Tag Archives: Travel

The Road to Pisa…

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Note: This post is based on notes I made between March 30th and I reserve the right to edit this posting for content and clarity at a later date.

…Does not lead directly through Bologna. In fact, it’s more of a detour on the road to any of the major tourist towns. I’m glad we made the effort, though. It’s the seat of the oldest continuously operating university in Europe and with 100,000 students, it feels like a college town. The cafes are plentiful and the food is cheap… as long as you don’t order a Coke with lunch. Raining all morning, it was tough to get a real feel for the town, other than the overwhelming feeling of age. It’s hard to shake that feeling anywhere you go in Italy. The pictures I posted are from the Piazza Nettuno and San Petronio Cathedral.

Back on the road to Pisa, the rain finally gave way to a low overcast. First impressions are important and it’s hard to get past the idea of Pisa as a tourist trap. The vendors are thick along the walls and even inside the main gate, but once you’re past them, the things you see are simply amazing. Renaissance Pisa understood the concept of monumental architecture dead on. Coming through the city gate, you’re sort of surprised by the proportions of the religious center of the old city. Maybe it is a tourist trap, but it is one of those places that you just have to see to really appreciate.

Getting there is…

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Note: This post is based on notes I made between March 27th and March 29th and I reserve the right to edit this posting for content and clarity at a later date.

In truth, getting there is really a giant pain in the ass. In our case, the pain was slightly magnified by having only a 45 minute scheduled layover in Munich. Clearing EU customs with 29 people, and getting to the next gate: simply not going to happen in 45 minutes. I’m fairly certain that’s some kind of natural law or something. At any rate, we missed our connecting flight and had the opportunity to spend an extra three hours in the beautiful Munich International Airport. That last part wasn’t actually snarky… The Munich Airport is a pretty nice place to be stuck… and you can smoke inside as long as you don’t mind standing in a small ventilated booth contraption. I wish I would have taken a picture of those. I may want to have one installed in the house if the weather doesn’t improve soon.

Munich is also a good place to people watch. And by people watch, I mean ogle foreign women with the confidence that you are almost guaranteed not to ever see them again. I need to note here that as a group, European women are just plain hot. Their accents are hot… and sweet Jesus, do they know how to dress. I don’t necessarily mean that they’re slut-ified, but hot in an elegant Kate Hepburn kind of way, but I digress.

The first real day of the tour started off with 29 exhausted tourists heading for a 45 minute boat ride to Venice. Most of us probably remember that Venice is the “City of Canals,” but what the history books usually leave out is that canals are, even today, the principle mode of transportation in the old city. Come to think of it, I don’t actually remember seeing any cars on the island. Not that those cars would have had anywhere to go, because as the books also left out, there really aren’t “roads” per se, more like alleys and footbridges. Basically, if you’re not on a boat, you’re walking. The place really is amazing. It’s one of those places where the pictures don’t really do it justice. I think the fact that we were really there hadn’t really settled in at that point, so those first days have a bit of a tendency to blur together. Venice is really something you have to see to believe. More something out of a picture book than a real place.

Marathon Man…

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So after a 5000 air miles, a six hour nap, and a 900 mile drive, I am back in Memphis. I have copious notes from the last 9 days that I will be working on pulling together into some kind of coherent narrative… Probably a tale in several parts. You may reasonably expect to assume that I’ll be posting some pictures and lots of verbiage over the weekend. As for tonight, I’m going to go make a drink with ice and go to sleep.

Clear for flight operations…

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I’m headed to the airport here in Memphis in a few hours for a hop to Baltimore. Tonight’s plan is to overnight there and then head down to Dulles tomorrow in the late afternoon. We have a redeye from Dulles to Munich and then a puddle jumper from Munich to Milan in the early morning. If I can figure out how the Italian internet works, you know I’ll keep things fresh around here… and if not, I’ll be taking copious notes and will fill you in on all the details when I get back.

There be plague here…

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They say that stress if bad for your body, but I’ve found that it’s during those periods when I am under the least stress that I am most susceptible to illness. Over the last few days, I’ve been winding down a lot of my work and getting everything to a point where I can leave it on “pause” for the next two weeks while I’m on vacation. Wouldn’t you know that between the goddamned apocalyptic pollen count here in the south and the upper respiratory crud that we have been passing around the office for the last month, I’ve managed to get myself sick. Although it’s nothing serious and I fully expect to be back in fine fiddle by the time we leave for Italy, it’s just one of those minor inconveniences that combine to agitate the living shit out of me. I’ll take the weekend to rest up and OD on orange juice, but in the meantime, turn back, for there be plague here.

A rare thing…

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I rarely use this forum as a chance to dispense praise on anyone or anything (other than myself, of course). Wading through the sea of humanity that is an airport security check point is not anyone’s favorite activities. I usually try to get to the airport about 2 hours early so I can get a cup of coffee and a smoke before charging into the security line. With flights cancelled over the weekend and flights out starting to stack up on Monday morning, I didn’t have great expectations. My worst travel fears were confirmed when I checked my bags and turned to make my way to the checkpoint. I found a line of nightmare proportions… stretching from Pier D down through the international terminal and folding back on itself. I, of course, was running 45 minutes behind my self-appointed schedule… something highly unusual for me. With just an hour before wheels-up, I was already doing the mental math on when I would get to Memphis if I could get a seat on the 9:30 flight.

As it turns out, my fears were unfounded and the screeners were running the line through in what had to be record time. Total time from being the end of the line to sitting at the gate was 30 minutes. God only knows what made it past the fine men and women of TSA yesterday morning, but I appreciate their efforts to keep things moving. So here, in a public forum, I want to offer the thanks of a weary traveler.

Going to the well…

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Have a six-week road stand starting a week from Monday with a 900 mile drive to Memphis. You might be expecting a rant, but the reality is the only thing I am mildly agitated by is paying $1000 a month rent for an apartment I am going to be using as a glorified storage shed/mailbox while I am gone.

Like before almost all of my long trips, I feel a compulsion to go home this weekend. It’s an almost visceral need to stand, again, on the good earth of my childhood; to go once more to the wellspring to drink deeply and gather strength for the next push, the next campaign in my most recent long slog. I’ll go home and smell the first crisp air of fall and watch the mist burn out of the valley in the early morning. I’ll sleep, peaceful in the quiet home of my family a few more nights before turning out to late nights in tacky hotel rooms. For a few days more, I’ll be home.

I’ve crossed continents, but ultimately, every place I have ended up can fit into the category of “just the place I live.” I’ve had my share of rolled eyes and sarcastic comments about Western Maryland and I can’t imagine living there again, but somehow, I can’t imagine it ever not being home.

Temporary Duty…

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…is the Army’s delicately phrased way of telling you that you’re about to be jerked out of your regular job and put on a plane to go stay in a hotel and do something that may or may not be in any way related to your primary area of expertise. Temporary Duty (TDY) is a strange combination of work and happy hour where the two tend to bleed into one another to the point where it’s 9:00 at night and you’re not sure if you are working or just sitting at the bar having a drink… but in a good way. Even when home, I’m not exactly known for leaving work at the door, but being here on the road, it turns into something more of a compulsion. You talk about work having your morning Starbucks. You talk about work driving to the office. You spend 9 hours actually working. And then you spend 2 hours talking about work over dinner. I wouldn’t say it’s exactly monotonous, but it does beg the question if any of us have lives any more. I’ll step to the forefront, save you all time, and admit that for me, the answer to that question is a resounding no.

For the record, I’m not complaining about it, just making an observation that struck me as interesting; how many of us have put or lives on hold to work on this project over the last 18 months. Up until last week, things were academic, like moving the pieces on a chess board. But now we’re here, with a real building, real offices, and whole lot of real people who are betting their livelihoods that we have it all figured out. It’s a little intimidating to see how much is still left to do, more, probably, than we have put behind us. It occurs to me tonight that it’s time to stop being academic and to figure out how this applies here in the real world.

Here comes the hard part.

Shifting my flag…

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In the age of fighting sail, an admiral’s headquarters was identified by a unique banner or pennant, his flag. Hence we have the terms: flagship and flag officer. If the ship were holed or too damaged to stay in the fight, the admiral, and his flag, would be transferred to another ship. In that way, flagship refers not so much to the physical vessel, but to the high-ranked personage aboard. When the fleet returned to port, the admiral’s flag was shifted ashore.

While I’ll make no claim to be a high ranked personage, I am shifting my flag for at least the next two weeks, I am taking this show on the road and will be back in my home-away-from-home at Winchester, Virginia. Same great posts, new geographic location. Possibly even better posts because the group I will be with provides some of the best grist for the mill.