Tales & Trails of a Traveling Wiseguy

Flying for Fun & Profit #3
Back home. Sun, 28 Dec 2026, 9pm.

Well that was easy. The mileage run I thought would chew up part of the day and all evening got done in just a few hours— thanks to finding a quick turnaround flight back from Los Angeles. I could've been home over an hour ago but I decided, since it was before 7:30 when I landed in San Jose, that I'd like to enjoy dinner out with Hawk. Now it's 9pm and we're back home, unpacked (for very small values of unpacking; basically I just took my computer out of my shoulder bag!) and relaxing.

For dinner we went to California Pizza Kitchen a few miles away. That was my pick because I was planning to eat at the CPK in Terminal 1 at LAX. The CPK there is actually more attractive now than it was a few years ago thanks to renovations, but oh! the prices. I took a peek at their menu while I was dancing the hokey pokey. They want $26 for a pizza! I figured with that and two airport-priced beers I'd be out $60 just for a basic dinner for one. Instead Hawk and I enjoyed a dinner for two near home, including two beers and an appetizer in addition to two meals, and the total was only $80.

Oh, and I just checked— the miles are already posted to my account! I now have A-List Preferred status through 2026. 😎

Yesterday, Christmas Eve, Hawk had another followup with her podiatrist. It's been now 10 weeks since her surgery and three weeks since her last followup. Christmas Eve may seem like a strange time to see the doctor for a followup. Indeed, the schedule on the wall showed half the doctors in the department out on leave. But we don't celebrate Christmas (we're not religious) and after her week 7 followup showed things progressing but not as fast as expected (stuff went sideways in weeks 2-4 due to a bad substitute doctor) Hawk was keen to get her next checkup on schedule and not let it slip out as much as two weeks due to holidays. Oh, and things went sideways again last weekend, so Hawk was eager to see a trusted specialist to get her diagnosis of the situation.

Long story short, it was good news yesterday. Call it the Christmas present we were hoping for on the 24th. 🤣 The bones in the toe are fusing correctly, and Hawk can now walk in a regular shoe. She's on track for being able to get the next operation in a month. The sideways stuff that happened over the weekend is still sideways, but the doc says it will resolve itself within 2 weeks with educated self care.

One way we celebrated good news after past checkups is by going out to eat. Even if only to Denny's. With the 24th being Christmas Eve there was an additional tradition to follow....



Chinese food!

Hawk grew up in a Jewish family, and at least among American Jews, going out to eat for Chinese food on Christmas Eve is a tradition.

We tried a new-to-us Chinese restaurant in Sunnyvale, Epic Dumpling. The menu is huge, and despite the restaurant's humble appearance the food arrives with beautiful visual presentation. But some of the flavors were not to my taste. For example, the filling in the steamed pork buns was candy-sweet. And a beef dish I ordered came full of cucumbers, which weren't listed as an ingredient in the description. I hate cucumbers. Given how hard it was dealing with language barriers just to order our food I decided it wasn't worth the effort trying to send the food back to have it remade.

Thanksgiving triplog #20
Sunnyvale, CA · Sun, 29 Nov 2025. 7:30pm.

We're back home from our Thanksgiving travels. Though it's rolling up on 7:30 now we actually got home at 5:10pm. We stowed our bags and headed straight back out for dinner at La Fiesta, a favorite local Mexican restaurant.



The flight from BWI to SFO was mostly boring. It was on Southwest, so wouldn't you know it...



It was late. We departed 20 minutes late and arrived 20 minutes late. Aside from our general frustration (and resigned amusement) with Southwest's behind-as-usual operations it didn't matter much to us. We booked a nonstop flight specifically because it meant not having to worry about delays causing missed connections on this busiest air travel day year. And traveling earlier in the day— we left Hawk's parents' place at 8am to drive to the airport— meant, even with delays, we were home in time for dinner.

Thanksgiving triplog #13
Camp Hill, PA · Wed, 26 Nov 2025. 12:30am.

We arrived in the Harrisburg, PA area this afternoon, a day early, after changing our plans when some of our visiting plans fell through. That means we now have five nights with my inlaws, Hawk's parents.

Ordinarily yellow flags would pop up about visiting anyone for this long, especially when we're staying in their house. But Hawk's parents are pleasant people, their minds not dulled by age and their personalities not strained by sharp swerves to the political hard right, as is so common among many older people. And, because they still live in a big house, we have our own bedroom on the upper floor when we visit, so there's privacy when we sleep— and anytime during the day when we want to retreat to ourselves.

This evening the four of us went out to eat together at a new Japanese restaurant in town. They offer an all-you-can-eat sushi and hibachi buffet. The price is very reasonable— at least by our SF Bay Area standards. And going out for sushi together is a tradition we enjoy together when visiting my inlaws. You see, in my inlaws' family, only MIL like fish. FIL hates it, Hawk hates it, BIL hates it. So it's only when I visit that MIL has anyone to enjoy sushi with. Though it seems that now with this pretty good surf-and-turf restaurant open MIL should be able to cadge FIL into going there more than the once a year we visit. 😅

After dinner we stayed up late (back at the house), chatting. We were all up, chatting, until after midnight! Apparently staying up until midnight or later is a regular thing for MIL. She wrestles with some form of insomnia. But staying up late is tough for me, thirty years her junior! Still, I enjoyed the conversation this evening. And now I'm upstairs in our private room (where Hawk is already asleep) winding down for the night.

Thanksgiving triplog #9
Manassas, VA · Mon, 24 Nov 2025. 10pm.

The week of eating our way through our family and friends continues! But whereas Hawk came up with that line out of frustration that so much of this Thanksgiving week is about eating, I embrace it. And not because I'm looking for an excuse to over-eat repeatedly but because I accept that an enjoyable meal is a great setting around which to gather and meet friends and relatives. Tonight's gathering, after a different one at lunch earlier today, was with my cousin Matt, aka The Talking Moose, and his wife, Sally.

Among all my cousins Matt is one of the few I was close to as a child and have remained close to as an adult. ...Of course, "close to" is a relative term as when we were kids we only saw each other once or twice a year. And now that we're adults we see each other... once or twice a year. 😅 But I always felt we were close in the sense that we're close in age and share similar intelligence, interests, and curiosity about the world.

We met for dinner this evening at the South Riding Inn. It's a pub with an extensive menu in South Riding, Virginia. As I quipped earlier today, I grew up not that far from here and had never heard of South Riding until maybe a year ago. A quick check of Wikipedia tells me why.... South Riding is a place-name made up by a developer in 1995. So, yeah, it literally didn't exist when I was growing up around here. It's a few miles outside of Chantilly, which was already considered the last suburb before the suburbs gave way to farms back then. And now, of course, it's a burgeoning suburb itself with a population of probably over 35,000.

Dinner was good. I mean, dinner— the food— was adequate. The company was excellent. With Matt and Sally we enjoyed a rollicking good discussion about life, work, family, politics, and places we've traveled. Maybe at some point we'll be able to do this more than once a year. 🤣

Thanksgiving triplog #2
Hanover, MD · Sat, 22 Nov 2025. 7:15am.

Our red-eye flight from San Francisco last night was tough. We were late leaving, which I didn't exactly mind— no risk of missing connections— except for the fact it meant more time sitting in an uncomfortable seat. We even had seats in Southwest's not-yet-launched preferred seating section. They're normal seats but with maybe 2" of extra leg room. The extra leg room was nice but the real problem is that the seats are too short. There's not enough seat to them.

I was confident about this red-eye flight after our last one, a red-eye flight to Toronto in August, went well. Ah, but on that flight we had first class seats on United. This time we were on Southwest, with its too-short seat bottoms. I know from lots of experience those make me squirmy within just 2 hours. I shouldn't have been so sanguine about committing to one for 5.5 hours. The uncomfortable seat meant I couldn't fall asleep for several hours. And then I slept for maybe 1 hour.

Things flowed smoothly at BWI airport upon arrival. Hawk and I got off the plane just before 6:00am. I shambled toward the nearest bathroom to use the toilet and splash some water on my face. We weren't in a rush, but we were happy that the shuttle bus to the rental car depot departed just after we boarded. Standing around while blinking the sleep out of your eyes is one thing, standing around waiting on someone else is different.

The bus rolled through the pre-dawn darkness at 6:20am. Shouldn't the sky be getting light by now? I wondered. Alas sunrise wouldn't be until 7:00, and with the clouds and drizzling rain it might be hard to notice.

There were no lines at car rental. Yay. Of course there were also almost no people at car rental. But a helpful staffer in the garage pointed us where to go to pick a car. We could take any from our category. We looked at a few and chose a Mazda CX-5. It's similar to the Mazda CX-50 we rented on our trip in Georgia back in April. Our good experience with that car is why we picked this one. If nothing else it has heated seats, which are a big help for Hawk on any trip and a help for me on longer drives.

Which brings me to where we are right now. We're parked in front of a Wawa convenience store. Once clear of the airport we headed straight for breakfast... and for us, for breakfast, a good convenience store is better than just about anything. Wawa, a chain that's been a fixture in the Baltimore area for decades already (even though it started nearly Philadelphia), offers decent fresh food from its short-order kitchen and has a great selection of drinks.

Now here sit eating breakfast in the front seats of our car. Dawn has finally broken around us, though it's hard to tell. The sky went from dark to... mostly-dark... while it continues to drizzle. We'll chill here another 30 minutes or so while waiting for a reasonable time to visit one of Hawk's college friends later this morning.

Texas Trip log #5
Residence Inn · Thu, 13 Nov 2025. 7am.

Last night could have been an early evening. It could have been, but it wasn't.

I went out with my sales colleague to treat a prospective customer to dinner. They picked the restaurant, an Italian joint in the Domain. "I just love uniquely styled restaurants such as this," someone in the group gushed. "It's owned by Cheesecake Factory," I pointed out. At least the food was better than Cheesecake Factory. And the menu was just 2 pages, not 27.

I thought that dinner, with copious drinking, was going to be why it was a late night. Instead, both the gents we were entertaining wanted to get back to their families. Yay, engaged dads! They big us goodnight by 8. My sales colleague suggested we get a few more drinks. Mindful of the fact I had my morning alarm set for 6:15 already I suggested we limit it to just one. I was back in my room by 9.

Alas it was just staying up too late that was my excuse for staying up too late. I got involved in watching videos on YouTube and couldn't settle down to sleep until after midnight.

Morning came early today. At 6:15 I was up before dawn— even with the recent switch off of Daylight Saving Time. I've spent 30 minutes catching up on yesterday's unread emails while nibbling on breakfast in my room. Now it's time to shower, pack, and head downstairs to meet my sales colleague to prep for today's in-person meetings.

Today is Day 14 of Hawk's post-op recovery. At the time of her surgery they wrapped her foot in a half-cast, half-splint with strict instructions to put no weight on it. That made her close to immobile. She could hop around short distances with the help of of a pair forearm crutches— "short distances" being like from the bed or sofa to the bathroom. Going between floors in our vertical townhouse took focus and real energy. She tried to limit herself to one trip up and down per day. Today she had a followup visit at the clinic.

For the trip to the clinic Hawk used a knee scooter. It does no good in the house because there are stairs everywhere. But it's great for covering long, flat distances like from the parking spot in the garage to the clinic's front door, and from the front door to the orthopedic department. She zoomed along on the scooter, going faster than me, walking normally. Though heavy closed doors were her bane as it was difficult to balance while exerting enough force to open them. I caught up to her every time there was a door. 😅

At the clinic today they removed the cast and replaced it with a bandage wrap and a boot.



The boot can be taken on and off. And even the wrap can be removed (by us) at home tomorrow. After that she just needs to cover her foot with a sock. And before very careful with it when it's out of the boot, of course, because it's still healing. She'll need the boot for at least another 3 weeks, possibly up to 6 weeks.

The switch to the boot has made her more mobile. Now she can put partial weight on her foot. She still uses the forearm crutches to walk, but she can move faster with them because she can put her injured foot down to balance instead of having to hop along on one leg.

Hawk celebrated the change today by asking that we visit a local bakery that has her favorite, princess cake. She boldly decided to walk (hobble) from the parking area to the cafe. It was across the street and partway up the block. She was okay getting there though it took more out of her than she expected. So she bought all the princess cake they had in the display (5 pieces) and asked me to pull up the car for her hobble back out.

Phoenix Getaway travelog #12
Now at PHX airport · Tue, 23 Sep 2025. 1:30pm

We're at the airport now, chilling before our flight home in 2 hours, but before coming here we did enjoy a last hurrah at the resort this morning.

We got up early this morning, around my usual weekday 6:45am alarm. Aren't we supposed to sleep in on vacation? Well, yes and no. When the sun's up early and sets early it makes sense to make good use of daylight. And it's not like we were up late last night anyway. We tried using the resort's hot tubs after dinner but both were broken. One had no heat, the other had no jets. So after a short soak we returned to our room for the evening.

Breakfast at the Cafe

Since we were up early today we opted to sit for breakfast in the hotel's small restaurant. The past few days we've contented ourselves with eating protein bars in the room so today we decided to splurge a bit. Plus, one of my elite benefits here at the Hilton hotel is a $30/day food credit. Yesterday we used the credit toward our lunch at the pool cafe. Today we figured we wouldn't stay late enough for lunch so we used it toward breakfast. Not that it covers breakfast. $15 each doesn't even get the job halfway done when breakfast plates are around $20 apiece, plus $5 for a juice or soda, plus tax and tip. But it changes the cost calculus enough that we enjoyed dining out instead of eating protein bars in the room.

Quiet Morning in the Water Park

After breakfast we returned to the room, relaxed a bit, and changed into our swimsuits to hit the lazy river just after its 9am opening time.



Yesterday was pretty quiet at the water park. Today seemed even quieter. Even though this is a great time of year for #PoolLife in Phoenix— the weather is hot but not too hot— the resort hasn't been too busy. I figure that's because school's back in session, so families aren't taking trips outside of the weekend. And even on the weekends they're buying fewer day-passes as kids are busy with sports and other activities on the weekends. And that was all part of my plan for why to make this trip now. We balance great summer-y weather— even though today's high of 100° is crisp Fall weather by Phoenix standards 🤣— with less crowding.

We spent a few hours at the river ranch this morning, alternating between floating around the lazy river and relaxing on lounge chairs in the shade. Come 11:30 or so we decided to call it a day... er, morning... and headed back to our room. I'd arranged a late checkout of 1pm so we could shower, change, and pack our bags after using the pool.

Making Time to Shower and Change

The late checkout wasn't strictly necessary. The hotel is fine with guests staying in the water park all day after the normal 11am checkout. We've taken advantage of that policy several times in the past... packing our bags in the morning, stowing them in the car, staying in the pool area until sometime mid-afternoon, and changing in one of the bathrooms when it's time to leave for the airport. But having a room to go back to is more civilized, and today the timing made sense for that. Plus, taking a shower in our private room instead of changing quickly in a public bathroom has made me feel a lot more refreshed.

Little Charge for Charging

Like I said at the top, we're chilling at the airport now. Oh, returning out rental car involved a bit of... weirdness. Remember I maligned renting an EV because figuring out charging without an annual subscription is a pain in the ass. And expensive. Well, I decided to simplify the conundrum of "a pain in the ass and expensive" down to just expensive and return the car with 60% charge to the rental depot and pay whatever ridiculous marked-up rate they charge for electrons. Y'know, like how they charge you $6/gallon for gas if you return the car less than full.

I noted the less-than-full battery to the attendant processing car returns and asked about the cost.

"It's only 12 cents," he said with a chuckle. "We'll email you a receipt."

"12 cents per kilowatt hour," I responded, "That's great. Without a membership the commercial recharging stations are charging 48 cents on up."

Except I'd misunderstood him. The rate wasn't 12 cents per kilowatt hour— which I estimate would've come out to $4 or $5 total to top off the battery. I checked the emailed receipt just now on my computer, and it shows 12 cents, total, for the electro-fillup. Bonus!

L.A. Trade Show journal #2
Burbank · Tue, 16 Sep 2025. 7:30pm

My flight down to LA this afternoon was uneventful. We did leave late as I predicted. It's funny how I can look at a few simple facts in the public record and predict such things with more accuracy— or perhaps more honesty— than the airline itself. Anyway, once we started taxiing I nodded off to sleep and then slept for most of the flight. That was surprising as I never used to be able to sleep, at all, while flying, let alone on a flight in the middle of the afternoon.

Landing at Burbank airport instead of LAX provided exactly what I expected it to. I mean, aside from the novelty of exiting the plane onto the tarmac. And enjoying a beautiful, mostly not-smoggy view of the San Gabriel Mountains just north of us as I did so. Tiny, outdated, hole-in-the-wall Burbank airport is fast. I walked into the terminal at gate three and didn't have far to go to get out to the curb to catch an Uber.

My first stop this evening has not been my hotel downtown but rather dinner with a colleague, Sandi. She suggested Smoke House in Burbank. It was a short ride from the airport— though with afternoon traffic and surge pricing the fare was almost $40. 🥵 (Sandi later said she could've picked me up on her drive over there. I told her I could've tipped her $40. 🤣)

I'd looked up the Smoke House online when Sandi suggested it last week. From their website it looks like a modern, concept oriented restaurant. Y'know, the kind of place that serves a messy food that used to be cheap— i.e., barbecue ribs— but does so in a pretentious, upscale environment with a bunch of microbrews on tap at the bar... and two-thirds of them are IPAs.

Well, I was wrong. Smoke House is not a 2020s era concept restaurant repackaging old fashioned food. It is a genuine old school steakhouse that's been there for decades. It's all 1950s inside, with dark wood paneling and overstuffed red vinyl booths. Black-and-white photos of movie stars and producers line the walls. This is a place where movers and shakers in film & TV have been coming to make deals over martinis for decades.

Was I impressed by any of that? No. But standing beneath a portrait of Walt Disney in one of his impeccably tailored dark suits starting glancing down at me with his typical half-sneer— I mean, he even had the courtesy to stub out his cigarette before this photo was taken— I did suddenly feel underdressed. As I arrived a few minutes before Sandi and had my suitcase with me I gave serious consideration to dodging into the men's room and changing from shorts and sandals into trousers, black leather shoes, and a sports coat.

Meeting at 4:30 for dinner was a bit early. Sandi and I agreed to go at a leisurely pace so we'd be hungry by the time our entrees arrived. We started with chatting up the waiter since the place was dead at 4:30, then had a couple of drinks, ordered a small appetizer to share, then finally our mains— we both chose the prime rib, though she wanted hers well done 😣 and settled for medium-well when the waiter politely told her "No" 🤣— and finally dessert.

It's weird going out to a restaurant with a woman who enjoys all the same stuff I do (except for that well-done nonsense) and can put it away. Man, if Sandi were younger, and we were both single, I might ask her out on a date. Except for that well-done nonsense. Red flag right there. 🤣

Update: The adventure continues in A Very Tiny LA Hotel Room!