Home for a month.
Hopefully two.
I've started taking a couple months off during the winter because I really hate travel this time of year. I've spent the past two decades being trapped in airports because of snow and ice, and I'm just done with it. At least that's the plan.
Which is subject to change at any moment.
Unfortunately.
An early morning flight from Minneapolis back to Seattle.
Where Delta was kind enough to upgrade me to first class... so I guess today is the day the perks die, not last Wednesday after all. Still... again... it was good while it lasted.
After several delays out of Seattle, my flight finally boarded... but on a Weather Advisory... which means there's a chance we won't get to land, but will instead have to turn around and head back to Seattle if the weather is too bad.
Fortunately that never happened and I made it home just fine.
I guess that means the last trip of 2014 was a success. Plus I get to update my "States Visited Map"...
South Dakota and Nebraska make 49.
North Dakota is the only state I haven't visited yet.
I'll try to get that taken care of next year.
This morning I woke up early because I had stuff to accomplish.
I wasn't going to visit Eastern South Dakota without seeing The Corn Palace... and I wasn't going to visit Sioux Falls without seeing the replica of Michelangelo's David.
But first? Breakfast. Which was going to be the TWIN BING candy bar that I bought at the Sioux City Museum yesterday!
I say "was" because it turns out the "BING" in a TWIN BING bar is for BING CHERRY! Cherry being a flavor that I loathe. So... no breakfast for me!
The hour drive back to Sioux Falls was uneventful... except for the roadside billboards that keep popping up. Unlike Washington State which has banned billboards, in South Dakota they are very much alive. Half of them are telling people to visit the famous Wall Drug Store, which is odd because it's located five hours away. The other half? Well... anything you can think of, really.
One of the best billboards I saw was the one that said "EAT BEEF!" and had a photo of a steak on it with nothing more. Direct and to the point.
But my favorite billboard? The one that said "Eat Steak. Wear Furs. Keep Your Guns. The American Way." My biggest regret this trip is that I didn't pull over and take a photo of it. Lucky for me, a YouTuber caught it...
Still from a video by Dumbface Tour... you can watch their video here.
Stuff like this is hysterical in its idiocy. For me, the "American Way" is having the freedom to NOT eat steak... to NOT wear furs... to NOT have a gun. The American Way is not having to conform to some redneck's moronic ideal of what it means to be an "American." But whatever. Expression of stupid shit is also The American Way.
After blowing past Sioux Falls, I headed west on I-90 towards Mitchell, South Dakota... home of THE CORN PALACE!! I've wanted to visit this place after I first learned about it years ago. I mean, come on, it's a sports venue COVERED IN CORN! Every year the corn murals are different, but they all kind of look like this...
Photo from WikiMedia Commons by User Parkerdr
Unfortunately...
The Corn Palace is undergoing rennovations just now, so what I saw was this...
The building may be a mess, but the murals are still intact...
The inside is just as good...
And of course I crossed the street to visit the gift shop and meet Cornelius, the Corn Palace mascot...
Hopefully I'll get back one day when everything is put back together.
There was just enough time to head back to Sioux Falls and hunt down David before I had to be to the airport, so off I went.
Fortunately, he was pretty easy to find...
And off I go...
And so today I flew into Sioux Falls so I could rent a car and drive down to Sioux City... home to the latest US Hard Rock Hotel and Casino. It's nothing overly-fancy, but it does have some nice pieces of memorabilia and pretty good theming throughout.
But I'm getting ahead of myself...
As you can tell in that last photo, the hotel part and the casino part are two separate buildings. The hotel was the former Simmons Hardware Company Warehouse (which you can read about here)... then they plastered the casino building right up next to it. You can see that they used the original exterior wall as the new interior dividing wall when you use the rear entrance...
The lobby is beautiful and decorated nicely for the holidays...
Interestingly enough, the reception desk has a full bar behind it. I don't know that I've ever seen that before!
The rooms are great, but not terribly "Hard Rock." With the exception of a guitar painting and a strip of photos next to the toilet, there's just not much to distinguish this from a "regular" hotel room... albeit a very nice one...
Hallways are pretty mundane and memorabilia-free, except for the carpet and door art...
Memorabilia is fairly good once you get to the casino portion. Not so much on the casino floor, but all the way around it...
A shirt worn by Elvis Presley!
Not wanting to spend all my time in a casino (I'm not much of a gambler), I decided to head out into the city and see what museums could be found in walking distance from the Hard Rock. The first I ran across was the Sioux City Art Center... which is not an actual museum, but they do have a small collection. The building itself is one of their best works of art, however...
Much to their credit, they had a beautiful Dale Chihuly seaform vase in their collection...
And a series of paintings focusing on cornfields. I couldn't really tell if they were painted to be faded and tough to make out... or if they were badly faded from sun damage or something. Still interesting. Though I found it impossible to photograph them well...
Much to my surprise, they also have a Jackson Pollock on loan...
Not one of my favorites by him, but Polock's works are alway great to see in person... the way the paint layers up is an interesting effect that gets lost in photos.
From there I walked to the Sioux City Museum, which focuses on the history of (you guessed it) Sioux City...
There's a lot of history in a relatively small space... almost too much at times, because it gets so cluttered you don't know where to look...
A nice museum, really... and totally free (though you can make a donation).
After a while I decided to head back to the hotel... disappointed that both cities I visited bearing the name of the Great Sioux Nation didn't actually have a museum dedicated to the Native Americans which inhabited (and continue to inhabit) the region. A teepee and a few crafts in the City Museum were about it. Perhaps one of the Indian reservations would have a museum, but they're so scattered I wouldn't know where to begin looking. I've done some cursory Google searches and came up empty. Guess I need to find a book.
Oh... and I found this cool shot along the way...
Dinner was an interesting side journey.
Three days ago, Blogography reader "Omaha Carl" left this comment...
As always, just LOVE it when you share your travels.
If you ever get to fly-over country. i.e. the Omaha region, consider me for a guide, or at least for suggestions.
Carl Mann
(NOT the country singer from the 50s and 60s)
Smartass that I am, I replied with this...
I’ll be in flyover country day after tomorrow… see you then! :-)
It was a joke... but then I got to thinking about how Omaha couldn't be more than an hour-and-a-half south of Sioux City. So I Googled it and, sure enough, an hour and thirty-four minutes...
So... a couple emails later and I was off to Omaha for a terrific dinner with Carl...
If you're ever in Omaha, Anthony's makes a mean bowl of pasta (and it's way more than I could eat!). I'm just sad that I didn't have room to eat a salad with some Dorothy Lynch dressing (which is apparently a very Omaha thing to do given that it was invented in the city of St. Paul, due East of the city).
Thanks so much to Omaha Carl for the great evening!
Don't say it's over... because Bullet Sunday on Monday starts... now...
• 161! This evening I net up with two local bloggity internet friends, Chris & Kyle, for a visit to the Hard Rock Cafe Mall of America... which has been built into the middle of the USA's largest shopping complex. For a "new school" property, it's not bad. Certainly not as great as the former Minneapolis Hard Rock since it's a douchey hipster-lounge "new school" property... but at least there's some decent memorabilia to be found...
Oh... and the location is pretty good. Right next to the LEGO Store...
And that's Hard Rock property no. 161.
• SPACESHIP!
Thanks, Benny!
• Pub Night! After drinks at the Hard Rock, we headed to Ward 6 in St. Paul for dinner. I had the fried egg sammy (sans the bacon) and loved it. They actually put TWO fried eggs on there, which makes for an especially gooey delicious mess. Fantastic fries to boot. As if that wasn't enough, it was PUB QUIZ NIGHT! Our table was #1 for three of the four rounds, so we probably would have devastated the rest of the players... but we left before round 4 because it was taking really long to get through the questions. Still, great place for food if you're in the Minneapolis/St. Paul area.
• Thomas! This guy is genius...
While funny, am I the only one who thinks that this will one day lead to his death?
• UPS! This is too adorable...
Now I can't help but wonder if this kid will grow up to become an actual UPS driver.
• THANKS, OBAMA! Love him or hate him, this was pretty dang funny...
Cue the asshole brigade with cries of "Shouldn't he be running the country? And by 'running' I mean 'ruining"?!?"
And... tomorrow I'm in the air yet again, so I bid you goodnight!
The Plan was to fly out today since my work ended yesterday so I could have more time on my upcoming Hard Rock adventure. But to follow The Plan would cost four times the money than a hotel stay, so I'm instead flying out tomorrow morning. Early.
The rest of this entry should be prefaced with the understanding that cold Maine is cold. Very cold. Biting cold. Cold with a side of cold and a scoop of cold on top.
It's really f'in cold.
And it's Sunday in the off-season, so there's not much to do in Portland, Maine. Thus my incentive to go outside is not very high. So I didn't until the hotel kicked me out at noon. At which time I checked into my airport hotel, returned my rental car, then took a taxi back into the city because pizza and apple crumble was calling at Flatbread Company...
To say I love this restaurant is a gross understatement. The location is great. The atmosphere is great. The service is great. The beer selection is great. The food? Beyond great. Especially the desserts, which are worth a trip to Portland all by themselves.
Did I mention it's cold?
Yet I went wandering downtown anyway like the fool I am. Despite wearing a T-shirt, thermal henley, hoodie sweatshirt, and a coat, I was still freezing. But I wanted to get a shot of the fence with locks on it in daylight, so off I went...
To profess their undying, never-ending love, a couple will write their names on a lock, attach it to the fence, then throw away the key. I have no idea if you come back with a bolt-cutter if things don't work out, but it's a nice idea.
I decided to explore somewhere new this time around, and left the Old Port area for downtown. That's when I saw... MAINE LOBSTERMAN!
Sculpted for the New York 1939 World's Fair, this piece has an interesting history (which you can read about here). At first I thought that the guy was giving first aid to a lobster with a hurt claw, but that's apparently not the case at all...
He's actually "pegging" the poor thing... which is to say he's shoving a wooden peg in the claw joint so it can't be opened (so he can't pinch anybody). This practice has mostly been abandoned, and now they just wrap a plastic band around the claw. Still a bit cruel, but I'm guessing it's not as painful to the lobster. At least until he gets boiled alive.
As I was walking, I saw a really cool painting on the side of a building that was meant to mimic a giant blueprint being laid over the structure...
Just across the street is a giant postcard painting that's also pretty cool...
If you look closely, the "lighthouse" is actually a spray-can...
At this point I was so cold that I could barely move, so I called a taxi while taking a few last photos as the sun set...
And that was that.
Back to my airport hotel room where I can (hopefully) get a few hours sleep before my early morning flight.
I left Auburn at noon and was back in Portland by 1:00... just in time for lunch.
But first I had to spend a half hour scraping snow and ice off my rental car. This included the tires, which had frozen to the ground...
The Ford Focus I rented is a pile of crap for many reasons. Primary of which is the horrendous gas mileage. Driving the 80 miles to Auburn and back killed... I shit you not... A HALF-TANK OF GAS! As if this wasn't bad enough, the car is just awful design-wise. Massive, glaring blind spots. A driver console that has no place to put your mobile phone. Uncomfortable seats. Utterly shitty "Sync by Microsoft" computer system that's as intuitive as a nuclear reactor to control. And then you get to the outside where you have this fucking huge gap between the hood and the windshield that is so cavernous and deep that it's extremely difficult to dig all the snow out of it. Even if you have a brush, there are ridges in there that makes it much more trouble than it's worth...
No wonder everybody wants a foreign car... their designers actually think about shit like this.
But anyway...
For reasons completely unknown, Portland, Maine has some really excellent pizza restaurants. This is nice because it takes the edge off the misery you experience when visiting in the cold, snowy, wet, days of Winter. A place I had wanted to visit but never got around to last time I was here was OTTO Pizza...
They are kinda famous for their Butternut Squash, Ricotta & Cranberry pie...
Sounds weird, I know. But it is pretty wonderful. Creamy with subtle flavors that taste amazing together...
It's important to eat it while it's hot though. As soon as it gets cold the texture gets kind of rubbery and weird.
OTTO's itself is a nice enough place. Kind of eclectic in a rustic way. Service is pretty good too. The only thing I hated is that somewhere in the restaurant there's a piano that kids are, apparently, welcome to bang all over. This makes an ungodly racket that completely ruins the experience of eating here. And I cannot fathom why in the hell they allow it. They must know that it's irritating as fuck to listen to that shit... so why put your customers through the agony? Stupid.
After some various errands, it was my plan to get some sleep.
Or not.
I made the foolish mistake of checking my email only to find a problem that required me to head back out into the cold, snowy, raining, wet misery I had just escaped from. At least I was smart enough to bring my camera along with me. I didn't have it on my previous trip, and really wanted to take a shot of the Harbor Fish Market (which proved impossible with my iPhone). It's a beautiful building with amazing lighting that has a steady flow of customers pulling up all day...
From there I wandered around for a while to see if I could find anything else interesting to shoot...
I finished up my evening at my favorite restaurant in the city... Flatbread Company. I was still stuffed with OTTO pizza, so dinner was out of the question. But Flatbread Company makes some of the best desserts I've ever had, so I decided to try their Apple Crisp...
Not as jaw-dropping amazing as their wild blueberry desserts (which are out of season, darnit!), but still fantastic. Fortunately their chef is smart enough to know that RAISINS HAVE NO PLACE IN APPLE CRISP EVER!!! I frickin' hate it when somebody ruins a good apple crisp by dumping raisins in it. BLECH!
And now, at long last, that sleep I've been trying to chase down all day...
During the winter months I always try to arrive at a job site a day early because you just never know. This week the New England weather is supposed to be okay, but last week Maine had a winter storm attack that left a lot of people without electricity. So... just in case weather delays or power outages happen to me, I plan a buffer day so I have time to get everything straightened out.
Today was that day. Except it turns out I didn't need it.
And so I worked in my hotel room until they kicked me out at noon then went to the Maine Mall so I could have lunch at Johnny Rockets. While eating my Streamliner Veggie Burger (no mustard, no grilled onions), I saw this...
That's pretty awesome. Babies need to eat too, yo.
After a drive up to the fine city of Auburn and an uneventful afternoon working I was going to go explore the area for a while... but decided I'd be better off seeing if I could find out where I could get some falafel. Turns out it could be found just down the street from my hotel. That almost never happens! Dinner was served...
Dessert from from the hotel gift shop and looked something like this...
Party in my room!
Sixteen years or so ago, when I really started traveling lots for work, I actually kind of enjoyed it. I was seeing new places... meeting new people... experiencing cool stuff... it was a whirlwind of wonderment that made life fresh and exciting.
After a few years the excitement wore off (as it was bound to do) and I had gone from "Yay! I get to go to Milwaukee!" to "Argh. Milwaukee AGAIN?" But I still enjoyed it. The more miles I traveled, the more perks I got as a frequent flier. Travel had become a chore, yes, but not a terrible one. I got bumped to first class most of the time. I had access to private airline lounges. I had premium support problems popped up. Free handjobs in the first class lavatory.* The list goes on and on. Unlike the horror story most people experience when traveling, mine was a fairytale.
For the most part.
I mean, yes, there were delays, lost luggage, missed connections, and spending hideous amounts of time away from family and friends, but it was mostly better than a poke in the eye.**
But then the perks started to fade away.
I can't pinpoint the exact time they began vanishing... I want to say five years ago... but I honestly don't know because it seems like forever.*** I can, however, tell you when they died out completely.
That would be today.*****
For me at least.
After Delta Airlines decided that the amount of time you spend in the air with them didn't mean shit compared to how much money you spend... my days were numbered. I always fly the cheapest fares I can find out of obligation (to my day job) or necessity (for my charity work) so my importance to Delta went from being huge to practically zero. It didn't help that Delta started screwing over their partner airlines by making it so that you earn way less miles (or nothing at all) for non-Delta flights.******
Some partner.
And that was just the beginning. It seemed like Delta was devaluing their frequent flier program more and more with each passing week. So I switched my mileage plan from Delta to Alaska Air at the beginning of the year. Meaning this is my final year as a Delta Platinum (and former Diamond) flyer. And given how expensive it is to fly Delta now... and how little I get in return... this will be my final trip with them as a willing participant. From now on I fly Delta only when it's my only option left.
Which means next time I need to go to Portland, Maine like today (a city that Alaska Airlines does not serve) I'll instead be flying to Boston, Massachusetts (a city they do serve) and taking a two hour drive up the coast. I may not have huge status with Alaska Air, but they seem to value the time I spend with them a bit more.
And so on.
Which will be fine... until Delta buys out their SkyTeam partner Alaska, which is obviously their goal. Delta is adding so many flights out of Seattle that pretty soon you'll be able to fly direct from Seattle to Peoria. It's their way of squeezing Alaska out of their very own hub city, and Delta is getting pretty ruthless about it.
Some partner.
Oh well. It will be good while it lasted.
Delta must think so too, because this was my upgrade status flying out of Seattle this morning...
Missed it by this much.
My thanks to the many, many, many Delta employees who took such excellent care of me all these years. You will be missed. Though I'll still see you from time to time. Alaska Airlines doesn't service Amsterdam, for example, so I'll probably see you again in the Spring.
When I'll be earning a pathetic 50% of miles flown now.
Damn. Shouldn't we have Star Trek transporters by now?
* I may be exaggerating about the free handjobs. But I did get warmed nuts and free alcohol, which is almost the same thing.
** Unless you're a person that likes getting poked in the eye, then it's better than a Justin Bieber CD.
*** Not literally forever. I'm trying to be illustrative here. More like the time it takes to get through the line at the DMV.****
**** Also forever.
***** Actually, it's probably more like next Thursday... I'm getting ahead of myself here.
****** Even when purchased through Delta! For my trip to Vietnam, Cambodia, and Laos last year, I flew Delta "SkyTeam" carrier Korean Air. At the time of my reservation, I was told I had to pay a higher fare in order to get any miles credited to my account. So I did. Then they changed their mind and said I'd be getting no miles at all. It took a month of arguing before they gave in, and even then they shamed me for making them do it... even though they made me pay extra for exactly this purpose.
The drive home from the coast was surprisingly sedate.
Meaning nobody did anything to piss me off so badly that my road rage escalated to the point where I was wanting to kill people.
Always a plus for somebody trying to stay out of prison.
Which is everybody, I guess.
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