Some combination of fever and remnants of generic brand Sudafed from the building 30 first-aid cabinet seem to be forcing me to perform another round of keyboard pounding hoping that something close to comprehensible English will spew forth.
We’ll see how it goes – luckily this is more or less a personal blog (where I happen to talk about testing 95% of the time), so I don’t have to worry so much about losing clients – just about losing readers.
I observed a few things on my flight here that are so universal that they probably don’t need to be shared – but I thought I’d go ahead anyway.
- Every flight has someone with a "personal item" that’s as big as the suitcase I used when I moved to Wisconsin (another story). That person also boards near the end of the line and is surprised when they can’t find a place to put their "bag"
- If you are sitting in an aisle seat (which I always do), the person on the inside of you will get up to use the restroom at least 2-3x more often than you do
- Conversely, if you are on an inside (or window) seat, the person next to you will doze into an unwakeable slumber just as the seatbelt light goes off, and will not stir until the plane lands
- The person in the aisle seat who goes into an unwakeable slumber is nearly always sitting directly in front of me. They manage to put their seat all the way back just before they doze off, leaving the back of their seat six inches from my nose. If I’m lucky, their greasy hair flops over the back of the seat just enough that a few hairs fall into my food
- I’ll probably never understand the urge to jump from your seat and pack into the aisle the moment the plane pulls up to the gate. I’ve noted that the ferocity of people to pack into the aisle increases dramatically if I have a connecting flight departing in thirty minutes or less
- The distance a backpack extends away from the back of the wearer is directly related to the non-awareness of the backpack bulk from the wearer. In other words, pay attention you stupid f&*# before you whip your body around to grab your man-purse and smack me in the face with your extendo-pack
I will, of course, watch for deviations and more proofs of these observations on my return trip.
The hotel I’m staying at in Munich is quite nice. The bed is comfortable, the room is quiet, and breakfast is provided. As a vegetarian, hotel breakfasts are often a bit of a challenge. As I expected, sausages and bacon were in full supply. I do eat eggs (occasionally), so I’ve been grabbing a small spoonful of those and some of the slim pickings of fruit – and bread. The bread’s really good, so I’m thankful, but I may try to improvise something more interesting for myself tomorrow (I’m thinking table-made egg-white salad with some of the good mustard kept near the sausages).
I like to workout when I travel. Actually, I like to work out all of the time, I just tend to have that precious extra hour in a day when I travel. Before it sounds like I’m complaining, I’d like to say again what a nice hotel it is – at least as far as my room goes… So Sunday morning I was up about 6:00 and decided to head down to the gym on the first floor. I followed the signs and was sure I was lost. I was heading toward a dead-end and saw what looked like real hotel rooms..but just past the last one was a door that said "fitness center" – so I put in my card and walked in.
Sure enough, when I checked the fire escape map on the back of the door, I saw that the room next to the fitness center was a real room. I’m going to hope that they only use that room when the hotel is packed – but who knows (apologies if you were trying to sleep during my adventure).
The "fitness center" is about half the size of my hotel room and contains a treadmill, an elliptical trainer, an exercise bike, and a multi-purpose weight bench. My exercise drug of choice is running, so I hopped on the treadmill and started pushing buttons until it began moving. I was just placing an ear bud in my ear when I felt like I slipped on a piece of ice. "Hmmm..", I thought – "the belt has a bit of a slip in it". I’ve run on slipping treadmills before, and while a bit awkward, I can usually get by. I stepped up the pace a bit more and began converting Kph to Mph in my head when it slipped again. This time it was like someone grabbed my foot with a soft hand and pulled it backwards at warp drive. I managed to hit the stop button and keep my chin from smacking into the console, and decided that perhaps the elliptical machine was a better choice for me.
I hopped on the elliptical and began…ellipticizing (is there a better name for it). I was just getting in a groove when I heard the screech of a mouse. I quickly realized it wasn’t actually a mouse – it was just a huge squeak from the elliptical. I turned up the volume and kept going.
But I couldn’t drown out the screeches of the mouse under my feet. I kept turning up the volume, but the squeaking wouldn’t stop. Finally, when I was sure that my eardrums were about to burst, I gave up and moved to the bike.
Except the bike was broken – so I vowed to walk a mile or two extra in my exploration of Munich and headed back to my room.