Off to NYC. Traveling Sunday to Work Monday.

NYC Quickie Travelog #1
OAK airport - Sun, 23 Mar 2025, 8:30am

This morning I'm off to New York City. For work. Yes, on a Sunday morning. And not even comfortably late morning. To catch my 9:20am departure out of Oakland Airport— not the closest to home— I set my alarm for 6:30am.

Why NYC? And why sacrifice half of my weekend for work— especially when I haven't yet caught up on taking comp time for when I sacrificed my weekend two weeks ago? Would you believe I volunteered for it. In fact I didn't just volunteer, I basically demanded it. 😣

My company's doing a sales training program Monday and Tuesday in NYC. It's not for everyone; it's for a small, hand-picked tiger team. I heard about it last Monday from a colleague, Mike, who was chosen for the team and asked if I'd be there. "I haven't heard anything about it,' I answered, "Holy shit, you're not on the list," Mike said, checking the calendar. "I can't believe they didn't invite you."

Mike and I discussed it a bit and decided it would really make sense for me to go. I ran by him a 3- or 4 sentence request I'd send to my department head. He agreed with my wording and added he'd tell his sales VP that not including me was "nuts". The VP would be sure to add... persuasion. I sent the message off to my department head right away, while Mike delayed in pinging his VP to give my director time to do the right thing.

Long story short, an invite came through to me by the end of the day. My director was kind of a dick about it, though. 🙄 Maybe the sales VP was too... persuasive... with him. 😅

Once I was invited to the meeting, though, I started to have second thoughts about it. I made my case for going because I hate being left out. This training is for our new product, and people who participate in it this week will be the tip of the spear. We'll be the first to scale up selling it— and in the process we'll learn what works and what doesn't work, and communicate that back to improve the training, and possibly even the product, before they scale out to the rest of the sales organization. Blazing the trail and then paving a path for others to follow in sales is what I do.

But once I got the invite I felt a bit like the dog who always chases cars and finally catches one. Did I really want this? Did I really want to burn half my weekend just to be first? I could lay back like the other 80% of the team and take things as they come— and enjoy my damn weekend. The weather's going to be beautiful back home today, 72° and sunny. I would've gone hiking. Instead I got up early, trudged to the airport, and will spend most of the day playing Planes, Trains, and Automobiles to get to New York where the high temp is in the low 50s and it's supposed to rain tomorrow.

BCS 3.02: "Care to Elaborate?"

The first few episodes of Better Call Saul season 3 continue to tell a fascinating story about supporting character Mike Ehrmantraut. In my previous blog I wrote about how Mike turns the tables on mysterious adversaries who are following him since the season 2 finale. He traces them to the fast food restaurant Pollos Hermanos— which we fans of Breaking Bad know is owned by drug trafficker Gus Fring— but doesn't yet know who's behind this gang.

In episode 3.02 Mike continues staking out Pollos Hermanos to figure out who the bag man is handing off the bags of drug money to. He enlists shady lawyer Jimmy McGill— the titular character who hasn't yet changed his name to Saul Goodman— to pose as a restaurant patron and watch what the bag man does inside. The bag man enters, orders, sits down with the bag at his feet, then leaves— taking the bag with him. Jimmy checks the trash can after the mysterious man leaves, thinking maybe he made a dead drop, but finds nothing. And Gus Fring intercepts Jimmy, asking if he needs help as he rummages through the trash. Gus and his gang are now onto Mike/Jimmy, and the tables turn again.

Mike's tracker device shows that the beacon he planted in one of the money bags is moving from the store. He tails a driver in a black SUV to the desert outside of town. When the beacon stops moving on an empty desert highway, Mike realizes he's once again the mouse, not the cat, in this game of cat-and-mouse.



Mike approaches the beacon carefully, stopping behind a crest in the road and then rolling forward slowly. He sees in the middle of the road the gas cap he planted his beacon in. Sitting on top of it is a cell phone. As he approaches on foot the phone rings.

I've gotta stop right here to say it is amazing that this show— a not-animated, not-science fiction/superheroes, not-James Bond level spy movie show— successfully uses the trope of "Protagonist finds a cell phone in a crazy place and answers a call on it from the antagonist". It's amazing how they make this believable. It took a lot of damn fine plotting and writing to build up to this scene.

The great writing continues as Mike negotiates the call from his adversaries. They inform him they're going to approach him and ask him not to try using a gun. But Mike is ready with one of his acerbic quips.



The adversaries roll up in two black SUVs. Gus Fring, whom Mike doesn't know yet, emerges from one. There's an enforcer on each side of him; but Mike is unbowed. He holds up the hand-written note from his windshield in the season 2 finale— "DON'T"— and prompts Gus, "Care to elaborate?"

The Long Road to New York

NYC Quickie Travelog #2
DEN Airport - Sun, 23 Mar 2025, 2pm

It's been a long road to New York City today, a longer road than it had to be... but maybe easier?

Traveling nowadays is always a series of tradeoffs. The most direct flight coast-to-coast? Stupid expensive. Or only middle seats in steerage left. Or both. The next most direct flight? Nonstop to EWR. Which is fine if you're staying in New Jersey, but to upper midtown Manhattan it's 4 trains on 4 different systems. Or 3 trains plus walking 2km. Or $100++ for Uber/Lyft. So I chose to fly Southwest to LGA. Which means taking a connection. On the plus side, my Southwest elite status and Southwest's open seating policy— soon to be RIP— guarantees I can get a decent seat. And a midday connection in Denver means I can eat lunch at a real table and choose something tastier than an airline snak-pak. See? Tradeoffs.

Then there's the tradeoff of departure and arrival times. Flying west to east already makes scheduling hard, given the 3 hour timezone change. When flying with a connection the choices are often leave stupid early, arrive stupid late, or both. I found one itinerary that wasn't ridiculous on either end— depart 9:20am, arrive 8:05pm— but it meant hauling up to OAK airport, 40 miles from home.

Then there's ride-hailing services. Those have become a tradeoff all unto themselves. You want sneaky fees and shell games finding a driver? More and more, those are standard. When I hailed a ride at 7am this morning the app spun for a few minutes then assigned me a driver 12 minutes away. Then that ride disappeared. "We're looking for a new driver," the app told me. Then, "We're still looking for a new driver." My estimated pickup time telescoped to 20 minutes past when I first pressed the "Buy" button.

Fuck that, I decided and woke Hawk up to drive me to OAK. Fortunately for her this didn't come out of the blue. We discussed last night the possibility of me needing her to give me a ride at 7:15am. Yes, that's how enshittified Uber and Lyft have become; that I now routinely make a Plan B for "What to do if Uber and Lyft are useless."

Well, I got to OAK in good time, no thanks to anyone but my gracious spouse. And the flight left on time, so here I am in DEN, as planned, with time to eat lunch at a real time and without my elbows pressed in against my sides. OTOH it's still hours to NYC, and I'm not going to get to my hotel until at least 9pm local time— and even that only if things continue to go (mostly) right. Tradeoffs.

Update: MOAR tradeoffs in traveling to NYC!