and schedule … so I keep clicking … and I keep screaming at the computer.
I don’t know if NWA is to blame for this: Orbitz? NWA? The Others? The Dharma Initiative? Halliburton? Hillary Clinton? All I know is that I’m tired of it. Air travel is bad enough; making the reservation is supposed to be the easy part.
June 7, 2008 at 5:34 pm
I’m not one of those “I hate to travel” people, but my schedule so far in 2008 has me leaning in that direction more than ever. I’ve done more travel in the past four months than in any year of my life so far.
Where I’ve Been So Far This Year
It started with what was supposed to be a 2-day trip to Seattle in late January, but turned into a 3-day trip because the worst storm of the year shut down the Tri-Cities Airport. The photo at right is what my car looked like when I finally made it home. After that, the travel schedule went like this:
February 25-29: Santa Clara, CA
March 9-10: Portland, OR
March 10-12: Seattle
March 16-20: New York
March 28-31: Martinez, CA
April 20-22: Houston
April 22-24: Long Beach, CA
April 30-May 2: Seattle (I canceled this one, needed a rest.)
May 6-13: Philadelphia (and New York)
May 20-21: Portland, OR
June 2-5: Seattle
I get tired just looking at that list! But, if all goes well, the only traveling I’ll be doing between now and August is a quick drive to Portland later this month for a friend’s wedding. I can handle that. With air travel being as expensive as it is these days, and being such a complete hassle, I’m going to aim to stay home as much as possible. There’s a wedding in August I hope to go to, and a conference in September I’m already committed to. Other than that, I’ll be quite happy right where I am.
June 6, 2008 at 12:43 am
I wonder… When traveling, why does the return trip always seem faster than the ‘leaving’ trip?
Case in point:
On Monday, I drove to Seattle. Trip time: 3 hours, 15 minutes.
Today, I came home from Seattle. Trip time: 4 hours.
Despite the evidence, today’s drive absolutely sailed by. Monday’s drive seemed like it took forever.
Why is that?
May 26, 2008 at 7:43 am
One of the great things about Web 2.0 is that it’s now kinda cool to sit down and share vacation photos with friends — not like back in the old days when you’d sit in the living room and go through slide-by-slide while Grandma or somebody tries to explain every little detail in the photo. Save me from that torture!
Now, you can cruise through pix and see what you want, leave comments on the photos you want to, mark some as favorites, etc. Or you could ignore them altogether and make me sad. 
I think this might be my favorite shot from the Philly/NYC trip earlier this month:
That’s a somewhat artsy-fartsy shot of Independence Hall. Turned out well, and a little messing with the exposure makes it more interesting (to me). If you’re curious to see more, the full set of 39 photos is on Flickr now.
You can see my son at Yankee Stadium, and some good action shots from the game we saw. Or maybe the room where the Declaration of Independence was debated in Philly, plus the very moving Tomb of the Unknown Revolutionary War Soldier with its eternal flame. We also took the kids to see my grade school and the all-boys high school I attended — kinda like the school in Dead Poet’s Society, but ours wasn’t a boarding school.
May 14, 2008 at 10:58 am
Part of the family vacation last week involved taking the kids down into Philadelphia to see the historic sites — Independence Hall, the Liberty Bell, National Constitution Center, etc. It was a great, great day and a good time was had by all. Perhaps more about that stuff later, but the point of this post is to share the … interesting … directions we got from Google Maps and the “Street View” tool.
The trip began in Bristol, PA, where my parents live. I could easily get down to the historic district, but wasn’t sure on some of the last couple turns to find the right parking lot. Here’s how Google helped:
On exiting I-95, we’re apparently supposed to drive through this concrete wall on the way to Independence Hall, causing certain death for the McGee 4. Oddly enough, I don’t even recall seeing this concrete wall at this location. Later, there’s this:
As we get closer to Independence Hall, we’re supposed to turn right and take out a group of tourists, including one in a wheelchair. Nice!
I’m sure there’ll be more funny Street View directions as Google expands this feature in more and more cities…..
January 28, 2008 at 4:52 pm
I like Seattle. I like visiting Seattle. I just don’t like getting stuck in Seattle and spending an extra day in Seattle when I should be home.
After the Big Ice and Snow Storm of 2008 shut down Tri-Cities Airport on Sunday, I finally made it home today, just 26 hours later than normal.
This photo is my water bottle sitting in the snow on top of my car at the airport parking lot. I had about 8 inches of snow and a 1/2-inch sheet of ice covering my car when I reached the parking lot.
Three other car-in-snow-and-ice photos:
Toyota Snowmobile
Inside the Igloo
Digging Out
It took me about an hour overall to get the car dug out, but that included about 10-15 minutes helping an older lady nearby who was in the same predicament as me.
So good to be home….
