Tales & Trails of a Traveling Wiseguy

I'm in Newport Beach, California for a few days of intensive sales training. The training hasn't even started yet— it's on Wednesday and Thursday— but the partying has. ...I know, I wrote yesterday that this trip is not a boondoggle. But last night we went out to a fancy-ish restaurant on the coast, Javier's. The valet parking was full of high end luxury and sports cars. The restaurant was full of people in their see-and-be-seen attire; a style I only see in certain places where wealth and vanity collide like in Southern California.

I was hoping for a not-late night last night. I even seriously considered blowing off the group dinner. But I decided to go because the group seemed small enough. There were just 12 of us. Well, dinner was languidly paced at the packed, fancy restaurant. We had drinks. Then simple appetizers. Then bigger appetizers. Then full dinner plates. I estimate my end would've been $175 all-in if I were paying my own bill. And we didn't get back to the hotel until almost 11pm. So much for my idea of a not-late night. I had been hoping we might be done with dinner early enough for me to take a dip in the hot tub before 10!

Getting back to my room at 11pm was bad enough— considering I was up, sick half the night the night before— but then, because it's a business trip and I'm in an unfamiliar bed, or possibly because I'd eaten too much food too late, I couldn't get to sleep right away. I tossed and turned until about 12:30. And this morning I was up at 5:30 for a 6:30am meeting before the all-day training sessions. Ugh.

Last night my cold took a turn for the worse. I've had a cough and body aches/tiredness since Friday. Monday night I got sinus congestion, too, and my cough got a lot worse. I took more OTC meds to combat the symptoms but, still, I tossed and turned, unable to sleep, most of the night.

This morning I took a Covid-19 test. I'd been telling myself for a few days that if the symptoms got worse than a mild cold, I'd test. Well, last night was when they got sufficiently worse. Oddly, though, by this morning the symptoms had abated. There's something about colds being worse at night and lighter in the morning. Anyway, I took the test this morning. Negative.

I was actually kind of hoping for a positive test. That at least would put a specific name to what I'm suffering and open up a clear course of action better than, "Take these at best semi-effective OTC cold remedies and let the virus run its course." Plus, "I can't. Covid," shuts down colleagues at work asking if I can't just join these 3 Zoom meetings way better than, "I have a cold" does. 😷

On Sunday it wasn't just "Screw being sick, I'm going to the hot tub". After a week of being too tired from jetlag and busy-ness at work to do anything relaxing other than sleep I was getting stir-crazy; stir-crazy in a way that just going to the pool wasn't enough to rectify. For a few weekends before our trip to Italy I was yearning to get outside for a hike locally. Alas, one or both of us was always too tired then, too. And now this weekend I'm sick? Screw being sick, I'm going hiking!

Hawk, mindful of the fact I'm struggling through being sick with a cold, suggested we could hike at Byxbee Park, a nearby favorite at the edge of the bay that's flat and has plenty of options for short hikes. I countered that No, I've been yearning for something further afield. So we headed up into the mountains for another regional favorite, Russian Ridge in the Mid-Peninsula Open Space District ("Mr. OSD")



As always, I like Russian Ridge because of the sweeping views it provides from atop a ridge in the coast range mountains. From the east side of the ridge (not quite pictured above 😂) you can see all around the San Francisco Bay, from San Francisco itself in the north to San Jose in the south, to Mt. Diablo and Mt. Hamilton in the mountains on the other side of the bay.

Oh, and from this side of the ridge...



...You can see out across the Pacific Ocean. Which is all socked in with fog today, as it often is. That's one reason why we're rarely like, "Let's go to the ocean!" when we live less than an hour away. Most days the view's better up here in the mountains.

BTW, that mountain near the middle of the frame above is Mindego Hill. After seeing it in this vista from Russian Ridge for years we figured out how to hike it a few years ago. Seeing it this weekend reminds me that we should plan another trek out there.



Most of our past several trips to Russian Ridge we've come up here earlier in the spring, or even in the winter. That's because it can be hot in the summer, and the grasses are all brown. We were surprised it wasn't all brown already here in June. And there are wildflowers, too. Not a lot, but definitely patches here and there. We thought they'd all have burned off by now.



Even when we aren't gazing at far-off views from the trail, Russian Ridge is just such a mellow place to hike. Partly that's because there are a lot of rules here. Dogs are prohibited and there are speed limits for bikes, for example. Rangers enforce the rules. We met a ranger at the start of the hike and chatted about things. No, he doesn't spend his whole day writing speeding tickets for dogs and cyclists. Sadly his most common trouble call is some speeding dipshit wrecking their car or motorcycle on the highway outside the preserve. It's technically outside his jurisdiction as a ranger, but when there's an accident and an injured person up in the mountains, the closest emergency responders answer the call. FWIW, I own a sports car, and on a beautiful day like this I think it's lovely to drive the speed limit and enjoy the beauty all around me.



I began this hike with a particular route in mind, one that traverses many of the highlights of the area without being too long or having too much climbing. Partway into the hike I was feeling bullish and thought maybe I'd extend the loop. That's another one of the great things about Russian Ridge— there are a bunch of connected trails here, making it easy to hike a longer route or cut it short.

Alas, though I was feeling bullish partway into the trail, by the time I got to the bottom of the hill I realized there was no way I was going manage the long version today. It'd take my remaining energy just to get back to the trailhead via the shortest route. That's not bad, though. I did 2+ miles and several hundred feet of ascent while sick with a cold!

In beauty I walk. Even if I'm achy and coughing up phlegm.

A local pizzeria, A Slice of New York, has had a sign out for months that they're closing soon. Now they have a sign showing a date: Next Saturday.



This restaurant has been circling the drain for several years. The pandemic was tough on many restaurants, but this one did the WTF coming out of the pandemic of reducing their hours in late 2023 to just one and two-half days a week. At the time I mused they wouldn't make it a year by cutting their own revenue so badly. Somehow they held on for 18 months. (I wonder if the landlord had given them a sweetheart deal and it took them this long to raise the rent to market rates. Or for an eviction to work its way through the courts.)

I have mixed feelings about seeing this pizzeria go under. I used to love this pizzeria. When their pizza's good, it's great. But for the past few years now, more often than not their pizza has been left sitting out too long. It's usually dried out and sad looking. Half the time I've gone in there recently I've turned around and walked out after seeing the choices. It's become an in-joke between Hawk and me; I've got to have a "Plan B" for where else to eat any time I try to go to this pizzeria.

Earlier today I posted about bringing home a bit of money from Italy as a souvenir. Sadly, no, it's not ancient denarii or sesterces... though that would be awesome if we did! It's just a few dollars worth of modern coins. They're not even particular to Italy because they're Euro. There are 20 countries that use Euro.

I'm not much into souvenirs from foreign countries. So many of the things sold as souvenirs are stupid crap— and just make the house look junky when displayed. Hawk and I will often buy one thing we agree on as a physical memento, something that means something to us and represents the place we visited. For example, we brought back from our Panama trip a painted wood carving of a harpy eagle. This trip, though, we forgot to shop for a souvenir. 😱

How did we forget? First of all, like I just said, it's not a huge reflex on our part to buy ready-made-for-tourists stuff. Second, there surprisingly weren't gift shops scattered all around Rome prompting us to buy stuff. I mean, that's awesome. It's awesome that a city filled with so much history doesn't have junk peddlers every 3 meters trying to monetize the tourist experience.

Sure, we have all our memories of the trip. But no unique souvenir means that we have nothing physical in the house to remind us of a great trip.

Whew. It's been a busy week. It's a good thing we came home from Italy Saturday, giving ourselves an easy day at home Sunday instead of booking the trip all the way through Sunday, because I've been go-go-go at work all week.

We've done an "AI innovation week" this week. It's kind of like a hackathon. The upshot is that it's been another 12 hours of work on top of an already full schedule this week.

Where am I finding the extra time for extra work? Would you believe... in the mornings. Well, okay, there were two 9pm+ evenings this week, but I've actually been waking up early every day. It's jet lag coming back from Italy.

I've been waking up at 5am, give or take 15 minutes, every day this week. But rather than toss and turn in bed I've been getting up and starting my day. I'm not starting work at 5am but getting some of my personal time in. Then I've been starting work at 6:30 or 7am.

This is an approach similar to what I started doing when I was traveling to Asia frequently for work many years ago. Traveling 8-9 time zones west I'd wake up stupid early in the morning for the next 5-6 days. Rather than suffer the jet lag I decided to make it work for me. I'd start my day as early as 4am, getting things done before breakfast and going out to meet clients for the day.

The only drawback to this approach of starting each day early was that I'd poop out early. And that's been happening this week, too. Last night I laid down for bed at 7:30pm!

Now that the work-week's winding down I hope that my jetlag will wind down, too, and I'll be able to get back onto a normal schedule this weekend.

Italy Travelog #29½
Somewhere near Greenland - Saturday, 31 May 2025, ??pm

We're aboard a flight on Level airlines from Barcelona to San Francisco. Have you never heard of Level before? Yeah, neither had we until a few weeks ago. When we booked these tickets 7-8 weeks ago Level was a subgroup of Iberia Air. Since then they've started flying on their own license. Apparently they're yet-another low-cost European carrier.

What does Level being a low-cost European carrier mean? It means practically everything is an extra charge. You want to pick seats before T-24 check-in time? That costs. (We paid $110 to select half-decent seats 8 weeks ago.) You want a cup of soda? That costs €3. Even a bottle of water costs. That's €2. Somehow we booked on tickets that include basic food and drink— but some of those around us are having to swipe credit cards just to get a shitty airline sandwich.

But, hey, by ponying up an extra $110 several weeks ago Hawk and I at least made sure we have seats together, aisle-window (on an Airbus 330 the seat config is 2-4-2), instead of two scattered middles like on the way out here. OTOH, they are still tight seats, and it's a long flight— scheduled at 13 hours!



It's interesting that our flight path takes us over the tip of Greenland. That's where I think we are right now, anyway. This aircraft's entertainment options don't include a real-time flight map. In fact the entertainment options pretty much suck. And headphones cost €2. And there's no personal device based entertainment. For an airline that just got its license a few weeks ago, their tech is surprisingly 10 years old.

The impact of this old tech is that this is turning into a long flight. There's no worthwhile TV/movies to watch, there's no internet. And it's too early to sleep. We're just 5.5 hours into this flight, less than halfway there, and already I'm ready for it to be over.

Things were going so well on my trip to Phoenix yesterday. Lines at SJC airport moved swiftly, our flight boarded on time and departed on time, we arrived on time in PHX, my ride over to the hotel in Tempe was uneventful, and I got a fairly nice room at the hotel. I unpacked my clothes for the next day, hanging them in the closet so the wrinkles would straighten out, and then I realized: I'd forgotten to pack a shirt. 😱

Oh, I was wearing a shirt. It's not like I was running around topless. But I wore a more casual shirt for a travel day than I would wear to visit an executive at a bank. And what if that one shirt got noticeable dirty or sweaty being worn for a second day?

Well, here I am on day 2. I'm re-wearing my shirt. It's not a disaster. I'll see how under-dressed I am when I meet this bank exec later today.

Italy Travelog #29
BCN Airport - Saturday, 31 May 2025, 1pm

We landed at Barcelona airport a few hours ago. It's where we're making a connection on our trip home from Sardinia today. The flight here was easy; just a boring 90 minutes in an airplane. The leg home to San Francisco from here is a lot longer. It'll be a whopping 13 hours.

We're on the ground for a few hours in Barcelona so we've taken a tour of the airport, from one end to the other. That's not just because we have time to kill or because we want to stretch our legs before being packing into cramped airline seats for another 13+ hours; it's because we have to. Our arrival gate was at one far end of the airport, while our departure gate is at pretty much the opposite end.



As we cruised around BCN airport we found that it has a few outdoors patios. It's nice to have an opportunity at an airport to get outside for sunshine and fresh air. So few airports (*other than tiny ones) have outdoors spaces once you're behind the security cordon.

Alas, while these patios at BCN offer sunshine they don't exactly offer fresh air. That's because they're smoking havens. And the smokers are fucking pigs. Despite there being ashtrays every 5 meters the floor is basically one big ashtray. You can barely set a foot anywhere without stepping on cigarette butts.

The purpose of our exploration wasn't just to find our next gate. It was also to get lunch. BCN has a lot of places to buy a meal in its big central concourse. That's especially true if your idea of a meal is, "I absolutely love ham and Swiss, please show me 17 variations on ham-and-Swiss sandwiches!" 😅 Alas, Hawk doesn't like ham, and I don't like Swiss. That knocked out, like, 80% of the restaurants.

We did find two restaurants that served food both of us could enjoy. One was an airport-typical world-fusion restaurant with options that seemed fashioned to middle American tastes. We decided that would be our fallback restaurant if we couldn't find anything actually interesting. Then we found a Spanish cafe in one of those outdoor patios that sold a variety of empanadas.



Hawk picked a pair of veggie empanadas (left in the photo above) while I picked three different types (right): one chicken, one beef, and one pulled pork. We also split a plate of fries not pictured above. Oh, and I enjoyed a mug of German beer that wasn't heinously expensive. At US airports such a beer would often cost $15 nowadays.

Instead of beer being heinously expensive, you know what is? Sodas.



In a convenience store near our gate I spotted these soda and beer prices. A bottle of Coke is €4.59; a can of beer is €3.99. And that's no crap beer. That's Estrella Reserva 1906, a beer I've bought several times at home and found to be one of the best overall beers I've found. Granted, the beer is a smaller serving than the soda, at 330ml vs. 500ml. Still, it's a flip of the norm in the US to see any single of beer selling cheaper than a single of soda.

Another thing that struck my US eyes as odd today was this:



So, ham, particularly jamón Ibérico, is a big thing in Spain. Lots of stores at the airport are selling it. But this one is bold enough to insist that it's the best in the airport.

Best in the airport? Sure, I could believe that. It's way more plausible than one of their competitors claiming to have the best ham in the world. I mean, I'm not sure where the best ham in the world is but I'm pretty darn sure it's not in an airport. 🤣

Italy Travelog #27
Chia, Sardinia - Friday, 30 May 2025, 8:30pm

This evening we sat for an elegant dinner at one of the resort's restaurants. We weren't planning on it originally, but after the oopsie at breakfast this morning the restaurant manager offered to comp us dinner.



At 7pm, the earlier reservation available as that's when the restaurant opens for dinner— restaurants in Italy generally only start serving dinner at 7 or even 7:30pm— the weather was still warm, so we opted to sit out on the terrazza. The view was lovely. Though we still had to stand up and crane our necks to see the beach in the distance. 😅

Hawk ordered a dish of spaghetti while I ordered grilled duck. We shared an appetizer of hummus— "Just one?" the waitress asked, bordering on snidely— and a side dish of roasted potatoes.



The duck arrived artfully prepared on a plate with some kind of stacked scalloped potato and either kale or spinach or something else similar. It tasted kind of like kale in that it tasted like spinach but not as good. 😅 And it was served with a chocolate sauce. Yes, that's chocolate sauce you can see on my plate in the photo above. It's a strange choice on the part of the chef, IMO. While it didn't go poorly with the duck it also didn't strike me as, "OMG, why haven't I ever had this pairing before?"

Dessert was a case of "WTF?" customer service. Every item on the dessert menu seemed to have chocolate in it. Hawk, who can't eat chocolate (it gives her stomach problems), asked if any of the desserts could be prepared without chocolate. The waitress initially said no but then, apparently because she wasn't sure about what Hawk was asking given language differences, brought out her manager. The manager was kind of combative about what was in the food, so Hawk said No to dessert. Forcefully.

The manager then, showing that she actually was combative, brought out a dessert anyway and starting pointing out things about it. The manager and the waitress both had agitated tones of voice and body language that conveyed, "We can't believe you're so rude as to not want our dessert." Hawk practically shouted at them, "I said No three times already!"

The total was €99, all comped. Although that's more than we almost ever spend on ourselves for dinner, these are resort prices. We left only modestly full. If we'd eaten our fill the bill would've been at least €150, and if we'd had two glasses of wine apiece (instead of just me and just one glass) it would've been over 200. Of course, even if dinner wasn't comped by the restaurant it would've been at least partly covered by my company's club stipend.

Alas, our reason for eating cheap at this pricey restaurant wasn't being cheap. It was that there was only 1 entree on the menu that Hawk could eat. Then there was the WTF antagonism from the staff about dessert. That left Hawk seething and made me uninterested in ordering anything for dessert myself, even a second glass of wine. We're past the point in life where we'll eat more food just because it's free.