Tales & Trails of a Traveling Wiseguy

Italy Travelog #1
SFO Airport - Friday, 23 May 2025, 12:15pm

We've started our trip to Italy. We're approximately 0.5% of the way there! Yup, we're waiting in the United Club Lounge at SFO. And we've got a while to wait. It's just past noon now, and our flight doesn't depart until almost 5pm.

Why come so early? Well, we thought the lounge would be a decent place to relax, with a bit of free food and space to get some work done without worrying about whether there'd be rush hour traffic later in the day. Well, we definitely solved for the "avoid rush hour traffic" part of the equation, but the lounge isn't exactly relaxing. It's overcrowded. Like, people are hovering for chairs like people hovering for parking spaces at Costco on Saturday afternoon. And the food? What little there is gets picked apart almost as soon as a new dish is brought out.

Maybe the crowd in the lounge is a lunch time thing, with people packing in here hoping to skip the outrageously priced slop served in the fancy-looking restaurants out in the terminal. ...Speaking of which, Hawk and I spent $60 for lunch on a shitty knockoff of Panda Express. I threw my plate out slightly more than half eaten.

Not a great start to this trip. We'll see if it improves soon.

Wednesday this week was a busy day, work-wise. I was out and about on the Peninsula visiting a few customers. I met at one customer's offices just before 10am for a couple of meetings, took them out to lunch nearby, then drove up to Redwood City to meet another customer for a couple of meetings, then took them out to dinner. It turned out that both meals were at Greek restaurants!

Lunch in Santa Clara was at Opa!, a new-ish branch of a restaurant that's been around in Silicon Valley for a while. I don't remember if I've eaten at one of the their sister restaurants before. If I have, it's been years. Thus this counts for my Try New Restaurants New Year's resolution from 2023. 😂

Opa! feels like a high-concept chain restaurant. The decor is upscale and modern yet looks a bit too... pat... to be unique. It's not really a chain, though. There are only 3 of them. The menu is decently broad, spanning all the standards you'd expect to see at a mid-scale Greek restaurant, plus a few crossover dishes like the "Greek Philly Cheesesteak" that one of my colleagues ordered. It was huge, BTW, and he said it was great.

I ordered the Greek meatloaf, one of the house specialties. It was pretty good. I mean, how great can meatloaf be? It was moist, came covered— but not drenched— with a mild tomato sauce, and sat atop a serving of slightly too-creamy mashed potatoes and a few pieces of wilted spinach. The only reason I wouldn't order it again is because I'd like to try at least 3 or 4 other things on the menu before doubling back.

Also tasty looking was the grilled flank steak with feta cheese. That was my #2 choice, and one of my colleagues ordered it. He had no complaints about it, but my concern looking at his plate was that it was just a piece of meat with a small sprinkling of cheese. I guess if you're doing a carnivore diet that's perfect, but if you're looking for a square meal it's missing a few sides.

Speaking of sides, I also ordered a few appetizers to share. Saganaki was served alight, which thrilled all 5 of my colleagues, none of whom had ever seen it before. Opa! We also shared a plate of dolmas. They were disappointing. They were very fresh, but inside the freshly rolled grape leaves they were just rice.

Price-wise Opa! was on the spendy side of what Hawk and I usually do for meals out together. The tab for our group of six was about $240 all-in, so $40/head with tax and tip and non-alcoholic drinks. The qualify and presentation of the food seemed fair for the price, though, so I could see us going there together every once in a while.

Dinner in Palo Alto was at Evvia. Yes, it was Greek twice in one day. That happened because I picked the lunch spot while a colleague of mine picked dinner and apparently didn't notice the overlap. Or maybe he just really wanted Greek and was jealous because he couldn't attend lunch. 🤣

Evvia has been a well regarded restaurant in tony Palo Alto for a long time. I'm not a go-to-fancy-restaurants sort of person— except when the company's paying 🤣— so I'd never bothered to try it. But I was also curious to try it on OPM.

Evvia's dining room has a classy feel without being pretentious. We were seated outdoors on the covered patio where things felt a bit more casual. Heat lamps blazed away making it actually too hot despite cool evening air in the 50s.

The food at Evvia was all very good though not distinctive. Nothing made me say "Wow!" And the saganaki was not served alight. Disappointing. Maybe it's a fire code thing with the tented patio?

Surprisingly Evvia was not that spendy. I mean, it was more expensive than Opa!. And if you go deep in the extensive wine list you can add hundreds to your tab. But the braised lamb shank entrée I ordered was just $40. I didn't see the final bill (a sales VP paid) but I figure the average cost for a meal and shared appetizer and non-alcoholic drink would come to about $70pp all-in. Order heavy like the VP did, though, with lots of appetizers and two nice bottles of wine, and... well, I think the bill for 5 people topped a grand. 😳

I could see going back to Evvia with Hawk. It'd be in our splurge range though not a crazy splurge. As not-crazy-expensive as it is I wished I'd tried it on my own years ago.

I've written before about how I hate Las Vegas. Pretty much every time I've been to Vegas for work in the past several years, I've hated it. Why? Here are Five Things:

• The gambling sucks. Gambling was once the primary draw to Las Vegas. The house always had the edge, of course, but years ago they could be gentle about it. Now they've worsened the odds for players by 3x-10x. It amazes me that people still sit down for games where the house wins, on average, 2%, 5%, or even 7% of your money every turn.


• Food is stupid expensive. Years ago Vegas casinos offered good food at fantastic prices. It was a loss-leader to get you in to gamble. Now not only is the gambling itself more of a con than ever before, but the food has flipped around to being a profit center. A meal in a food court costs $30. Dinner in a nice restaurants starts at $100pp— and that's if all you order is an entree and a glass of water, after tax and tip. Throw in a few drinks because you're celebrating, and an appetizer and/or dessert, and you're looking easily at $200pp.


• Smoking. Even though the number of smokers as a percentage of casino patrons is smaller today than years ago, it's still sickening how much latent smoke is in the air. It's like it's all built up over the past 30 years. I have to shower before going to bed so as not to wake up sick in the morning.


• It takes forever to go anywhere. When I enjoyed gambling in Vegas years ago, part of my routine was to visit different casinos to explore the variety. It wasn't hard to get around. Now going anywhere takes seemingly forever. Call an Uber at peak hours? It takes 15-20 minutes to arrive, then 25 minutes to go a few miles. Okay, this is partly a consequence of the huge conferences I travel to Vegas for, and that's why I hate going to Vegas for conferences.


• Mega-hotels have gotten mind-numbingly boring. And too big. To me part of the allure of staying in a nice hotel is that it's nice. (Duh!) While the mega-casino hotels look nice on the outside, they quickly feel mind-numbingly boring on the inside. And they're too big, so it takes for-freaking-ever to get to/from your room.

Well, that's 5 reasons why I hate Vegas. But I said in the title I'm finding peace with it. How is that?

Part of it is just acceptance. Vegas is what it is. It's not like I'm doing it wrong or failing to master some "simple trick" that makes it better. The trick, if you can call it that, is not to go. Indeed, when I travel through Vegas for leisure, I stay in a non-casino hotel outside the casino areas and focus most of my time on things that are not in casinos.

And the other part of it is that when I have to stay in Vegas, in casinos, because my company wants me to work a show, I choose not to sweat the prices. Even off-Strip hotels are $200++/night because of the crowds? That's the company's decision to send me there. Expensive Uber/Lyft rides? Their decision, not mine. Stupid-expensive meals? Again, not my decisions, and not my money.

There's been a discussion on an email group in my neighborhood about hiring a contractor to replace windows and sliding glass doors. One neighbor, "Chu", asked for recommendations. A few businesses were suggested, including one that my spouse and I hired years ago for some window repairs. We didn't give this recommendation, though we do consider the contractor an knowledgeable and fair professional. Many people in our neighborhood have hired them for window repairs, as they've been in business in our community for decades.

Chu wrote back to the group that the contractor had come through with a $33k bid that she thought was too high. Moreover, they didn't itemize the cost proposal to identify specific materials and units of labor.  At first the amount of $33k struck me as large, too— our bill for window repairs years ago was more like $1,000— but then I saw Chu's description of the work she wants done. She's asking for 13 windows and 2 sliding glass doors to be replaced. ...Not just repaired, like fixing a pane of glass (which is what we did year ago) but replacing the whole window/door 15x.

A few of our neighbors pointed out that, yes, this project will be costly. The contractor has to cut into the exterior wall in numerous places, remove the old windows/doors, set the new casements in, then not only patch them up to the interior walls but seal them to the exterior, redoing the stucco and exterior paint.

Chu is upset that the contractor didn't provide a price breakdown and hasn't responded to her request to provide one.

I gotta say at this point, I understand where the contractor is coming from in kind of ghosting her request. For one, quotes can take time to prepare. I know in my company, there's a process around it. And when a prospective customer starts requesting multiple quotes, it triggers concern that the customer is aggressively looking for ways to argue for discounts and/or shrink the size of their order but still get the favorably unit pricing entailed in a bigger order.

Also, in any business situation, you've got to understand the market dynamic. Are the vendors hurting for work, or are they all booked up? If the vendors have staff idling for lack of work, they'll respond quickly to inquiries (they're not busy with other projects!) and they'll lead with discounts or offer them quickly to secure a deal. OTOH, when there's more demand than supply, the vendors hold the cards. They don't need to return calls lickedy-split. They don't need to write multiple quotes for choosy buyers or entertain bargain-seekers.

I believe that right now, in terms of home renovations contracting, we are facing an under-supply relative to demand. There are only so many contractors, especially good contractors. And a lot of people want to hire them. In this area there's almost always a supply-demand imbalance for skilled contractors that favors the contractors. It's a high-cost-of-living area, and people want home improvements. In addition, with home sales slow because of high interest rates the past few years, more people are paying to renovate where they live instead of moving.

I absolutely don't fault Chu for wanting to shop for 1-2 competing offers. She absolutely should. But given the first company she called is well reputed and known to be fair, I wouldn't be surprised if the other offers either come in higher or would entail cutting corners that spell trouble a few years down the road. (If you cheap out on exterior sealing you get leaks, with inside-the-wall damage!) I hope she sees that quality work isn't always compatible with getting the lowest price, and that contractors who are busy because they're good aren't going to bargain down their price.

Alaska Travelog #3
Anchorage - Sat, 15 Jun 2024, 10am

Last night as I learned our flight to Alaska would arrive 90 minutes late I rued getting to bed late and sleeping in late. It turns out only half of that came true. We did get to bed late— around 2:30am. But then I woke up at 7:30. I was still tired but could tell I wasn't going to be able to fall back asleep. I often refer to quick, no-frills hotel stays as "8 hours and a shower".... This one was 5 hours and a shower.

Oh, and while the hotel stay was mostly no-frills it certainly wasn't cheap. As part of how everything is expensive in Alaska, this room at a Hilton Home2 Suites (a limited-service brand similar to a Hampton Inn) cost over $300.

Just because I got only 5 hours of sleep, though, doesn't mean I checked out after 5 hours and a shower. No, after a relaxing shower I opened my computer (as did Hawk) to research places to go hiking today. We've found a couple places to stop on the drive from Anchorage to Seward and we've also found two waterfalls north of Anchorage. We'll take advantage of the ridiculously long days (sunset tonight is 11:40pm) by hiking those falls north of Anchorage after breakfast/before lunch then continue on our way south to Seward.

But we're also in no rush to start hiking, thanks to these ridiculously long days. After checking out from the hotel we stopped by a fast food restaurant for breakfast since I was famished, then visited a Walmart nearby to buy some groceries for the next few days. Oh, and a spray can of insect repellent. Multiple hiking blogs warned of hordes of mosquitos on the trails, and those pesky little blood-suckers sure love me. Well, now they're going to have to deal with my Cutter 40% DEET spray.

Well, it's been a year. ...Actually, it's been more than a year. It's been 16 months. I know because I wrote about it in my blog last time I did it. I ate at Taco Bell. And I liked it. Well, kinda. 🤣

Wendys--; TacoBell++;

My inspiration for "Making a run for the border" again was a particular Taco Bell restaurant.



This one opened near my house several months ago. It replaced an old Wendy's that had been there for at least 30 years, probably longer.

I drive past this spot at least a few times a week. I even used to work around the corner from here. The Wendy's used to do a fair business at lunch. It got hit pretty hard, like most restaurants did, during the Covid downturn in 2020-21. It closed for good sometime in that period, after which the building sat empty for a while before someone new bought/leased it and renovations started.

Multiple times during that period I thought, "I could really go for a Wendy's combo for lunch today." I could have gone to the other Wendy's in town 3.5 miles away, but the drive over there is annoying with midday traffic. Wendy's isn't that good. 😂

Thus my impetus to try Taco Bell again this past week for the first time in over a year was part curiosity about the new place and partly sublimated desire for Wendy's. 🤣

The 1980s aren't Completely Gone

Well, the outside of this old fast food spot is refreshed; what about the inside?



Inside, the restaurant is refreshed... but not thoroughly. The stupid "greenhouse" extension that Wendy's had at the far end of the dining room, where the temperature could never be regulated properly and some of the side windows leaked, has been removed. The furniture is all new and 2020s style, for better or worse. But that 1980s drop tile ceiling— yeah, that looks like maybe all they did was replace some of the dirty tiles with clean ones.

Okay, enough about the building. How's the food?

newPrices = oldPrices * 3;   // Haha yes I'm still writing code

Before I get to the food I need to spend a moment on prices. That's because before I eat the food I have to order it, and ordering it means looking at what's on the menu (remember, I haven't been here in 16 months), and the menu includes prices.

Recently I've seen discussions online where older Gen Z members complain about their Boomer* parents not understanding that the cost of things has risen, markedly, since 30-40 years ago. (I stick the asterisk next to Boomer because, really, Gen Z has Boomer parents? Their parents are three generation cohorts older than them? Of course, lots of Gen Z thinks anyone over 40 is a Boomer. Including my nieces and nephews.)

The generational misunderstanding in these situations is that because prices have risen so much, wages also need to be higher. The $7.50/hr that a Boomer (or Gen Xer) fondly remembers as a great entry-level wage from way back when is nowhere close to sufficient today... if someone wants to live on their own and afford things, not live with their parents who carp constantly about "NoBoDy WaNtS tO wOrK aNyMoRe!" ...Yeah, for a paltry $7.50/hr and a jackass boss who thinks that's generous, they don't.

One way I put in perspective how prices and wages are different today is by comparing fast food prices with what I remember paying as a teen and early 20-something. Overall I think of things today being 3x what they were 30 years ago. In fact my first time eating at Taco Bell was a hair under 31 years ago (I was a late bloomer) and a basic 3-taco combo then was $2.99. Of course, that was 3 plain tacos. A taco supreme combo, which seemed splurge-y at the time— I mean, c'mon, who can afford to add sour cream all the time?— was $3.59. And that same combo now is very nearly 3x that, at $10.79.

So, did I order a 3 taco combo, for old times' sake?

I'll Try the Cantina Menu

No, I decided rather than try food that Taco Bell's been hawking for decades I'd try something that's at least marketed as new. The "Cantina Combos" were advertised as new and special. Plus, they were the same price, $10.79, as that lowly taco supreme combo. I mean, for $10.79 my fast food combo had better be something special. 😂



Well, the Cantina Combo sure came packaged special. Look at that fancy cardboard box! We're way above plastic fast-food tray with paper liner level, here. We're up to cheap pizza level now. 🤣



Inside the box are tucked a chicken burrito, a ground beef taco, a bag of chips, and dishes of cheese sauce and green salsa. The green salsa was a special order. I was happy they obliged me... and didn't charge me $.80 extra (or whatever an extra 1-oz. dish of sauce costs nowadays).



Once unwrapped the food looks... not disgusting. 🤣 Yeah, that's damning it with faint praise, but I feel it's necessary to put it that way given how much many of my peers deride the notion of eating food as lowly as Taco Bell.

Disgusting? Only the Pepsi!

Sure, Taco Bell isn't great food. Especially here in California there are tons of tastier choices if you want Mexican or Mexican-inspired food. Though most of them are 2x the price or more. And that dish of nacho cheese sauce, which I really thought was going to be disgusting, was actually decent. I ate the whole thing with my chips. And overall, that's what everything was: decent. ...Oh, except the Pepsi. The Pepsi was disgusting. If there's any one reason from this visit I won't set foot in a Taco Bell for at least another 16 months, it's because they serve Pepsi.

And look, nobody's getting sick from eating at Taco Bell. There aren't lines of people outside the restaurants throwing up in the bushes. Nobody's dying from Taco Bell, either. Though maybe that's just because nobody's filmed themselves eating there for a month solid and then died 20 years later from alcoholism and cancer.

Phoenix Weekend Travelog #2
Arizona Grand Resort - Thu, 9 May 2024, 9pm

After arriving in Phoenix this afternoon Hawk and I checked in at the Arizona Grand Resort. We settled in our room, a comfortable if not exactly luxurious suite. ...Well, not luxurious compared to where we've stayed the past 5 days, anyway. You can see pics of a suite here from our visit last year.

Since I already have pics of the inside, here's a photo of the view from the balcony:



This is similar to the view we had last year; same building but a floor or two higher this year. And this year we paid an upgrade fee to get this room. This hotel is getting pretty bad with nickel-and-diming for things. Their room rate looks low at first, but then there's a mandatory $75 per night "resort fee". Then the optional $30/night fee we paid for a room with a view. And the view's not even all that great. We mostly see the backside of the kitchen building for serving food in the pool area. Next time— if there is a next time— I don't think we'll waste $30/night on a "view". Anyway, enough fussing about prices. We're here for the waterpark!

After getting settled in our room by 4pm we went out to the waterpark for an hour or so. We rafted around the lazy river a few times. We pulled out a bit early to dry off, change in our room, and visit a gem store Hawk really likes in the area. After that we killed time for a bit until it was time to pick up her parents at the airport. They're flying in from the east coast to join us here for the next few days.

Now we've got my inlaws squared away in their room. They didn't pay the $30/night extra for a view but they've got a ground-floor room with a nice patio. It's at least twice the size of our balcony. I'm a bit jealous... though being on the ground floor means there's no privacy with people walking past, so they need to keep their curtains drawn when not fully dressed. We're looking forward to keep ours open this evening for fresh desert air as we go to sleep!

Los Cabos Travelog #6
Waldorf Astoria Los Cabos - Sun, 4 May 2024, 9:30am

Last night I crashed early. By 9pm I was already fighting sleep, so I went to bed at about 9:30 and fell asleep right away. This morning I woke at 5am, briefly, and saw that it wasn't yet sunrise. The sky was starting to get light, though. Dawn comes early here! I feel back asleep and woke around 6. The sun had just risen, though we couldn't see it through our balcony doors as we're facing west.

I spent an hour sitting out by the plunge pool waiting for Hawk to wake up and get ready.



With a setup like this it's tempting not to leave. We were hungry, though, so we went downstairs for breakfast around 7am. Breakfast was bougie just like lunch though better quality and half the price. The full breakfast buffet was $20 before tax and gratuity. Though ordering a class of Coke Zero added another $7 and change to the tab. 😨 Yeah, I won't do that again tomorrow.

After breakfast we came back to our pool terrace and spent the rest of the morning there. Well, the rest until almost 10am, anyway. 10 is when we scheduled room service to come. That's our self-imposed goal for when to get going.

For years now I've had a bucket list goal of visiting all the states in the US. After notching Alabama, number 49 out of 51 in 2016, I remained stuck at 49/51 for several years. (I'm using 51 because I'm counting Washington, D.C. in addition to the well-known fact of 50 states in the US.) Last year I reached 50/51 by visiting Louisiana. That left only "The Last Frontier" of the US— no, not outer space; that's the final frontier— Alaska. And now I've got plans laid in to visit Alaska in June.

We'll visit Alaska for a 5 day trip in June. We'll fly to Anchorage; it's a 5 hour flight non-stop from San Francisco. Once in Anchorage we'll rent a car and drive out to Seward, AK.

Why Seward? There's nothing to recommend that podunk little town except that it's right outside Kenai Fjords National Park. So this trip will serve two bucket list items: getting me to 51/51 states and adding another national park on my national park bucket list. It'll be national park number 53 out of 63. We'll spend a few days visiting the park, both on foot— we'll hike to a glacier!— and by boat, where we'll see more glaciers.

One thing that's struck me as we've made our bookings is how expensive everything is in Alaska. Decent hotels in Anchorage start above $300/night and go up from there. (We're staying one night in Anchorage after a late evening flight.) Rental cars are $200/day. And no, these are not last-minute prices; I was booking 7 weeks ahead. I tried dates in July and August to sanity-check if we'd just chosen the wrong time to visit, but no, Alaska's always expensive.

"What's our alternative?" I asked myself rhetorically multiple times as I choked on the prices. "The only alternative is we don't go." So we'll pay the price to complete our all-the-states bucket list. And notch one more national park.

"Fifties are the new twenties." That's a quip I heard from a FOH employee at one of my favorite local restaurants.

The context was I was asking to get change for a $50 bill. I've been carrying it around in my wallet for months now, not spending it since most businesses refuse bills larger than $20. But I've observed that this restaurant does lots of cash business, and even though it's an inexpensive restaurant the reality of $20 lunches means that families/groups that order together are often paying with a $100 note... or multiple $100s. Plus, they know me as a regular at the restaurant, so I figured they'd trust me not to be passing a counterfeit bill.

One of the cashiers opened the till to see what kind of change he had. Inside there was only one $20 bill. "Lots of people pay with $50s and $100s," he explained. "I need $20s to make change."

"Thanks for checking," I said, "Though I'm impressed that you don't treat people like suspected criminals for trying to pass $50s and $100s."

"We'd lose a lot of business if we did," he said. "$50s are the new $20s."