Haiti: Getting there

On January 12 a relatively moderate 7.0- magnitude earthquake hit Port-
au-Prince, Haiti. Sitting down at dinner that night, I told my wife,
Leslie, that I bet I'd be going. I am on a Navy contingency
engineering response team, and given our new trademarked motto, "A
Global Force for Good," we tend to jump at humanitarian stuff like
this. It makes us look better.

So a couple days later I was put on a short list. On Friday, January
22 I get a phone call:

"Are you packed? Can you deploy?"
"Yes."
"You leave on Monday. You will be gone six months."
"What?"

Well, it turns out we couldn't leave on Monday. There are a lot of
shots you need to be able to step foot in Haiti. And apparently the
earthquake destroyed the airport, making air travel hard and the
planes that could get in were filled with food and water. Engineers
were low on the shipment list.

After a couple key calls by people much higher than me, we secured a
C-130 to take us down on Friday the 29th. They let us know Thursday
evening. Flying on a C-130, and one packed with a couple pallets of
cargo, is not quite an airliner experience. You sit on cargo nets, put
in ear plugs, and freeze as the uninsulated plane climbs into the Mid-
Atlantic winter atmosphere. I nicely avoided this experience on the
way home.

We arrive in Haiti at an airport filled with planes from dozens of
nations. The crew unloading my plane is Haitian, I suspected, and we
couldn't communicate with them. As my team leaders conferred on why
there was no one around to pick us up, our pallets of gear disappeared
on a couple trucks. Bad thing.

Having come to the realization that the military organization that
requested the team did not think to pick us up, we called a
contractor. Having contracts personnel with us, we were very easily
able to get services from American contractors already in Haiti and
thrsty for work.

An hour later we find our gear in a dark corner of the airport. After
loading it onto a truck, we climb aboard a bus (which looked exactly
like any bus you have seen in any Caribbean/Central American based
movie) and headed out into PaP.

As it was 9:30 at night and electricity has never been a big item in
Haiti, we didn't see much at all that first day. Which was fine by me
because I was too tired to care at that time.

The military headquarters camp had no room for us, and the Embassy
turned us away, so we set up camp across the street from the Embassy
in a contractor laydown area. We had air conditioned trailers, though,
so I wasn't going to complain at that point. Our perimete was secured
by Haitians with shotguns, which seemed odd. I grabbed my sleeping
bag, found a rack, and slept soundly, at least until the old guys in
the trailer got some good resonance in their nasal cavities and shook
the trailer with their snores.

Day 1

Back to Blogging

Well, it has been a while. You can tell you've been away from a blog too long when 1) someone actually emails you and says they miss it, and 2) the only comment posts are spam for adult toy websites.

Well, five months or 151 days into 2010, and I have spent all of 40 of those in a somewhat normal state. On January 12 a relatively minor earthquake devastated Port-au-Prince. By January 29, I was in Haiti as part of the US military humanitarian response, and I would remain there for 65 very long days.

Only one month back, I broke my left index finger playing football. Not really a big deal (though typing certainly suffers) but when I went to the hospital to set it I inexplicably collapsed and struck my head on a counter and some porcelain tile, leading to a skull fracture, concussion and a whole lot of pain.

So it has certainly been a crappy year to date, and I plan to cover the highlights in some later posts. But welcome back.

My sign would have been better

As I was driving back to work this morning, I passed an old brick Methodist church. It had a small marquee out front that read:

OPEN

HEARTS
MINDS
DOORS

However, I read it as:

OPEN

HEARTS
MINDS
ODORS

I didn't get it, but I knew it had to be some clever reference. All I could picture was a church full of old people taking in the Word of God and discharging something completely different. I had at least three jokes ready about why they were called pews. Unable to pass up this chance for a hilarious anecdote, I whipped out my phone to snap a picture. And then I saw it. Doors.

Not hilarious. Not even slightly funny. Totally a missed opportunity.

Great Bridge Bridge

There is a town in Chesapeake called Great Bridge, a town that has existed and persevered since pre-Revolutionary times. The town is so named for a long-gone bridge that once crossed the southern branch of the Elizabeth River. This, as an engineer, excites me. In fact, there was a brief Revolutionary War battle fought at the bridge (appropriately remembered as the Battle of Great Bridge), and now the road whose origins trace to the highway that crossed the bridge is known as Battlefield Blvd. Cool stuff, right?

Well, it ends there. The Chesapeake-Albemarle Canal, which connects the Chesapeake Bay to the Albemarle Sound, was built as part of the Intracoastal Waterway, thus starving the southern Elizabeth River of its feedwater and negating the need for a "Great Bridge." However, they still needed a bridge to cross the narrow canal.

Currently, we have a beautiful Scherzer rolling lift bascule bridge crossing the canal. It is sleek, modern, and truly is the centerpiece of the little Chesapeake hamlet. Unfortunately, this bridge came after the town, so no one feels right calling it "the Great Bridge." It is awkwardly known as "the Great Bridge Bridge." So, whenever the city needs to work on the bridge, the announcements say "Great Bridge Bridge Closed." On electronic highway marquees, it looks like the sign developed a stutter. So this little town, gloriously named for a civil engineering feat that had its own glorious history, now somewhat ingloriously refers to its landmark with a repetitive term that leaves my spell checker begging to delete the extraneous bridges.

Still has a sense of humor

I typed "The Men Who Stare at Goats" into Google. Google then proceeded to read my mind and pulled up reviews for the film, which is exactly what I was looking for. At the bottom of the screen, just above the search bar and in clear view, was the following statement:

The selection and placement of reviews on this page were determined automatically by a computer program. No movie critics were harmed or even used in the making of this page.

That is the Google that, if Google so chose, could issue the command "jump" and we would all watch helplessly as our computers leapt from our desks and tumbled to the ground. The same Google with a net worth bigger than the GDPs of 138 of the world's nations. I love that they can still have a sense of humor.

Everything is so dramatic

It seems that every nation has its dramatic phase.

We went through our own teenage the-world-is-out-to-get-us phase back in the 1700s. Only a misunderstood teenager would wax poetic in a revolutionary document and change "property" to "the pursuit of happiness." Our parents back in England proposed a curfew of sorts and we got ourselves legally emancipated. Happens all the time.

France went through the same thing a decade later. Except they chose the nice-neighborhood-kid-who-is-actually-a-serial-killer avenue. Whatever works. I'm not here to judge.

And of course our own revolution was borne out of a centuries-long selfish stage in which all the colonial powers grabbed as much land as they could despite the glaring fact that the enterprise was economically and logistically unsustainable.

In the 1800s most of the colonial empires dissolved as colonies chafed under imperial rule and wanted to strike out on their own. Unfortunately, most of the colonies rebelled against their parents before graduating high school and now are stuck in a minimum-wage, third-world McDonald's type of existence.

Argentina hit its teenage years in the early 1900s and never really grew up.

The Bolsheviks eventually got what every impudent teenager needs...a swift kick in the pants and some strict discipline.

The Pacific side of WWII was precipitated by a Japanese tantrum, who, like many teenagers, had a false sense of immortality and moral correctness.

India's hunger strikes were going to bed without dinner taken to the extreme.

Tiananmen Square? You have one teenager standing in the street playing chicken with a tank driven by another teenager. Take that and multiply it by a billion to get China's little dramatic phase.

And now we have Venezuela, Iran and North Korea, who have the advantage of global media in their efforts to hurl childish taunts to their bigger neighbors. I know you are, but what am I?

The latest example is Afghanistan. The UN-sponsored election review found that Karzai's election commissioners were stuffing the ballot box. The UN interceded to ensure a runoff would be required. We spent untold millions and gave American and allied lives to get a fair runoff for the nation. But Karzai's challenger, Mr. Abdullah Abdullah (so nice, they named him twice!), with a flair for the dramatic, decided to boycott the runoff, effectively handing the presidency to Karzai and abrogating all the efforts expended on Abdullah's behalf. Dude, you don't quit in the middle of a pivotal election because you think its unfair. We know its unfair. The world knows its unfair. What are you proving by pouting?

http://www.cnn.com/2009/WORLD/asiapcf/11/02/afghanistan.election.runoff/index.html?eref=igoogle_cnn

Stupid teenagers. In another century or so, we should be done with all these dramatic countries. In the Future of the World (According to Bryan), the world is full of nations that have grown past their teenage years and have settled into a jaded and cynical middle age where no one really gets excited about anything anymore. We will all get along, more or less, in a perpetual state of mutual skepticism and global apathy.

A Crappy Way to Begin the Week

As I write this, a certain odor of indescribable severity and unyielding presence is punctuating every olfactory nerve in my body. I feel it seeping into my pores and burrowing deep through several dermal layers. I am now thoroughly imbued with it. Its invasive presence begs the same creepy feeling that accompanies a stray ant running up your leg. My office is inundated with sewage, and I am the lone survivor.

I sit at my desk and wonder how long I will last. My open window provides minimal relief. The smell falls over me like the gentle ripples of an ebb tide. The thermometer reads 62 degrees. My shivering feet are making a gentle squish-squish-squish sound as they chatter against the swollen carpet.

A broken sewer line is a bad thing. A broken sewer line with 100 Marines above you flushing and showering all weekend, oblivious to the tidal wave of shit on the first floor makes a bad thing even worse. We know very little about what happened. We know that at 1400 yesterday is was dry. We know that at 2000 a Marine noticed a growing puddle coming out of the first floor female restroom. We know that this dumbass decided not to call anybody.

The carpet is gone in most of my office, exposing the asbestos floor tile underneath. Ironically, the sewage has thoroughly wetted the tile, eliminating any danger the asbestos could cause. I learned that my office used to be part of a bathroom at some point. And now it has returned to its roots. There hasn't been this much crap on the floor in here in thirty years. It may be presumptuous of me to make that determination. I have no idea what the previous owners did in here. There are accidents.

My window has a thick layer of condensation on it. I figure that moisture is vaporized shit. I breathe much less frequently now. It means less oxygen, but it also means less fecal matter in my lungs. My environmental guy, the guy who has several dozen snakes in his living room, checked out of here as soon as he saw the mess. He said he needed to change his clothes. He is a rather large guy, and he probably had a firsthand account to the worst things that have gone down our sewer. He wasn't playing.

It is hard to work when you can glance out into the hall and see bits of toilet paper on the ground. Such a thing is disconcerting. Alone in a cold building that smells like crap sitting in an office that even the fat snake guy couldn't stand.

Maybe Tuesday will be better.

Right-Click-Drag!

Today is a good day.

Not five minutes ago, I discovered that I can highlight text and then hold down the right mouse button to drag it elsewhere in the document.

Holy crap.

After using a computer for hours per day for about a decade and a half, this shortcut never was made known to me. I am immensely proud of this accomplishment. After all, it isn't every day you learn something this earth-shaking.

But I am hesitant to report it in a broader medium (i.e., a Facebook status update), because I have this sinking feeling that everyone already knows about it. Kinda like Alt+Tab. No one really talks about it, but everyone knows what it is.

So here I am, in the aftermath of my world-changing discovery, and instead of celebrating the achievement with, I don't know, a Coke Zero or something, I'm trying to figure out, with the years of personal contact I have shared with various mice over the past generation, why I hadn't stumbled upon this earlier.

Today is no longer a good day.

The Road to Nobel is Paved (only) With Good Intentions

No one is perfect. I know that. But rarely has a group of highly educated people gooned it so badly. I guess it isn't entirely their fault (they are, after all, Norwegian). But I am holding them accountable for giving Obama a Nobel Peace Prize eight months after he was elected President.

Let's look at the timeline:

September 2008 - Solicitation for nominations published.
November 2008 - Obama elected.
January 2009 - Obama inaugurated.
February 2009 - Nominations due.
October 2009 - Obama given the Nobel Peace Prize.

Similarly, let's look at the timeline for the Nobel Physics winner Charles K. Kao:

1965 - Invent fiber optic communication.
(four decades of exponentially enhanced communications based on said fiber)
2009 - Kao awarded half the Physics Prize.

So guys, what's up? To win the Physics Prize you practically have to reinvent an entire branch of science and then wait several decades. To win the Peace Prize, however, it appears you have to give a couple nice speeches and make some promises. And this can be done after your nomination has been submitted.

What has Obama accomplished? Any revolutionary change in the world in the last eight months? Iraq--no. Afghanistan--maybe worse. Israel--no. Pakistan--no. Gaza--no. South America--no. Haiti--no. Sudan--no. Ethiopia--no.

Obama, in the next 3/7 years, may do something Nobel-worthy. But not now. I haven't been this ticked at Norway since Al Gore won this award in 2007. Or Carter in 2002. What is with the love affair with American Democrats? I'm sure Bill Clinton isn't taking this well. And he's the one who, above the others, might actually deserve it.

Whatever. I'm going home.

Uncut

I know there were typos in that last post. The iPhone is fiendishly
difficult when it comes to precision pointing and text correction. So
screw it. The errors are me. You've got Bryan. Raw. Uncut.

How lucky for you.

Sent from my iPhone.

Conditioning

When we're young, we are inundated with new information all the time.
In a monumental effort to keep up, our minds hurriedly assign
relationships to objects for later recall. I am not a neuroscientist,
but I think it works exactly like taggig pictures in Facebook. Most of
the time it works well, but it can go horribly wrong, like tagging you
schnauzer as your Aunt Margaret.

For instance, when I was young I associated Cobb salad with corn. I am
certain this is becaus of the corn on the cob link, and I suspect my
dad lent some positive reinforcement to the mental mixup. He does
things like that.

So now every time I think Cobb salad I see lettuce, chicken and corn.
And every time I get a Cobb salad without corn (which happens to be
every...damn...time) I am a little disappointed. Which is a shame.
Cobb salads are delicious.

I want to be an author, but everyone else already did it

Every now and then, when I am in one of my less lucid and thus more
fantasy-prone states of mind (non-substance related, I assure you) I
get the urge to write a book. I get excited and determined about it,
then I fall asleep. I think it is a cruel irony that I am most
ambitious right before I doze off. C'est la vie. Or however you spell
that.

These delusions remain, albeit in a faded state, for a little while,
generally until I read something that I know I could never match in
quality. Occasionally, these diluted delusions (ha!) are killed by
hearing about people who use their celebrity to dabble in the creative
arts, thereby selling more copies in a day than I could give away in a
lifetime.

On The Today Show, the Mannings (all the football ones) showcased
their new children's book, "Family Huddle." It is a relief to know if
the quarterback thing doesn't pan out, at least they still have their
literary pursuits.

The Navy Launches a Denial-of-Service Attack on Itself

I am currently suffering through a textbook example of what happens when idiots are faced with spam. In my case, every individual in the US Navy with a last name of Berrios - Dieter was emailed that dumb "Bill Gates will pay you for forwarding this!" scam. This particular email has been in circulation since 2004, and is carrying with it a history of email addresses so long that the message body itself is 9 MB in size.

Understandably, we all feel ticked off and harassed for having to put up with this email. Incredibly, people feel the need to "Reply All" and to tell everyone else how ticked off and harassed they are. INFURIATINGLY, they keep the original message in the reply so that I now have twenty 9 MB emails trying to squeeze through my already taxed email server. We are launching a denial-of-service attack on ourselves. I'm sure the Chinese couldn't be prouder.

I have deleted most of them, but being that I can't do much else while this is going on, I figured I would share some of these thoughtful insights that employees of the world's most powerful Navy deemed important enough to share:

"So now I have to hear from each one of you that this is a scam?!?!?!?!? Just STOP, delete it and let it be!!!!!!! You are wasting valuable DoD time!!!!"

"Stop this, it overloads Outlook."

"All, Do not respond the this hoax email! Maybe the sender should do some research before they send a mass email such as this. This is a hoax!! Read the following at: http://www.snopes.com/inboxer/nothing/microsoft-aol.asp or http://www.hoax-slayer.com/ms-money-giveway-hoax.html and many others, if they would do some research. Also, sending mass emails, such as this, is a violation of the NMCI user agreement."

"PLEASE stop hitting "reply to all." You're clogging up the system more than the original garbage did. Thanks in advance."

"This is bogus. I remember getting this same junk email about two or three years ago. I don't believe it has resurfaced."

"ALL, Please do NOT act on the email sent to you. This is TOTALLY fake, hoax, scam, urban legend. Please read the following from Snopes = http://www.snopes.com/inboxer/nothing/microsoft-aol.asp. All you've done is spread spam email...which is one of the goals of the originator who came up with the hoax."

"Remove me from this list. Don't resend. NMCI notified. "

"DO NOT NOT NOT NOT NOT SEND THIS TO ME. You people have clogged up my email several times now. I've reported this to NMCI. Take me OFF this list. Thanks"

"Whoever has me on their distro list take me off now. I am tired of my inbox filling up with this crap. Last time I checked mass spamming is not authorized. Quit hitting reply to all..... "

"Do NOT reply to all on this list. This email is bogus and if this continues, action will be taken."

Note that most of these individuals came to the prescient conclusion that Replying All was in fact causing the majority of our ills, but that conclusion could not in itself prevent them from also clicking on Reply All.

It is worthwhile to note that some of the individuals making these replies are in positions of considerable influence, and these individuals, who couldn't muster the mental fortitude required to think through the consequences of a single email action, most definitely have a hand in the expenditure of millions of taxpayer dollars and responsible for the welfare of our Sailors.

It cooks...and cleans?!

I watched my oven clean itself for the first time on Saturday. It was amazing. In an hour, every bit of dripped cheese and every crumb of unknown and suspect origin was reduced to a tidy pile of ashes. I am still beside myself. As a closet-OCD guy with no love for cleaning, automated help is greatly appreciated. I have a Roomba. I use Tilex religiously. I employ various methods for cleaning toilets without actually touching them.

But I admit I was initially skeptical of this self-cleaning feature, which explains why it went unused for this long. I knew that as soon as I pressed the "Clean" button, the oven would lock me out, as if it were saying, "Nah, bro, I got this." This to me is an attitude unbecoming of a kitchen appliance. The first fifteen minutes were hard, but once I glimpsed the near-Hades being recreated in my kitchen and watched the cheese drippings incinerated into itty bitty cheese constituents, I had a better time of letting go.

Now I am convinced of the oven's lofty perch high above the lesser appliances. When was the last time you helped me out, stove? And don't get me started, microwave. No matter how the power setting, you still manage to spew tomato sauce everywhere. Every appliance should have a clean-by-vaporization option. Anything less is more work for me.

Cruise Chronicles: Alaska Edition - Seattle

Seattle is a nice town. Especially in the early summer months when the highs are in the seventies and it isn't raining. I imagine that the place isn't quite as pleasant during those winter rains the Emerald City is famous for. Anyway, here are some basic observations.

The Space Needle is overrated. There are taller skyscrapers in downtown and a lot of the the northern hills are higher than it. Totally not worth twenty bucks to ride an elevator to the top. It does, however, make a good backdrop for pictures. And those are free.

The guys who throw fish are awesome.

Pike Place is like the New Orleans French Market, only twenty degrees cooler.

The gum wall is hyped up a lot, but at the end of the day it is a collection of sticky misdemeanors. It is kind of hidden, so you feel like you've accomplished something when you find it.

Town car drivers cut travel times in half.

The Mediterranean Inn is a fantastic place to stay. A great roof top view and a Starbucks off the lobby.

For the birthplace of Starbucks, there aren't as many as you'd think.

Queen Anne has a Bohemian feel without the druggies and other negative aspects. Perfect for good eats without the uncomfortable walk.

Mount Rainier is a big volcano.

This is my first attempt at blogging on my iPhone, so please forgive any spelling errors which I am sure are numerous and annoying. 

Sent from my iPhone. 

Life's Lessons

I went to Walmart today, because Leslie is coming home tomorrow and I wanted have the pantry stocked (with my food) when she got home. I spent all morning cleaning the house. I vacuumed (well, Roomba vacuumed), I Swiffed and Windexed the floors, I cleaned the bathrooms, and I changed the linens. I was pretty darn proud of myself.

After I loaded the groceries in the car I stopped by Tropical Smoothie on the way home, the intent being that if I had a smoothie now I wouldn't be tempted later by a burger or something else laced with lipids and salt. I picked up a Blue Lagoon, unable to resist the delicious mix of blueberries, strawberries and banana.

When I got home, I quickly got inside with the smoothie and my library books. The smoothie was already quickly transitioning to the liquid phase, so I stuck it in the freezer door while I unloaded the car. This will be important later.

I brought in the dozen or so bags of food and quickly sorted out the freezer items. Desperate to get the lasagna and chicken strips (Leslie will be so pleased) into the freezer, I whipped open the door and watched 22 ounces of minced fruit fall swiftly to the ground below. The result was catastrophic. I went through the stages of grief in a record fifteen seconds. I couldn't believe it at first, and then quickly became agitated at the $4.74 that lay on the ground before me. I tried to scoop it up, trying to save it. When I saw the blue streaks on my walls I vomited a little in my mouth, and slumped into the only clean corner in the kitchen, where my silhouette was clearly visible, my body having shielded at least a portion of the wall. After two quick tears, I grabbed the six-pack of paper towels I just purchased (Scott, pick-a-size quilter) and got to work.

Having been inspired recently by Obama's ability to turn anything into a lesson, sort of like life gives you lemons, make a racial relations team-building exercise, I took inventory of everything I could learn from this event. The list is quite extensive, as it took me a very long time to clean up the mess. Here is that list. It has been formatted to fit your screen and edited to run in the time allotted.

I have learned:

1. That freezer doors are useless places for storage.

2. That a falling body, beginning from a height of four feet with an initial vertical velocity of zero, assuming negligible air resistance and a sea-level acceleration due to gravity of thirty-two-point-two feet per second squared, will reach a final velocity of ten-point-nine miles per hour when it reaches the floor.

3. That ten-point-nine miles per hour is more than enough to destroy a Styrofoam cup.

4. The plastic lids on Tropical Smoothie cups will blow out before they separate from the cup.

5. Tropical Smoothie cups will rupture in multiple locations if given the opportunity.

6. That as a rule, splatter can travel up to three times the height of the initial fall.

7. Blueberry juice stains everything.

8. That for some inexplicable reason, the floor slopes down underneath my refrigerator.

9. That I should clean under the refrigerator more often.

10. That the idiom, "clean enough to eat off," should be literally applied only in the cleanest applications, and never with a liquid.

11. That the floor was not as clean as I thought it was.

12. Blueberries and strawberries have a lot of seeds.

13. These seeds are a pain in the ass to pick up.

14. Blueberry juice rivals industrial adhesives in stickiness.

15. That our cat Mimi has a new reason to lick my feet.

16. That the sticky floors feeling is the worst feeling in the world.

17. That it takes ten rinse-soap-rinse iterations before this feeling goes away.

18. Quilted paper towels really do hold more liquid.

19. That wood laminate floors covered in Dawn dish detergent are slippery.

20. That the limits of my flexibility are now painfully defined.

21. That some categories of groin pulls don't really hurt until two hours after.

22. That I am definitely eating something high in lipids and mercifully solid tonight.

Cruise Chronicles: Alaska Edition - Lost Luggage

I lost luggage for the first time in my life in Seattle.

Having arrived almost an hour and a half late to Seattle and already dealing with the several voice mails left by my town car driver (oh yes, we ride in style) that were recorded in a manner that was either anxious or annoyed--I had not met the guy, so I couldn't tell the difference--we learned that our luggage had not made the trip with us. Well, not so much as learned as came to the conclusion after watching the carousel in hopeful anticipation for twenty minutes solid as it interminably orbited in a lazy elliptical.

Waiting for baggage is like waiting to be picked for kickball in PE. You know you won't be first, but you hope to God you're not last. Sadly, our luggage never appeared. Like the odd kid leftover who got to be umpire, which in kickball is as useful as the life vest under your airplane seat.

This baggage carousel was the first one I have ever seen with a chute from an upper level. I've dreamt about seeing one (and riding one) ever since I watched the Chipmunks' balloon adventure. You know what I'm talking about. Near the end while they were running from Claude and went down that baggage chute like a slide on a playground.

The Southwest baggage claim lady in Seattle was abnormally chipper for what I guess must be a pretty crappy job. She took down our claim information and reassured us that it was actually better that both our luggage was missing. It was more likely to turn up. This made us feel a little better, as I had absolutely no change of clothes, much to Leslie's enjoyment, though her single change of clothes would fare no better on a seven-day cruise. Never before in my travels had luggage been so vital.

Perky Southwest Baggage Lady took down our hotel information, marveling at the fact that I could recite the address of the Mediterranean Inn from memory. If she knew what kind of planning went into this trip she would have been less impressed. But as it was, she did not yet know (but she probably suspected--everyone does) that I was an OCD freak, and her amazement made me feel better. An noteworthy achievement, considering my current deficit of clean underwear and toothpaste.

But Perky Southwest Baggage Lady promised our luggage would arrive by the next morning, so we left to find our anxious/annoyed town car driver. After one false start (I jumped into the back of the wrong town car), we found our guy and made the forty-five minute trip to the hotel in a little less than half an hour. The driver obviously knew a route or speed limit exception of which Google is unaware. Useful travel tip: When traveling in groups of 2-4, take a town car from the airport. It is the same price as a cab, and normally less than those airport shuttles, which make ten stops and often smell of a cocktail of bodily effluents.

True to Perky's word, our luggage arrived promptly at 2:00 am. The front desk clerk, who probably was having a slow night, this being the hipster section of Seattle, where everyone pretended to be bohemian but turned in by 10 pm so they could wake up early, grab their Starbucks and head to their mid-level job at a financial firm in downtown, happily woke me up. After he chatted briefly about something Seattle-related, he released my luggage to me (dutifully checking my name, as if someone else would be looking for luggage at that hour). Satisfied that the luggage survived its ordeal in Las Vegas, I went back to bed and dreamt of luggage chutes.

Cruise Chronicles: Alaska Edition - Las Vegas Airport

As the saying goes, "Whatever happens in Vegas, stays in Vegas." The fine folks at Las Vegas International Airport, true to their motto, make damned well sure nothing ever leaves Las Vegas, at least not by air.

Seasoned air traveler that I am, I consider myself very tolerant of airports. I don't mind walking to gates, I actually enjoy moving sidewalks and underground trams, and I am adept at airport dining. For instance, I love Atlanta's airport. For the amount of people going through that city, that airport works exceedingly well.

Las Vegas is no Atlanta. The population in the terminal consisted equally of downtrodden, newly poor people, the overexcited elderly, and ladies of the evening, or at least women who dressed like it. And not the "Pretty Woman" type ladies of the evening. The ones that are walking Petri dishes of venereal disease that you would much rather prefer were in the next county rather than brushing up against your exposed elbow.

And there were a lot of people. Not only was every seat taken, but every bit of wall space that offered a modicum of comfort was claimed. People were sitting on the ground leaning against trash cans. Other people, like Leslie and I, who preferred not to sit by the trash can where the non-Pretty Woman prostitutes just spit out her hepatitis gum, kept walking around the terminal. We were like a school of fish in a much-too-small aquarium. Just doing laps to keep from suffocating.

We eventually found a small "bar" in the corner of the terminal that didn't allow children. This eliminated most of the downtrodden people, who, in addition to being newly poor, were blessed with many, many children. Because nothing says family vacation like Vegas. At the bar, we had one beer, one bloody Mary, and two shrink-wrapped sandwiches. $44. It turned out to be the most expensive meal of our vacation. And it wasn't just the bar. The Subway around the corner was charging $1/inch.

After a delay of an hour and a half and a gate change that would cause our luggage to miss the flight, we left the Las Vegas airport, and we never plan on returning.

Cruise Chronicles: Alaska Edition - Kids on a Plane

On the previous cruises we've taken we have enjoyed the luxury of sailing from a port close to our home. This is obviously the most optimal, as you drop a surprising amount of cash on transportation costs trying to get to a cruise ship elsewhere. Unfortunately, there are no Norfolk-to-Alaska cruises, so we reluctantly had to fly this time.

I've been spoiled over the past couple years by government travel. Before our cruise I only flew on Mondays and Fridays when the planes are full of business travelers. Planes full of people who knew exactly how to get through security, who lived by carry-on limitations, and were, most importantly, quiet companions.

We flew to Seattle on a Wednesday aboard Southwest, or, as I've come to know it, the Every Man's Airline. There are no class distinctions in Southwest, are there? Seating is first-come, first-served. You don't get more American than that. Of the 137 seats available, at least 80 were filled with 60 pounds of raw human energy in small packages. These kids were crazy, and their parents, obviously beaten down by years of juvenile oppression, bore little resistance. Now, we are by no means anti-children. We are just anti-bad parents. For four hours and forty-five minutes, we suffered through this maelstrom of kicked seats, inane non-inside voice screams, and marathon aisle-running. Our favorite moment, by far, was sitting at the Las Vegas airport gate waiting to deplane when the girl in front of us took great interest in the baggage handlers.

Girl: Is that our green suitcase?
Mom: Let me see. No.
Girl: Is that our green suitcase?
Mom: Is it? No.
Girl: Is that our green suitcase?
Mom: Maybe...no.
Girl: Is that our green suitcase?
Mom: <silent>
Girl: Is that our green suitcase?
Mom: <still distracted>
Girl: Is that our green suitcase?
Mom: Wait, let me look. No.
Girl: Oh.
Girl: Is that our green suitcase?
Mom: No.

You get the idea.

It's Peanut Butter Jelly Time

When it comes to sandwiches, PBJ is about as good as it gets, and I'll tell you why: homogeneity.

Sure, there are a lot of flashy sandwiches out there. Clubs. Reubens. BLTs. But with all of them, it is the same story. Lots of good ingredients, lots of textures, but only a couple really good bites (if you're lucky) with all of them together. At the fringes of the sandwich, you're left with just lettuce, or a stray piece of bacon, between two slices of bread. That is not a sandwich. No sir.

PBJ is designed to get the flavor to the very crust of the bread. You control the ratios exactly. A tad less jelly? Do it! Maybe a scoche more peanut butter. Do it! You control it. None of this one-slice, two-slice crap. Precisely the right amount of peanut butter and jelly across the entire face of the sandwich.

Runners up include your salad sandwiches (tuna, chicken salad, egg salad) and grilled cheese, which deserves recognition for its attempt to spread out the cheese to the corners of the sandwich, but falls short in portion control.

In case you couldn't tell, I'm looking forward to lunch.