20 Questions - Part Three - Travel Edition

When I decided to steal Gwen's 20 Questions idea I was expecting a slightly different outcome. First of all, I thought for sure there would be a slew of raunchy inquiries about my sex life and B, I thought there would be many more inquiries in general. I was a little let down until I tried to answer the STD and pick-up line questions posed by Pistols and realized that I am sadly lacking in the kind of bawdy material that would have made the asking and the answering of such questions worthwhile.

I was more pleasantly surprised by the number of questions you asked pertaining to travel adventures. There were enough of them (well all right, there were only 3, but still) that I decided it would be appropriate to save them for this travel-themed edition of 20 Questions.

Those of you who may have been reading my blog for awhile know that I used to travel extensively around North America for work and also that the primary source of delight in my personal life is traveling just about anywhere with my husband. It's what we do, so I know a thing or two about a thing or two when it comes to travel.

My long time blogger friend, the prolific Miss Tara asked:

Where's the best place you've ever traveled to and why?

This is a tricky one because I rarely have a bad time anywhere. Also I've been so many places it's hard to nail it down to just one best place. So true to form I'll break it down into two separate categories, the United States and abroad, thus causing the answer to this question to be much windier and wordier than necessary.

United States: I love Chicago. We are one quick train ride from where we live (Dullsville) and boom - big city. We try to mix it up and focus on different neighborhoods when we visit, see live music and eat ourselves silly. Chicago is great because it's familiar and yet a completely new experience every time we go.

Abroad: I love Paris. I've been twice, once when I was a teenager I was there for a couple of days and once with MDH for our honeymoon when we stayed for an entire week. I would go every year if I could. It's the best place in the world to eat, drink and people watch, two of my favorite activities. I realize that that is 3 activites, but I didn't notice my error until I had already hit the publish button.(Here's a photo of our last night in Paris, wining and dining it up.)

Churlita over at Churlish Figure, another of my long-time blogger friends, and the first blog I ever put in my Favorites folder, by the way, asks:

What would be your dream vacation if you could go to a place you've never been before?

I've always wanted to go to Portugal and the Azores. Well, not always, but since I met MDH because that's where his family is from and also because before I met him I didn't think it was possible to meet someone who wanted to travel as much as I did. Prior to that Portugal was not even on my radar. Anyhoo... I love the idea of his exotic, ethnic background and the fact that his family has an "old country". We'll get there someday. It's on the agenda.

One could argue that my family has an "old country" too, but I've already been to Kentucky several times and it's just not the same.

Speaking of travels to exotic lands, this next question is from the only regular reader that I have in a foreign country (that I know of - otherwise reveal yourselves!), the lovely lipped Australian, Sparsely Kate:

Have you ever been on a plane with terrible turbulence? What is the worst air plane experience of your life? What flight was it, where were you going and what happened?

Sparsely the answer to your first question is yes, I've experienced terrible turbulence, but after so many years on the road, during which time it was not usual for me to be on up to 6 flights a week (that's including stopovers folks, so don't get too excited), I have become jaded. It's true, I am entirely unfazed by turbulence. Typically I fall asleep as soon as the engines start up and the plane backs out of the gate. Something about that low, constant humming is as good as 2 Ambien and a lullaby to me.

I do, however, remember once being sharply awakened by the screaming of the other passengers during a particularly bumpy red-eye while coming home from Phoenix. I hazily looked about and after establishing no sign of flames, box-cutter wielding terrorists, or that the little oxygen thingys hadn't popped out of the ceiling, I rolled my eyes and went right back to night-night time. Totally jaded.

The worst airplane experiences for me have nothing whatsoever to do with the flight itself and more to do with a lack of tolerance and over all bitchy attitude toward the more dim-witted of my fellow travelers. You can read about it here if you like.

In case you were wondering, the photo at the top is for Evil-E over at Random Crap, another long time blogger friend and constant cataloger of random graffiti. I took it for him on our trip last month to Philadelphia. I meant to post it last night, but MDH was hogging the office and I couldn't squeeze in long enough to make it happen. Better late than never! Anyhoo... looks like Dean was either outed by another tagger or became a little unsure of himself and decided to add a more readable signature to his handiwork.

I've Been Everywhere Part 2

Reading Tara's post listing all the places she's been prompted me to ponder my own travels. I started going through my old expense reports, which I needed to do anyway because we're getting ready to do our taxes, and counted 38 states I've been to in the last 5 years.

The names of the places are mostly familiar and some of them stand out more than others because of the length of time I spent there, frequency of visits and sometimes just the sheer weirdness of the people or the town.

Anyhoo... here's an official "Good-bye" to my old career in the form of an overview of the the little stroll I took down memory lane as I perused my old expense reports:

Worst "Hotel":

Methlab, MD
It seemed that people (rather unsavory people) were living in this "hotel" as if it were an apartment building. The place reeked of mildew, curry and body odor. Once in my room I immediately called MDH who began working furiously to find me alternative accommodations in the area. There were none with any vacancies.

As I was sitting on the bed, lamenting the horrible and possibly dangerous surroundings with my husband, I heard the a key turn in the lock on the door and a strange man walked into my room. I dropped the phone and screamed at the man, who didn't speak English, but clearly understood "GET THE FUCK OUT OF HERE MOTHERFUCKER!!" and the gesture implied by an angry frightened woman coming after him swinging a chair at this head. (Turns out the man was some kind of confused maintenance person, but still lucky to have removed himself before I smashed his fuckin' brains out.)

It was this incident that caused MDH, who of course heard the whole thing because he was still on the phone when it happened, to suggest that perhaps I should find another job.

Worst Hotel, Honorary Mention:

Truckstopwhore, Nevada
To start with, I had a horrible head cold. I stayed in a motel attached to the town's casino. The bed had one thin blanket and one pillow on it that I'm fairly certain was just a busted vacuum cleaner bag with a pillow case over it. My cell phone didn't work, there was no Internet service and I couldn't even use dial-up because the phone was actually attached to the wall with a permanent cable. As an added bonus - there was no TV. It was not unlike what I imagine prison to be. The vet was really nice and offered to let me stay at her house, but that could have been even weirder so I politely refused. It was only 2 days. I survived.

Crabbiest (Catty-est?) Clinic Staff:

Pick One
It's a tie between every single "cats only" clinic I've ever been to. I feel bad to say it, because one of the pleasures of my job was meeting the mostly wonderful and amazing people, but "cats only" clinics tend to be staffed with unpleasant grouches. I'm sure their foul moods have a lot to do with the fact that nearly all of these clinics reek of cat piss.

Most Rural:

Cowflop, MI

This was an equine clinic with a very cool doctor/owner who specialized in race horses and it was foaling season so there were lots of cute baby horsies prancing about. The clinic was about a 3 hour drive from home, but once I got off the highway it was 3 miles on a rutted dirt road, then turn on another dirt road and drive another 2 miles. The training was performed in a dusty old barn and the nearest hotel was 45 mins away. At least I racked up a lot of good mileage reimbursement.

Most Crazy Doctor/Clinic Owner

Baboon Buttock, MI

The poor man had whipped himself into a red-faced, blustering frenzy long before I arrived. The first day he was in a constant state of freak out and challenging me throughout the training to the point that I had to give him a time out and explain that he was wasting my time (which was really his time that he was paying me for) by being ridiculous. I handed him a brand new legal pad and told him to write down his questions instead of interrupting the training every 5 seconds and that we would address all of his concerns when the training was over at the end of the day, which we did. He seemed to have calmed down, but the next day when I arrived at the clinic, he wasn't there because he'd gone to the emergency room with heart palpitations. With him out of the picture the rest of the training went great. He is fine now, by the way.

Most Crazy Doctor/Clinic Owner - Honorable Mention

Whackadoo, KY

It was only my 3rd solo training and I was still learning the software myself. The owner was an older, country vet who had printed, read and memorized all 650 pages of the reference manual prior to my arrival, causing him to know more about the software than me. I was impressed with his brilliant memory, but the guy followed me around, buzzing questions like a goddamn horsefly. There was no relief from his incessant quizzing. At one point he followed me into the ladies room and I thought I would cry.

Most Fun Clinic
Bongwater, CA

There was just something special about this place and all the people who worked there. The manager was so relaxed about everything and fully prepared for the training (without having memorized the manual). To my amazement they had done all of the pre-training work I had assigned to them before I arrived. The clinic was in a big strip mall and there were lots of great little independently owned restaurants (best carne esada I've ever had) and a terrific little coffee shop right next door. Since they had prepared so much before the training I got to spend more time getting to know them and having a laugh. BTW - although they were very laid back, nobody was high as far as I know. I just think the word bongwater is funny.

Biggest Waste of Time

Pick One
Clinics that refused to close or even scale down the number of appointments they booked during the training (I would make this suggestion a priority in conversations with them in the weeks before I arrived) caused me to sit, sometimes for several hours, with nobody to train. Of course these are the same people that give you a bad evaluation, saying they didn't learn enough from the training.

Ah well...

Out with the old, in with the new...

A whole new world of things to bitch and moan about awaits when my new job starts on Feb 13th.