I’ve been a traveling mofo the last couple of weeks and I’ve been remiss in posting my View From Here pix, so here’s a whole bunch of them all at once.

First I was in Dayton, Ohio. My favorite part about Dayton was the Hooters restaurant you can see in the view from my room. Unfortunately, I never got to enjoy the waitresses wings there — instead, I had wings at Frickers, which were pretty frickin’ good.

Then I drove an hour south to Cincinnati where I had neither wings nor Hooters, but I did go see Miami Vice while I was there — and slept through half of it.

I came home for the weekend, then turned right back around and spent one day in Phoenix. Phoenix offered me only the hot, not the wings, so their equation of finger food excellence was seriously flawed.

Finally, I jetted off to Dallas to stay at my favorite Hampton Inn hotel in Richardson. I’ve been here twice before; it’s notable for me being the creepy lurking photographer of bikini-clad blonde poolside hotties. This time I’m looking directly down at the pool, which is sadly hottie free this trip.

I get to come home tomorrow — assuming, of course, that I can fight my way through the massive clot of stupidity that the air travel industry has become in the last two days. It’s going to be wall-to-wall idiocy as minimum-wage TSA employees — with absolutely no manners, brains, or common sense, and only the most rudimentary command of the spoken word — will try to interpret and “enforce” a collection of “security measures” that will keep no-one safe and serve only to inconvenience everyone and bring smiles to the faces of the “terrorists” who enjoy making us jump through stupid hoops. It’s important that we all be forced to throw away our deodorant and sunscreen before boarding a flight — the planes must be kept safe from the threat of passengers who don’t stink and have nice suntans.

I’m reminded of a comedian who joked that one terrorist bet another that “I bet I can make them all take their shoes off” and then paid a mental defective to try to light his shoes on fire while on a plane. And now here we are a few years later, all of us taking our shoes off as we go through “security screening” for absolutely no good reason. Pretty soon, they’re going to restrict travel so much that they’re going to ban passengers on the planes — maybe then we’ll be “safe.” Or maybe all the unscreened mail and shipping cargo sitting in the belly of the plane will finally get some attention.

But I’ll just keep my feelings about the TSA to myself. I don’t really have all that much experience with them, after all…

Greetings from what’s shaping up to be my Colorado home-away-from-home: Room 204 of the Longmont, CO Hampton Inn. This is my third time here, and my second time in this room. I was here in November and then again in February, and it was snowy and cold both those times. This time it’s 95 outside and more like L.A. than Colorado. I think I prefer the cold. Maybe next time…

Here’s the non-snow room:

And here’s the non-snow view:

And now… I’m off to share a “It’s a small world” moment with my dad. He lives in the southern part of Colorado near Durango — about 5 hours from here — and he’s been in the hospital down there recovering from pneumonia. He called me out of the blue last night to let me know that he’s been released to a convalescent home and to let me know that he’s not down there anymore; he’s moved up to Fort Collins to be near his daughters/my half sisters. And Fort Collins is about 30 miles away from Longmont! Small world. So I’m off to visit him and the girls tonight.

Greetings from Room 333 of the Hampton Inn Pickering, just outside Columbus, in beautiful Pickerington, Ohio. There isn’t really much to say about Pickerington, or even Ohio, for that matter — I’m just here and I have to get used to it. But I get to go home tomorrow, so I’ve got that going for me.

Thus far my trip has been most notable for my shame at watching tonight (and now reporting it here) America’s Got Talent, hosted by the estimable Regis Philbin. And in the background I’m listening to the “reporters” at Fox “News” jizzing all over themselves with the wet dream that Syria will unleash a hellfire of “weapons of mass destruction” on Israel over the conflict in Lebanon, so clearly my TV viewing choice-making apparatus is completely FUBAR right now. It must be something in the local water supply — that would certainly explain the 2004 election results here.

Anyway, here’s the view:

…and here’s the room:

And just for fun, here’s a picture of Zoe’s (newest) kitten Ebi:

And here’s me changing the TV channel to something with a little more intelligence to it: HBO and The 40 Year Old Virgin.

Greetings from Plano, Texas. I’ve been here three or four times in the last two months, training at clients that are all located within about 3 square miles of each other. I usually call it Dallas, but this time I’m keeping in real and calling it what it is: Plano. Texas.

Warning: this entry is going to be a bitchfest. More so than the usual entries are, I mean, so be advised.

This trip started out badly and has not improved at all at any step of the way. Virtually everything that can go wrong has gone wrong every step of the way, even stuff I never could have predicted.

First, I had to conduct this training on Monday/Tuesday, which meant travelling on Sunday. Which meant I missed going on a HOG ride I was planning to go on, which I was not a happy camper about.

Then, I had to fly on US Air/America West. I hate America West. HATE them. Every time I fly that piece of shit airline, something goes wrong — either a missed connection or a cancelled flight or a late departure/arrival, you name it. This time was no exception.

When I purchased my tickets online, I made sure to request aisle seats. So of course when I checked in at the airport, they had me in middle seats on both flights. I waited until most of the plane had boarded for them to miraculously find an aisle seat for me, which of course meant that when I finally made it to the aircraft, there was no more overhead space left and I had to check my bag. Amazingly, they didn’t lose it. I was sure they would.

Connecting through Phoenix, the flight was delayed. Of course. And of course it was delayed with us all on board. We sat there at the gate for nearly an hour, baking in the summer desert sun, with the air conditioning turned off. Which meant that when we finally got to Dallas, it was nearly midnight.

Checking into my hotel, I found that my reservation for a room with a king bed had somehow turned into a room with two double beds. I raised a stink about that, got my king-size bed, and then found that the in-room internet wasn’t working. Of course. I still had some prep work to do online for my class the next day, so I had to use the business center computer at 1:30 a.m.

Getting to the client site today, I discovered that their A/C was broken. Really broken. Not broken as in “Sorry, we can’t blow any cold air for you,” no, it was broken as in “We can only blow hot air and we can’t turn it off.” So in the 95 degree Dallas heat, I was training in a conference room where the heater was blasting and you had to go outside to cool off. And of course this was the one trip where I forgot to pack an undershirt, so I spent the day sweating through my dress shirt. Lovely.

And at a business across the street from us, a woman was shot in the head in the parking lot at lunch. It didn’t have any impact on me or my time here, but it certainly didn’t help to know that this had happened just 50 yards away while I was running my mouth and sweating.

Now I’m back in my room and the internet is working again — for the moment — but now I find that I can’t log in to my company’s website to set some things up for class tomorrow. So I’m going to have to shuffle and dance in the morning and try to train these people on my company’s software without actually using the software if our developers don’t get it back up and running by tomorrow morning.

God, I love my job sometimes. And travelling. And Texas.

Here’s the room:

And here’s the view:

And just fyi, when I tried to actually post this entry, the fucking internet connection in my piece-of-shit hotel room was down a-fucking-gain.

I can’t wait to get back home.

Greetings from room 316 of the Braden/Tampa Hampton Inn.

Ya know, there’s a series of commercials for the Hampton Inn chain that’s getting a lot of airplay lately — the “Bedheads” campaign (cast with an annoying collection of perky 20-somethings). They’re playing up how comfortable the bedding is at the Hampton Inn; how great the feather pillows and down comforters are. Well, I’m here to tell you: they are great. The pillows, that is. I don’t really care about the comforter (but it is quite nice — much nicer than your standard skanky polyester motel bedspread), but I do like me some Hampton Inn pillows. Every time I’m packing up at the end of a trip, I’m tempted to stick one in my suitcase. So in this case, go ahead and believe the Bedheads hype.

This particular hotel, however, apparently hasn’t gotten the Bedhead memo. Here we have the skanky polyester bedspread and weird synthetic blend pillows from the pre-Bedhead days. Sleepytime won’t be the glorious experience it normally is. Sigh…

Anyway, here’s the room…

And here’s the view…

Greetings from Room 206 of the Rodeway Inn in Revere, MA. It’s just outside Logan Airport in Boston, so we’ll just call it Boston, shall we?

I’m here because I screwed up my flight reservations in and out of Manchester. I had originally booked travel on Orbitz in and out of the Manchester airport, with a Friday night departure, but I somehow skipped the “confirm reservations” step of the process, which meant that when I final-checked my itinerary just a few days before leaving, I realized that in fact I had no tickets. At all.

Problem.

So I had to book the cheapest flight I could find, which meant flying in and out of Boston and driving to/from Manchester. And it also meant flying out Saturday morning, rather than Friday night. So I’m staying in the cheapest hotel I could find near the airport and, well, you get what you pay for.

Dinner tonight was a can of honey-roasted peanuts and a Diet Pepsi because I turned in my rental car already and the only thing even resembling a restaurant near my hotel is a liquor store two blocks away, where all they sell is soda, beer, wine, champagne, hard liquors, and honey-roasted peanuts. When I was checking out, the 20-something hottie check-out girl cracked a joke about me having a slow Friday night. My snappy comeback was … nothing. What could I say? She nailed it.

Here’s the room:

And here’s the view:

And here’s me resolving to stay in a real hotel on my next trip. These last two places have shown me that I’m a spoiled business traveler — I have certain expectations that a cheapo tourist joint can’t meet. You get what you pay for.

Greetings from Room 122 of the Quality Inn in Manchester, NH. It’s actually in Bedford, which for some reason reminds me of the Rosanne show (set in Lanford, I think), but the client is in Manchester, so there you go. And here I am.

I’ve been here before, actually. In Manchester that is, not Bedford. Only it was actually a little town called Bow last time, but the client was in Manchester, so there you go. And there I was. The client I was here to help last time was one of the minions in the ClearChannel radio army, and their offices are just down the block from the client this time around. I thought about dropping in to say “hi” and catch up on old times, but then I didn’t because I’m antisocial like that.

One of the jocks at the radio station last time around hooked me up with tickets to see a Journey/Styx/REO Speedwagon show, which means that I had a better time last time I was here. This time around the high point was when I tried to go see Superman at the movie theater in the mall next door to my hotel and it was closed because their electrical transformer had been struck by lighting. Whee. And don’t even get me started on the “quality” of this hotel. Let’s just say that when a hotel uses the word “quality” in their name — like this one, the “Quality” Inn — they’re probably overcompensating for something.

Anyway, you’re dying to see what it’s like here, aren’t you? Sure you are.

Here’s the room:

And here’s the view:

Whee.

I’m back in Texas again and I couldn’t be happier. No, really. Seriously. Stop laughing, I mean it. Look, like the song says, God blessed Texas. The song doesn’t mention that it was because Texas needed the help, but let’s not go there right now. Let’s just focus on the fact that I’m back in Dallas, which misspells “salad” backward, which is how the locals probably spell salad anyway when they’re not sucking their teeth and talking about Nascar.

Anyway. Happy thoughts.

I’m actually in Richardson, which is just outside of Dallas. Interestingly (not really), I’m staying at the same hotel I stayed at the last time I was here, just last month. I actually posted two entries from here last time, the standard View From Here entry, and a creepy- guy-behind- the-drawn-curtains- with-a-camera entry, where I took furtive photos of people laying out by the pool outside my room. Richardson is fun like that (not really).

I was in room 232 last time, with the winning view overlooking the pool and all its inhabitants. This time I’m two doors down and across the hall in room 235, with a fabulous view out the other side of the building looking out over a parking lot and some railroad tracks. There’s no semi-hot bikini clad babes over here, but there’s also no hairy men with their shorts hiked up into the cracks of their asses, so I’ll call it even. Here’s the view:

And here’s the room:

And now here’s me returning to the nightlife of Richardson. Next up: something on TBS, probably Full House.

Greetings from the “Horse Capital of the World,” aka Lexington, Kentucky. The hotel brochure claims that we are “in the heart of Kentucky Bluegrass Country” and who am I to argue? It’s pretty so far — very green (but not so much blue, actually), white fences, even a few horses. And Waffle Houses for days, which you know is always a plus. I think I’ll stay until Thursday.

I’m staying at yet another Hampton Inn (gotta keep racking up those Hilton HHonors points — this trip should put me over the top into “Gold” status), where the view may change the rooms really never do. Here’s the view from Room 513:

Notice the signage popping up over the roof of the neighboring Ramada Inn looming just six inches outside my window. Why, it’s a Waffle House! Within walking distance! Cue the angel music.

And here, enjoy the room too:

Remarkably similar to the Room in Atlanta … and Erie … and Hunt Valley … and … well, you get it. They all look the same, they start to blend, don’t they? But at least it’s not Motel 6. Their views really suck.

I’m back in the birthplace of Waffle House and Pappadeaux: Dallas, TX. Well, Richardson, TX actually, but who’s counting? And fine, okay, so Dallas/Richardson/Plano/whatever may not really be where Waffle House and Pappadeaux got started, but it’s where I first experienced these two fine examples of culinary excellence, so they’re what Dallas says to me.

Anyway.

So I’m here in Dallas. Just outside Dallas, in Richardson. Which is right next to Plano, where the client is and where I’m working, only my hotel is in Richardson. Which is a suburb of Dallas. Which is where I am, minus the long explanation. Land of Waffle House and Pappadeaux, as previously established.

Dinner last night was the ever-Waffle-icious Texas Cheesestake sandwich plate with the hash browns scattered, smothered, covered, and chunked at my favorite restaurant in the world, Waffle House. Tonight it’ll be crawfish etouffe at my other favorite restaurant in the world, Pappadeaux. Tomorrow will be hospital cottage cheese and jello after I’m admitted to the ER for completely clogged arteries and coronary disease. And cramping cheek muscles from a permanent ear-to-ear smile.

But for now, here’s the view:

Notice the young blonde hottie sunbathing by the pool. I felt like a total perv, taking her picture all surreptitious-like. But if I’m going to be honest, I guess I have to admit that taking 65 pictures was excessive. I’m kidding, it was only 64. But I should have stopped at 40. Everything past that was pervy.

…and here’s the room:

And now I’m off to either see a movie or buy a mask at Scuba Toys or shop for a Road King or … whatever.