Thursday, July 19, 2012

Chris-Crossing the Country with Jan


Okay, I’m either the worst routing scheduler on the planet or I’m trying to build up my frequent flyer miles in one week because I’m flying back and fourth from the west coast to the east coast 3 times in about 7 days! I’m enjoying the work, but I seem to be booking myself as far away from Los Angeles as humanly possible while still staying in the U.S. Last Thursday  I flew from LA to Newport, R.I., did my Finding the Funny in Communications keynote to a group Friday morning and then flew home to pet my cats.  24 hours later I went to Florida and then the next day I flew to my current location, San Francisco!

what i got from the waiter for my overpriced dinner

When I’m traveling though, I do like to learn some stuff.

At the Rhode Island group, I went to their clambake. Since I didn’t know anyone at the reception, I talked to the clambake master. Very nice and knowledgeable guy. He said there’s only 3 clambake masters on the island (Newport is an island), and it takes a lot of practice and skill to do the bake just right. It’s not like tossing steaks on a grill (okay, I don’t know how to grill either). He said you heat up the rocks and the rocks do the baking (like charcoal maybe?), but you’ve got to put the right amount of rocks in the pit. They also use special seaweed that has pockets of water in it, like little bubbles. These bubbles heat up and that’s what steams the fish.

Speaking of Newport, R.I. being an island, it is named “goat island” because in the olden days (before Facebook), people put their goats on the island. Since it was surrounded by water, and the goats can’t swim, the goats were stuck on the island. Pretty ingenious. There are 2 bridges to get over to the island. . . I was thinking I’d see some Billy Goats under those bridges. . .no luck. Ha ha.

I did a quick turnaround and headed back, only getting to stay in Newport for about 22 hours . . . darn. Of course this group announced that next years 2 conferences will be held in Arizona and Oregon respectively. . .yeah, that would’ve been a little closer.

Florida was good too. I asked the concierge if there was anything I could do besides Disney. She said “Downtown Disney.” I said, no, anything BESIDES Disney. She said there’s a little town that Walt Disney created . . . hum, she wasn’t getting my message. I went to Downtown Disney for my share of screaming children and overpriced meals. The group was fun though, so that made up for it.

I’m enjoying flying more and more now that Southwest is getting the internet on board. That will change my life not to land with 50 emails to answer!

San Francisco is turning out to be fun – great weather and I’m right on the water, so I’ve been walking up and down the embarcadero. . .it would be good for my health except for all the ice cream shops I keep popping into.

Safe Travels everyone!

Jan











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