Tales & Trails of a Traveling Wiseguy

I was too busy all week to use the pool even as the temperatures have gotten warm. I was too tired in the evenings to use the hot tub as I'd been waking up at 4:30/5am all week due to jet lag. So tops on my list for today, Saturday, was "Relax at the pool, dammit."

Today I even slept in 'til a leisurely 6:30am. But a new wrinkle appeared. I am sick. I've come down with a cold, probably from my quickie trip to Phoenix Mon/Tue. The sickness is slowing me down, but I'm not going to let it keep me from the pool, dammit!



This morning Hawk and I soaked in the hot tub. After lunch we went back out to hang out by the pool a while. Between the weather being not quite as warm as the forecast promised and my achiness and fatigue from this cold, I didn't feel like swimming or even wading in the water. But I did enjoy sitting on the deck for a while, in the shade, a cup of punch in hand.

Sadly, because the aches and fatigue, even relaxing by the pool took a lot out of me. I went back inside after an hour or two to lie in bed until dinner time.

Italy Travelog #30
Back Home - Sunday, 1 Jun 2025, 6am

We returned home from our Italy trip yesterday evening. No, we didn't leave directly from the beach on Friday morning. That was merely the last blog I posted. As usual I'm backlogged a bit— though not too badly this time. I've got 3-4 more blogs from our last day and our trip home to publish, then of course the 3-4 I skipped over earlier in the week from visiting the Vatican and a few additional sites around Rome. ....Okay, so maybe it is a lot. 😔 I'm skipping ahead again now because I want to put a stake in the ground about when we're home..... Because tomorrow afternoon I leave again, on another trip. 😅

BTW, yes, I really am writing this blog at 6am. On a Sunday. I've been up since 5am. I figure it's a bit of jetlag from Italy, where 5am California is already 2pm. If waking up at 5am for the next few days is the jetlag I suffer, I'm fine with it. I've certainly had way worse before.

Part of what I hope keeps helping the jetlag from being worse was staying awake the entire time yesterday on our 13 hour flight from connecting in Barcelona. By the time we got home-home last night, at 6:45pm, it had been a 22.5 hour day for us. I unpacked, went out for dinner— it helps to switch eating to a normal schedule— and came back and took it easy for a bit before taking a shower and going to be. I was in bed shortly after 9pm, which makes waking up at 5 a bit more reasonable. But staying awake for 25 hours yesterday and then eating and sleeping on a normal-ish schedule helps shock my system into getting over jetlag.

What's on tap for today? Well, amid my no-rest-for-the-wicked situation of arriving home nearly wasted last night and having to ship out on another trip tomorrow, I'm going to rest today. It'll be a normal take-it-easy Sunday. Well, normal-ish because taking it easy usually doesn't begin with waking up at 5am. I'll putter around the house for a while, clean and put away clothes and other stuff from the trip, enjoy some comfort food meals, and ideally spend a while at the pool this afternoon. Yesterday would have been the perfect day for pool lounging, with a high of 90°. Today it's cooler (it figures 🙄) with a forecast of only 79°. It may not be warm enough to enjoy the pool. But I'll try.

Then, Monday, it's back to work, and I pack a bag for a quickie business trip!

Italy Travelog #22
Chia, Sardinia - Thursday, 29 May 2025, 5pm

Early today I wrote about how we decided to take it easy at the resort today. We hung out by the pool from the morning through lunchtime. But there's more. More pools. More taking-it-easy. More. MOAR!

After Hawk was done with her massage in the spa I joined her up there for our "Spa Wellness Visit". It's an membership benefit I get as a Hilton Diamond elite. (The front desk agent at check-in told me there are no elite benefits, zero, at this property. She was so adamant there was nothing for us she refused even to enter my Hilton number in the computer. Another agent later, when we went to book the massage, inquired if I had elite status, took my number, and told us about this. 🙄)



The Spa Wellness Visit includes using the spa's hot tubs, sauna, steam rooms, and "emotional showers". I was amused by the term emotional showers. Like, what, the water drips out of the shower head accompanied by sounds of sobbing? 🤣 Alas, no, it's not quite that emo. It's just colored lights flashing and aroma-infused water.

Well, we weren't interested in the sauna or the steam rooms, and the emo-showers just looked silly. Oh, and the aromas were all mint, which Hawk is allergic to. We've already had enough allergy problems this trip. 😒 So we tried the hot tob, which is the main thing we wanted anyway.



We pressed the too-difficult-to-find button to start the jets and quickly found... the pool is running backwards. Or rather, the pump is installed backwards. The jets on the sides don't work. Instead, water comes jetting up from the middle of the floor of the pool, from what are supposed to be the return vents. 🤪

We gave up on the buttoh (hint: it's backwards) after a minute or two as a pool that just boils and bubbles like a cauldron of trouble is not very enjoyable.



Upon hearing that there are 3 pools to the resort's "Roman baths" I hoped for the classic trio of caldarium, tepidarium, and frigidarium. Hot, warm (tepid), and cool. The people at the spa were mystified when I used those three Latin words. I mean, this is part of Italy, and there are Roman ruins around. You'd think someone would be aware of what their ancestors figured out 2,200+ years ago. Nope. These are the clowns who put the Jacuzzi together backwards. Buttoh!

So it turns out all three of these pools are tepidaria. None of them are quite hot tubs. Though at the same time no two of them are the same temperature. So they're like plus quam tepidarium, tepidarium, and prope tepidarium. 😂

While the three of these pools were pointlessly different in temperature they were purposefully different in how their jets were positioned. One has lounge seats built in with jets in the seats; another has traditional hot tub benches with jets; and the third has a sequence of paired jets at different depths in the water. We used the latter to massage our ankles, calves, thighs, hips, and back and we waded around to different locations. After both amusing ourselves and massaging ourselves for a while we sat out on shaded lounge chairs to enjoy the afternoon warmth.

This has been another quiet weekend at home. Scratch that; it's been a mostly quiet. Hawk and I took it easy on Saturday when the weather was cooler, planning to go out hiking somewhere Sunday when the weather was warmer. But then Hawk came down with what seemed like a case of food poisoning late Saturday night. She was up more than half the night with upset stomach and pain. Today she's been recovering but hasn't been well enough to want to leave the house even for a quick trip to the grocery store, let alone to go hiking anywhere.

It's amazing, and scary, how hard food poisoning can hit. I think all of us adults know what it's like to have eaten something that disagrees with us a little, or to have eaten too much or drank too much liquor. We throw up, we're weak; but we go to bed and sleep it off. Food poisoning is different. With food poisoning you're not only throwing up, you can't stop throwing up.

You take an OTC pill like Pepto to reduce the upset stomach? You'll throw that up.

You take a prescription med to prevent upset stomach, if you have one? You'll throw that up, too.

You drink even plain water to rehydrate after puking? You'll throw that up, too, a few minutes later.

There's basically nothing you can do to stop the pain or quell the symptoms, short of maybe an IV. Unless you want to go to the emergency room— which is its own form of suck, here in the US— you're stuck bearing the full brunt of the sickness until the food poisoning is done body-slamming you back and forth several hours— or even a few days— later.

Wednesday afternoon I checked in to the Scottsdale Plaza hotel in Scottsdale, Arizona, after an easy mellow day visiting a client in the area. Well, the hotel was part of what made it a mellow day. That's because while it bills itself as a resort hotel it's really more like a low-key motel with a bunch of pools. And it's not very crowded right now.

When I checked in the gal at the front desk directed me back outside to the bell desk for a driver to escort me to my room.

"How far away is my room?" I asked, incredulously.

"Oh, it's in the next building," she said, and pulled out a map.

"Thanks, I'll walk," I responded. It was, like, 100 feet away.



Walking outside between buildings gave me a chance to check out the pool area. It's not a hoppin' place full of kids on rafts, nor are there water slides, but low key was kind of my speed anyway. Plus, I ultimately decided no-key was my speed. I didn't use the pool at all on Wednesday, preferring instead to relax in my room.



As I've walked around the hotel I've chuckled to myself, is this really a resort? Because while it's nice... -ish... it's not quite what I think of when I think "resort". Frankly it's more like a Holiday Inn from the 1980s painted in shades of desert brown.



The decor in my room extends the feeling of "It's a Holiday Inn, but nicer". The furniture is decent but not special. It's comfortable, though. This is like the hotel equivalent of a comfort food restaurant. Unless you want to read a book in your room— because the lights in here suck. When I made the photo above I turned on every light in the room and still brightened the result to show the layout. In real life pretty much none of the lamps are brighter than a 30W equivalent bulb. 🤣

I continued the evening in the range between low-key and no-key. For dinner I caught a ride with the hotel shuttle driver to a nearby grocery store and bought myself a dish of sushi, a slice of cheesecake, and a 6-pack of Coke Zero. Then I retired back to my room until about 9:30 to see which of my colleagues were left at the bar. I didn't want to join them earlier because I didn't want to be coaxed into spending the whole evening drinking. So I went downstairs just before last call and drank two rounds with them.

Good news: I was back in my room by 10:15. Bad news: I still couldn't fall asleep until 11:45. Also bad news: dawn is at freakin' 5:30am here in Phoenix because Arizona doesn't do Daylight Saving Time, and I awoke at 4:45am because it was already getting light outside.

Georgia Travelog #8
Pooler, GA - Wednesday, 9 Apr 2025, 11pm

Tonight was my last night visiting my sister's family in Savannah, Georgia. Tomorrow morning we leave the area for the next phase of our trip.

It was a pretty good day today. Hawk and I split paths this morning. She met her aunt from a bit further south, and they spend the day together downtown. Meanwhile I puttered around the room until 11am and took care of a few odds and ends online. Then my sister came over, and we went out to lunch and ran a shopping errand. After that we went back to her house and chilled on the porch for a few hours. Her husband was busy working (WFH) until 5pm then came out to join us for a bit. When Hawk got back from her day out the 4 of us met up for dinner and an evening of games.

It's been a nice, easy day today. That's been a good match for my energy level after 3 days of going out places and touring on foot. Every week-long trip has one slack day (at least). I'm optimistic this recharge will help me lean in over the next 3 days before we go home to California.

Taking a 3-day weekend this past weekend was just what I needed. After an 11 day workweek I needed that extra day off to reset, recharge, and frankly catch up on the non-work things I needed to get done. I even made myself an agenda for my Friday off— and accomplished everything on it.

One measure of how well it worked having that extra day off is that on Saturday I already felt like it was Sunday. "It's Sunday I'm going back to work tomorrow," I thought to myself a few times on Saturday— then remembered it was only Saturday so I still had all of Sunday free. Bonus!

That's the good news; my weekend was restful. The bad news is that coming back to work today has been a speed run. It's a sad truth of modern Corporate America that when you take a day off your work doesn't take a day off. Tasks just pile up in your absence and need to be addressed when you return.

One things that's made more work for me today is that on Friday one of my colleagues pressed the panic button prematurely on a customer situation. This colleague has a bad habit of pressing the panic button early and often.  I wish more people in the organization would understand that— and I mean really understand that, because they say they understand it but then they keep running fire drills every time the panic button is pressed. I need them to stop running those fire drills, stop leaping every time this guy says frog, because all it does is make more work for me each time without actually helping the customer situation get any closer to resolution. I've spent at least 2 hours today on internal status calls when I should only have spent 20 minutes on them. And that's in addition to all the time spent by well-meaning colleagues who shouldn't have need to get involved, too.

Between this clean-up-after-the-fire-drill issue and other things, this is the first chance I've had to catch my breath today. Yes, it's after 3pm now! And I still have 1.5 to 2 more hours to do. Whew. Tomorrow is looking to be a busy day, too, and then Wednesday... OMG, Wednesday is totally booked, too. Thursday... Thursday I might have a chance to catch my breath again with only half the day booked up with meetings. And now I've got another request for job travel over the weekend!

It's been an eleven day workweek. After a regular week of work last week I worked through the weekend at a trade show then rolled straight into another week of work this week. And ugh, there were a few early mornings involved. But now I've got a three day weekend. I'm taking Friday off as comp time. I'll take another Friday off later this month.

What's on tap for thsi weekend? Surely there's an exciting trip, but travel is what I do anytime I get a long weekend, right? Alas, no. The weather sucks almost everywhere I could travel this weekend, and airfares are pretty expensive right now, to boot. So I'm staying around home.

I've fretted that tomorrow, my day off, will be just like a work day except with less work. By that I mean I'll sit around all day in my home office, except sitting in front of my personal computer instead of my work computer, and maybe taking a long lunch. Well, I'm probably not going to figure out anything 180° around from that but I am thinking I could:

• Sleep in a bit
• Soak in the hot tub in the morning
• Do a shopping run to Costco
• Finish my taxes

Yes, finish my taxes. That's my plan for how to spend my day off— doing taxes.

Yay?

Non-Vegas Vegas Weekend Travelog #12
Back at the hotel - Sun, 16 Feb 2025, 8pm

Tonight is a lot like last night. We finished up fantastic hiking by 4pm, went for an early dinner at a Golden Corral buffet restaurant, and retired early to our room in a low-rise hotel very far off the Strip. Yes, today we ate at Golden Corral again. But it was a different Golden Corral restaurant. 😂 Hawk didn't like the one last night because they didn't have her favorite dinner dish— or her favorite dessert. The one we visited tonight had both. It also had more of a carnival atmosphere inside. (That's a bad thing, BTW. But we mostly ignored it.)

Also like last night I'm pushing this blog forward while letting several journals full of photos and videos from the hike(s) that need processing wait. At this point one— one— from yesterday is ready to publish. Another 5 are in the backlog behind this one. I'll work the backlog after we get back from our trip Monday night.

The one thing not like yesterday is where we went. I already posted in this morning's blog that we went to Valley of Fire State Park. There we hiked to the Fire Wave, probably the most famous spot in the park; continued the trail around in a loop through the Seven Wonders trail; and then hiked the White Domes loop.

We were spent after that and also red-rocked out. We skipped even drive-to spots elsewhere in the park, instead opting for a scenic drive home through the Lake Mead National Recreation Area. It was over an hour of easy, country-highway type driving, through a combination of wide-open Mojave Desert vistas (basin-and-range geography, not flat desert) and occasional canyons and red rocks outcroppings.

Now we're back at the hotel, resting and unwinding from a busy day. And we've still got tomorrow's activities to plan. Our flight home isn't until 7:30pm, so we can plan a full day!

Panama Travelog #40
IAH United Club - Tue, 31 Dec 2024. 4pm.

We're about halfway home from Panama right now. We're cooling our heels at the United Club at IAH. We relaxed in the Copa Airlines club in Panama before our first flight, and on our connecting flight from Houston to San Jose we've been upgraded to first class. These are all benefits of my Million Miler Lifetime Gold status. Yay, status, right? Except today these benefits aren't enough to turn a drag into into an enjoyable experience; they just make it drag a bit less.

Why? Let me count the ways:

First, it's a long day. We were up at 4:30am Panama time and had to solve one crisis at the airport while trying to solve another. Both were resolved without getting too bad, but they contributed to this being a long and trying day.

Second, the Copa lounge wasn't all that great. The food there was all carbs and sugar, and not even tasty-looking carbs and sugar. I passed on all the food offerings and nibbled on the last two pieces of jerky I'd packed from home. But at least the lounge had comfier seats than the gate areas in the terminal. I mean, there's got to be something there that entices people to spend $500/year for a lounge membership.

Third, the flight from Panama to Houston... well, there was nothing wrong with it. It was full, but I had enough room in my Economy Plus seat. I watched a movie, Inside Out 2, to help pass the time. But the flight still seemed to drag.

Fourth, we have a long connection here at IAH, and it is really a drag. Our incoming flight landed at about noon local time, and our connecting flight departs at almost 7pm. Yeah, a 6.5 hour connection isn't ideal, but the alternative was an approximately 2 hour connection— which we were worried we might miss. Today everything ran fairly well on schedule, and we totally couldn've made a 2 hour connection. But you know that if we did book a 2 hour connection, there's a 50% chance the incoming flight would be delayed, there'd be a humongous line at immigration because 3 jumbo jets just landed, luggage would be slow to arrive, and/or there'd be a line to re-clear security.

Fifth, while we caught upgrades to first class, it's basically ghetto first class. It's a bigger seat with a microwave-quality meal and a couple free drinks. I mean, it's better than coach class with no elbow room, a pack of crackers, and half a can of soda, but that's damning it with faint praise.

Sixth, we're both coming down with something. I'm not sure what it is, but right now we're both so achy and tired it's painful. When we planned this itinerary we thought we'd nap on at least one of our flights and be refreshed when we land this evening— New Year's Eve. We told our friends back home we might join them for a low key celebration. Well, change of plans: I've just texted them. "I'm so wiped I may just face-plant on the bed when I get home." 😖

Update: ...And when I got home, that's nearly what I did!