So this year’s trip was to the Dirty Coast and parts slightly north. I have clear and distinct thoughts on all three stops, but I will need time (and not to be swamped at work) for them to spiral out. So in the meantime, the travel debriefing itself:
1) Houston’s airport is terrible to fly through. I mean, yes, it’s Texas, so you could be forgiven for thinking that even the air has potholes, but seriously, the climate makes smooth takeoff and landing damn near impossible. It also makes me laugh that the Palm is going to try to open in Terminal C. Don’t know who that reflects worse on, to be honest.
2) The new travelwear that washes out in the sink actually did so, saving my ass a time or two. However, in future, laundry stops will have to be explicitly scheduled and executed if I’m going to try to halve the load with the cunning use of detergent. That said, the simple expedient of reverting to hybrid Dixie/California behavior and getting rid of socks seems to work as well as anything…shoes permitting. Which leads us to:
3) Shoes that don’t lace are critical to getting through the airport. However, the new magic chamber apparatus will think the handkerchief in your pocket is something to be alarmed about. Feces-throwing monkeys would do a better job of being adjusted to heightened threats of terrorism TEN FUCKING YEARS LATER than this country is.
4) Probably wouldn’t be a bad idea to have something in between “nice jeans” and “black suit” for strategic going-out purposes or Easter Mass. Something to think about next time, especially when a solid pair of khaki flat-fronts would be cooler than denim in late Southern spring.
5) THAT all said, if I had it to do over again, I think I might need something nicer than my battered Clarks loafers for the daily wear; not sure they would have passed muster for Sunday morning. It’s become apparent that since moving to California, my wardrobe has become more informal and less attuned to coping with high heat and humidity, especially vis-a-vis footwear. Maybe I should have gotten the DM tassel loafers when I had the chance?
6) I never once unracked the Bluetooth keyboard for use with the iPhone. Surprisingly, I didn’t do very much scribbling in the hip-pocket notebook either. I did the vast majority of the driving on this trip, which cut into the time that I would probably normally have wanted to jot things down or write, but I rather enjoyed piloting a big ol’ Dodge around the highways and byways of the Deep South, so this is by no means a complaint.
7) The iPhone had some issues, which may or may not have been down to the 4.3.2 update before I left. Battery life struggled a LOT, even with push turned off, but I didn’t make the necessary notes to see whether the usage pattern was having an impact. Meanwhile, the Kindle proved far superior to the iPhone for reading in all respects but one: when I was sitting up with bad reflux and trying to let everything settle before returning to bed, the backlight was essential for not waking everyone else up.
8) This leads me to believe that an iPad 2, 16GB with 3G, would have been ideally suited for this trip: only buy data service for the trip and then use it as the primary car navigation option; the larger screen and easier text entry would be a difference-maker when using Google Maps. Proof again that the line about “it’s a BIG iPod Touch” is actually an apt description of the iPad’s killer feature.
9) It should be obvious at this point that I didn’t put nearly enough time into loadout for this trip. I can only plead that the social ramble ain’t restful and that we are basically going full speed ahead until June, but still, the only real problems I had were things that could have been handled with a little foresight and a pen and pad.
10) The new Timbuk2 custom bag passed its shakedown voyage with flying colors. Hugely capacious yet able to be cinched up to a very reasonable size – I can’t imagine needing anything else for a whirlwind 3 day getaway or for a full-load carryon bag.
11) Relatives are no substitute for family.
More to follow…