Half-Life and Times

Dreaming about Rock Clubs

 

Photo by Hans Eiskonen on Unsplash

Labels: Life, Music, Travel

posted by Tony Plutonium @ 9:08 AM 0 comments

Customer Service - good and bad

I feel like I've spent my life working in Customer Service. Not only when we owned/ran a bar, but my whole life in IT support also qualifies, even if our contact with actual customers is sometimes limited. I very much appreciate our local restaurant culture and cringe both when I see bad customer service as well as when I see shitty customers that demand too much and that treat staff badly.

I had lots of opportunities to see all of that on my trip home from India - good customer service, bad customer service and boorish behavior by my fellow customers.

My itinerary for my return trip was an 8:45pm (IST) Saturday night flight from Chennai to Mumbai on Vistara Airlines (one of two full service airlines in India), a 2.5 hour-ish layover before a 12:55am Delta flight to JFK then a two-hour layover before my Delta flight home to RDU.

I know it takes a long time to get into the airport and I didn't have anything I wanted to try to do Saturday afternoon, so I arrived many hours early (around 3pm), hoping to check my bags, get through security, and then do a little shopping and hang out in the Priority Pass lounge. But Vistara would not let me check in until 6pm, leaving me hanging out in the departures lobby for three hours dragging around three bags. Bad customer service (I'm pretty sure that is not an airport or government regulation as I have checked in way early before on other airlines at the same airport.)

At 6pm IST on the dot, I went back to the counter only to find out the my flight was delayed by 1.5 hours, leaving me very little time to make my connection. The agent suggested that I not check my bags and that I carry them ALL onboard on the slim chance that I could make my flight. He also said he would inform the ground crew in Mumbai that I had a very tight connection and that they would help me get to the Delta gate. If you read my previous post about security, you'd know that even if the plane had been on time, I would have been hard-pressed to make it through, so while I appreciated the helpfulness, they really should have known that there was no chance in hell that I could make that connection.

I did drag all my bags through security and up to the Priority Pass lounge and noted that there was a further delay in the flight from Chennai, leaving me no more than half an hour for the connection, clearly impossible. So I called Delta from the lounge and sat on hold. And sat on hold. And sat on hold. And sat on hold. For 45 minutes. (This after having to search the web for a non-US tollfree number since those don't really work from India.)

When I finally did speak to an agent with Delta, she was actually very helpful. I had done some research while waiting on hold and noted a flight from Mumbai to DeGaulle in Paris with a 3.5 hour layover to the direct Paris flight to RDU. It was leaving Mumbai at 2:05 am (still tight) but maybe possible. So she got me booked on those flights since my next best option was the flight I was scheduled on - but 24 hours later.

So I finally boarded the Vistara flight, found room for three bags in the overheads (making enemies of every other person on board) and we took off close to 10:50 pm IST. We landed around 12:15 am and I grabbed my bag and my other bag and my other other bag and took off for the departures area and the Air France counter as the Paris flight was code-shared with Delta. The only promised help that I got from the Vistara agents in Mumbai was pointing me in the direction for transfers. Not all that helpful. It was probably 12:40pm when I got to the counter and they basically said no. Delta had booked me but not ticketed me (something about having already checked in to the Vistara flight) and while there was room, they determined that it was too late for me to make it (the flight wasn't scheduled to leave for another hour and 15 minutes and I still saw bags tagged for CDG waiting to go on the belt). So boo Air France (although if you read my post on airport security, they were probably right).

So now it's 1am IST, I'm exhausted, my cell phone is down to about 25% and my backup charger is dead and I can't find a fucking outlet anywhere in the airport. I called Delta back
and sat on hold. And sat on hold. And sat on hold. And sat on hold. For another 45 minutes. Finally got another also very nice and very helpful person who confirmed what I suspected - that I was fucked until 22 hours later and the next iteration of that Mumbai -> JFK flight that I'd missed.

So I was booked on those and was able to go to the self-service kiosk and actually print out real honest-to-god boarding passes for both flights, which helped tremendously with the security stuff (see my other post). App-based eboarding passes are still not a thing in India.

I did some looking for hotels (it's getting towards 3am by this time) and found that there is a hotel in the International terminal in Mumbai ("hey, that's where I am!") that had pretty good reviews. I called them, confirmed that they had rooms available, and then set out to find it. That's when I realized that I was not allowed to leave the damn Departures lounge without a hall pass. The first soldier didn't really speak English so I had to wait for the second guy, who sent me back up the escalator to the information desk.

I talked to the nice lady there and found out that someone from the hotel would have to come up and escort me. She called them and a bellman came up a few minutes later. He asked if I had a reservation, which I did not yet. Apparently that was bad, as he was supposed to show a piece of paper with my name on it and a reservation. So he pulled one from someone else out of his pocket, scratched out the other information and put mine in, and away we went. And it worked.

So I checked into the hotel around 3:15am with a checkout at 10pm. Very nice looking place. Also, as you'd expect, quite expensive - ~$150 US (really nice hotel rooms in India are often no more that $70-80 a night). But it was there (no having to deal with transportation) and I was too damn tired to worry about the cost.

So I had a shower, slept for a few hours, had a very decent room-service veg biryani (no beer as the hotel apparently isn't licensed) and hung out in the room as basically there was nowhere I could go without going back past a security checkpoint.

From a customer service perspective, the rest I guess is anti-climactic. I found the service on the Mumbai->JFK flight to be just fine (Delta has become one of the best for service) but the food was mediocre at best (at least compared to my past British Airways flights). For the flight over, I had ordered "vegetarian" meals which might seem superfluous since pretty much every flight into and out of India is going to have a veg option or two. But the problem is that sitting back in steerage, you get served last and choices may have run out. ALWAYS order a special meal, even if you don't have to. You'll never regret it.

So, what are my conclusions? Avoid Vistara, first of all. I had a much better experience with IndiGo (a low-cost local airline) on my flight from Bangalore to Chennai mid-week) than I did with Vistara. Their app didn't work at all, their agents were ill-informed and I think next time if I have to make internal transfers, I'll look for IndiGo.

For Delta, other than the ridiculously long wait times, I was pleased with their service. The agents I talked to were helpful in every case (and they were NICE), their app works better than that of most airlines and their flight attendants are a cut above American and United. And I'm guessing employee satisfaction is pretty high since the company just announced a profit sharing total of the equivalent of 2 months salary for all Delta employees!

Air travel is just not fun. I don't think it has been since the 80s, with deregulation and ever-tightening security and ever-shrinking seats making it an ordeal to be survived rather than a pleasant way to get from point A to point B. Since I've been traveling much more frequently the past three years, I'm looking for every little break I can get, whether it's TSA Precheck and Global Entry (both a huge help) or spending the dough required to get a credit card that has travel perks like airport lounge access (I'll never travel enough miles + segments to qualify for Gold or higher status with any airline). The other thing that makes it tolerable is good customer service - be happy if you find it!

Labels: Travel

posted by Tony Plutonium @ 5:56 PM 0 comments

Security Overload

I'm going to write a long post on the air travel experience to India that I just finished but I wanted to give you guys some idea of navigating airports in India, especially when it comes to security.

First of all, never expect security procedures in other countries to be anything like those in the US. Partly because security concerns are different (India has had both internal political violence as well as ongoing disputes with Pakistan, particularly when it comes to Kashmir) and different governments have different ideas for how to address the same problems.

So let me give you an idea of the security checkpoints I went through on the trip home I just completed, with a route of Chennai -> Mumbai -> JFK -> RDU

To get inside the airport in Chennai (or any airport in India), you have to present a boarding pass and ID to military security outside the terminal. But for the most part, eticketing is not a thing in India. So luckily I had printed out my itinerary and presented the officer with the sheets showing my Vistara flight from Chennai to Mumbai and the Delta flights to get me home from there. But... what I showed him didn't include my name. He directed me to the outside Vistara counter (all the airlines have counters that face outward from the terminal, which makes sense given the requirements to get inside). I stepped out and then realized that I needed to pull out the first sheet of the itinerary printout that had my name on it and got back in the mercifully short line and got through.  Passport check #1.

After going through the line at the Vistara desk, I got my boarding pass (but NOT the passes for the two Delta flights) and took my bags through security. The security checks at Indian airports are much different than those in the US. It's a bit of a mob scene, for one, with just a table for bins in each queue that people don't really queue up for all that much. Laptops AND cellphones come out and belts come off, but I was wearing sneakers and did not have to remove them (no sneaker bombers in India, I guess) and nothing about liquids. 

I travel with a CPAP for sleep apnea and left that in my carryon sometimes, took it out others, and it was never questioned. But the young man in front of me at one checkpoint that had unsealed containers of what appeared to be protein powder may still be in the airport. Or disappeared.

Everybody gets wanded and patted down. Everybody. They have metal detectors that look like the ones they installed in US airports in the late 60s after idiots kept hijacking planes to Cuba, but everybody gets a pat-down. So they direct female travelers to separate lines, including splitting families up. Passport and boarding pass check #2.

Passports were checked again at the gate and away I went, but 2 hours delayed with no way to make my connection - more on that later.

Mumbai is where things got even weirder. I had carried on three freaking bags in the vain hope that I'd make my connection so I didn't have to deal with baggage claim. So I hauled all the bags up to Departures, with a military check of passport and boarding pass/printed itinerary to get up there. Check number 1.

Having missed my flight as well as the flight through DeGaulle that Delta had put me on, I ended up booked on the flight to JFK leaving the next day at 1am (my original flight +1 day). I found that there was a hotel inside the Mumbai airport, called to ensure they had room, then went off in search of it. But security stopped me from LEAVING the Departures lounge as I didn't have a reservation. They sent me to the Info deck in Departures, who called the hotel to come up and escort me down. Checkpoint number 2.

Given the restrictions of movement, I spent the next 20 hours in a very nice hotel room in the Mumbai airport, trying to get some rest and eating a pretty decent veg biryani.

I *had* managed to get my Delta boarding passes from the self-service kiosk so I was prepared to get through security to get to Departures. Checkpoint number 3.

While in line at the Delta counter for the bag drop, Delta agents walked through the line, checking passports and asking immigration-type questions (reason for visit , point of entry, places visited, etc), then stickered my passport. Checkpoint number 4.

At the counter of course, I had to produce the passport again. Checkpoint number 5.

Go through security - similar rigamarole to above, maybe a little less chaotic. Checkpoint 6.

The to the very long line at immigration. Checkpoint 7.

Walk through the mall-sized Duty Free shop to get to the gates. I was confused about why the desk agent told me that boarding was going to start at 11pm for a 1am flight and I checked with the gate agent to see if that was right (I really wanted to check out an airport lounge and relax a bit). But no, the 11pm checkin was correct.

Scanned boarding pass at the gate plus passport check. Checkpoint 8.

Found that there was a temporary looking FULL SECURITY CHECK between the gate and the airplane. Take everything out of bags, wanded again, etc. Checkpoint 9.

I *think* that was it. But it wouldn't surprise me if I missed something - unlike previous trips I never got into a good sleep pattern and I was living on 3-4 hours a "night" and was a little punchy. 

I understand a "belts and suspenders" approach to security. But this seemed like a "belts, suspenders, bungee cords, Superglue, staples and duct tape" approach. Even if my Vistara flight had been on time, I would have been hard-pressed to grab luggage off the carousel, go to the Delta desk to drop it off, make it through security and customs and still reach the plane in the two hours that were originally scheduled. All my previous trips to India (all TWO of them, so not that many) were direct flights into Chennai, so this was my first experience with combining domestic flights with international. Lessons learned.

 The other thing that I find very different is that so much of this is handled not by a TSA analog, but by camouflage-uniformed military personnel, including pairs of uniformed soldiers patrolling the Departure area with machine guns at the ready. Takes some getting used to.

Additional security measures vary at hotels and work spaces. This trip, they actually seemed a little less than the trips I took in 2017. Where before the hotel security would run a mirror under any car to check for bombs and baggage had to go through a scanner, that didn't happen this time in either Bangalore or Chennai. Guess it depends on current tensions.

The good news was the Global Entry when I reached JFK was a fucking miracle. No line at the kiosks, 30 seconds for it to take my picture and print out a slip with a grainy photo, no more than 5 minutes in line to present to the Customs officer, and that was it! If you travel internationally, I highly recommend going through the hassle of getting it (it also gets you TSA Precheck, which helps not one whit internationally but is a huge help domestically).

I've never seen anything really describing this whole process. I was lucky I printed out my itinerary as I don't usually for domestic travel. Guess the moral of the story is be flexible, be patient and be as prepared as you can. Now at least you are prepared for your next trip to India!
 

Labels: Travel

posted by Tony Plutonium @ 6:20 PM 0 comments

Glasses Half Empty

Labels: Life, Travel, Work

posted by Tony Plutonium @ 8:51 AM 2 comments

First World Problems - Business Travel Sucks

"You'll survive all of this if it kills you
Just to show them that you never lost your nerve."
- The Old Ceremony, "Ghosts of Ferriday"

I have not always been a frequent business traveler but I'm an experienced one, both domestically and internationally, both pre- and post-9/11.  But I'm ready to stop.  Just quit it completely, unless it's a drive rather than a flight away.

I don't blog about work often and I'm not really talking about work itself here, just some of the wonder that surrounds it.

A couple of weeks ago I was visiting a customer in Andover, MA, around 45 minutes north of Boston.  Being the good corporate citizen that I am, I scheduled my flight for relatively late in the day so I could get a good day's work in before signing off.  The flight into Logan was uneventful, I picked up my rental car, plugged in the destination in Google Maps and away I went, through the Big Dig and off into the rainy night.

I arrived at my hotel around 11pm, maybe 11:15 and there is where the trouble began.  I had no reservation.  No record of it.  None. And of course the hotel was completely booked.  The guy behind the desk suggested a couple of other places to call (he did NOT offer to do that himself) but they were booked as well.  As a matter of fact, one of the people I spoke to at another hotel said she had been trying to find rooms as far away as Maine with no success.  There was some sort of huge softball tournament or some such going on and rooms were just not to be had.

Thinking that the travel folks our company uses had screwed the pooch, I emailed them and (to their everlasting credit) they responded within 5 minutes (meanwhile I had powered up my laptop and was looking for other options myself).  I heard the phone behind the reception desk ring and realized that the guy behind the counter was being reamed out by our travel people but to no avail.

I tried a few more places on my own as did the guy from our travel team.  I had zero luck.  He kept finding places that had rooms available online but when he called them to confirm, they were not actually available (again, I've derided these guys before but they performed admirably).

By this time it was around 12:30 am and I was contemplating sleeping in the back seat of the little Mercedes crossover I had rented and then blowing off my customer meeting and flying the fuck home.  I had been pretty well convinced that this had been a screw-up on the part of our travel people but just for the hell of it, I called the toll-free number for the hotel chain (yes, it was Holiday Inn Express).  I gave the guy my reservation confirmation number, telling him that the guy at the deck hadn't been able to find it.  No, the voice on the phone said, we had it but we canceled it because you hadn't checked in.

What the ever-loving fuckety fuck?!?!?

After blowing off a little steam venting at the sap on the other end of the line, I asked him how the hell that could happen, given that the room was guaranteed.  Apparently that doesn't mean doodly in situations like this where they've overbooked and everyone else around is booked solid as well.  After questioning the parentage of the dumbfuck that thought up that policy, I demanded the smug little shit from customer disservice find me another damn room.  And he did.  In Seabrook, New Hampshire.  Another 35-45 minutes north.  Okay then.

I packed up my crap, which by this time was spread all over the lobby, and headed up through the rain to Seabrook.  And a bed.  And all of about 4 hours of sleep.

After a good meeting with my customer, it was time to head back to Logan.  I knew I was going to have a few hours to kill at the airport and figured I would use some Delta Skymiles to buy an afternoon in their Sky Club so I could have a comfortable place to sit and get some work done before flying home.  So I did.  It looked like a refugee camp.  The thunderstorms rolling through Boston were holding planes destined for Logan at their destination for hours, so everyone that had any way to access the Sky Lounge had done so.  I was lucky enough to find an actual chair (there were people sprawled all over the floor, leaning against table legs, etc and the line for the free (sucky) beer was 30 people deep).  All of that being said, I was more comfortable that I would have been in the terminal while I saw my departure time slip out by 1 hour. 2 hours.  3 hours.  For a second time in 24 hours I thought about calling my friend Lynn at BU to see if she'd come get me and let me crash on her sofa.

We finally took off around 11:30pm, landing at RDU well after 1am.  By the time I got out, got the car and drove home it was 2.  By the time I actually wound down enough to get to sleep it was 3, with a full day of work ahead of me starting a couple of hours later.  Another 4 hours of sleep.

Okay, so that sucked but how often is THAT going to happen.  Well, apparently, every.  fucking.  time.

I'll admit that Wednesday's flight through Charlotte to Birmingham went without a hitch.  Rental car achieved.  Hotel was fine.  Dinner with our team was fun and the food was good.  Good meetings with the customer.  Uneventful trip back to the airport and a quiet gate to catch up on some more work and make a few phone calls.  I was traveling with one of my guys and we had 50 minutes to get from our flight to the next in Charlotte, which I thought was cutting it close but figured we had a shot.  Then the delays started.  15 minutes.  45 minutes.  Then they stopped updating it but I was watching Flightaware and the equipment we were going to use was coming in from Charlotte, which was under a very angry-looking thunderstorm.  The good thing was that lots of planes were being held at their departure location before coming into Charlotte.  Except for one, apparently.  Our connecting flight was coming in from Providence RI and was perfectly on time, no delays, might have even been a couple of minutes early.  Naturally.  I heard others around me talking to the gate agents to rebook their connecting flights and they were all the next day at 10am, 11am, 1pm.  Fuck that.  We finally boarded about 50 minutes late and before they buttoned up, I pulled up the Budget website, logged into my Fastbreak account and reserved us a car for a one-way from CLT to RDU.  I figured I could cancel it if by some miracle we made our connection but as we landed at Charlotte-Douglas, Flightaware showed our connecting flight as taxiing on the runway.

So off we went to the Budget counter and our grey Nissan Sentra and a long drive to RDU.  We left around 11:15 and I figured we'd get to RDU around 1:45, which was after the Budget counter closed, so I had a 1pm turn-in time.  The drive was uneventful despite the construction on vast stretches of I-85 between Charlotte and Greensboro (lots of night work).  I dropped my friend off at the terminal so he could catch a shuttle out to park-and-ride to get his car and then headed for home, music blaring to keep me alert and awake.  Home at 2:15, asleep a little after 3, an all-to-familiar story.

My calendar for Friday was a disaster.  I was determined to blow off my 8am meeting and the hour-long 8:30 meeting but I was doubled-booked for the rest of the morning.  I finally had a break around 12:30 with my next (must-do) meeting at 2pm, giving me exactly an hour and a half to drive the rental to RTP, gas up, turn it in, take the shuttle to the terminal, walk over to the garage, pick up the XTerra and get home.  I pulled off on Miami Blvd to gas up and as I got back onto I-40 I realized that I had neglected to grab either my parking ticket or my freakin' keys to my XTerra.  So exit onto Page Rd, hop back onto I-40 (westbound this time) and back home.  I called Budget and spoke to a robot for 15 minutes in order to extend my rental for another 3 hours, then did my can't-miss meeting and tried it all again.

Luckily this time I was successful and things went off without a hitch, which is good as I was pretty much incapable of handling complexity after only around 4 hours of sleep.

I'm not sure if there are any lessons from any of this.  I'm pretty good at packing for air travel, I know how to manage the security lines even without TSA Pre, I always get to the airport with a few minutes to spare so that I'm not crushing people trying to reach my gate.  But some things are clearly beyond my control.  Which is actually the worst damn thing about air travel.  Other than unexpected traffic, I feel much more control if I'm driving, and if I can get to my destination in 6 hours or less, I'm driving not flying.  But that doesn't help me with Boston or Birmingham or Atlanta or London or Chennai or really anywhere beyond the DC Metro and Charlotte.

So I'm going to have to find a way to cope with this but any more of these 2am homecomings and I may have to find a way to retire early.

Labels: Travel, Work

posted by Tony Plutonium @ 5:58 PM 0 comments

Spent a really nice weekend in DC, primarily to see the newly-renovated Museum of American History at the Smithsonian. JennySlash and I agree that they kind of jumped the gun on the opening - there were a number of displays that just obviously weren't quite ready for the public yet. It felt a bit sometimes like wandering into a restaurant a half hour before they open. But it was fun and some of the stuff that is finished is quite cool, including the Transportation in America gallery (sweet 40's Harley and Indian in there) and Julia Child's kitchen. The centerpiece is the preservation work that has been done on the "Star Spangled Banner" which was in really bad shape - it still is, but it shouldn't get any worse and the new display area is pretty nicely done and informative. Of course the highlight for us was the portrait of Stephen Colbert!

My boss asked me jokingly before we went up to be on the lookout for people infused with "hope" and all joking aside, I think we really did see that. I think a lot of the visitors were there now because they knew they wouldn't be able to go around the inaugural, so there was certainly a feeling of anticipation both for the impending end of the current administration and for the beginning of the next. The Presidential display in the museum was crowded, particularly at the end of the wall with the timeline of the presidencies which has now been extended to included President-Elect Obama - probably the most photographed area of the museum.

Labels: Travel

posted by Tony Plutonium @ 10:17 PM 0 comments

My Sister's House

Some of you may recall that my sister and brother-in-law's house burned down a year ago this week, the Sunday before Hallowe'en. After an initial slow start in getting any help from their insuror, they finally got the house rebuilt and were able to move back in around the first of July. We went down for the weekend to see the rebuilt place for the first time this weekend and I'm happy to say that the house looks fantastic and they're doing very well. They've always been known for their Hallowe'en parties and despite the fire (started by old wiring) starting the morning after their party last year, they're gearing up to have another one next Saturday, albeit on a smaller scale. It was great to see how well they've bounced back from such a life-altering event.

Labels: Family, Travel

posted by Tony Plutonium @ 10:16 PM 1 comments

KDH Day Eight - Tony Heads For Home

Good thing we'd done most of the packing the night before since I set my alarm clock wrong and instead of waking up at 6:45 for a last walk on the beach at sunrise, I woke up after 8am with the sun shining in. Arghhh! We'd already made reservations at Flying Fish for brunch so we didn't have to worry about breakfast - just pack up what we didn't finish the night before and take four hundred and sixty-nine trips up and down the stairs loading up. We were supposed to be out by 10am and I turned around to lock the door at 9:59 just as the cleaning person showed up - great timing!

Had a nice brunch at FF and spent a little time messing about before heading back across the causeway to the mainland. As I stopped to fill up (gas had dropped from $3.59 when we got there to $3.19 in a week), a big SUV pulled up at the next pump and hollered over that he'd seen gas for $2.89 in Columbia on the way out, but I'd pretty much topped off by then.

I've got a bet with one of the guys at work that I made back in June - he argued that the $4.00+ gas prices were all speculation while I argued that real demand was a big part of that, so I bet him that gas would still be $3.00 or over Memorial Day next year. I figure I win either way - either I get $5 or I get cheaper gas.

So there you have it - after a mercifully uneventful drive home we're still trying to unpack and do laundry 2 weeks later, but I did actually manage to get some real rest and I've found where I want to stay for my 50th birthday in a couple of years!

Labels: Family, Travel

posted by Tony Plutonium @ 10:07 PM 1 comments

KDH Day Seven - Tony Packs It Up

Saturday - last full day of vacation. And yet another new beach. I stepped out on the balcony and realized the wind was really blowing hard straight in off the beach and the waves were as high as I've ever seen them. Instead of the shell seekers and dog walkers or the surf fisherman, it was the day for hang gliders. As we had our coffee while bundled up against the wind, we watched a couple of gliders take off from the dunes in front of us and just hang in the air like a seagull before slipping down the beach. There were also a number of kiteboarders - surfers harnessed to a kite for propulsion. They zipped past a couple of times - found out afterwards that the speed record for kiteboarding was set the week before at over 50 knots!

After hanging around taking pictures all morning and playing a little Dungeon Siege while J finished up some stuff, we took a drive up to Duck as we'd bypassed it on Thursday. Last vacation days are always a little melancholy (one of these days I'm going to go all European and take two damn weeks in a row off. One of these days...) so we decided to treat ourselves to another dinner at Ocean Boulevard and this time sit back at the chef's "table" (actually a little bar overlooking the kitchen) so we could watch the kitchen crew. There were a couple of poor guys out on the patio trying to perform but the wind was blowing so hard they were out there singing away by themselves with the exception of one young woman who I assume was related to them in some way, but they soldiered on. We had another terrific meal (the best crab cake and one of the largest I've ever had anywhere) and were able to have a couple of laughs with the chef and his minions (I'm all about having minions!). If you're ever out there, I highly recommend asking for the chef's seating - it's a lot of fun.

Then it was back to the condo to pack and take one last long soak in the hot tub before calling it a night and a week and one of the best vacations I can recall.

Labels: Family, Food, Travel

posted by Tony Plutonium @ 10:01 PM 1 comments

KDH Day Six - Tony Chills Out

Friday was another day to relax a bit, although I did get up and go for a run. It was overcast and mizzly again with the beach once more covered with SUVs and fishermen, so I ran up the beach road again - didn't make it far as it started raining a bit more and I was still pretty worn out from my kayak beating. Can't complain - Friday was the only really rainy day we had. After a shower and then spending some time playing around with my new laptop through midday, we took off for Manteo for the rest of the day. We often stay in Manteo so it was a little weird that we weren't getting back over there until the end of the week. The waterfront and "old town" around Shallowbag Bay is a great place to spend a cloudy day messing around, hitting the antique stores and craft stores and looking at boats in the marina. I found a great old Reader's Digest swing collection on vinyl at one of the antique stores and a book on Carolinas music that I was unfamiliar with (the book, not the music) at Manteo Booksellers. Since we'd again skipped lunch, we stopped in at Full Moon Cafe for an early dinner. We've been eating there since they started out in the small space in the Waterfront building where Darwin's had been, then a few years ago they moved into a new much larger building across the street. I know I sound like a broken record, but yes, they too are one of our favorite restuarants in the OBX area. Even with a week we didn't make it to all of our favorites, like Black Pelican (usually too crowded) or Mama Kwan's (closed for refurbishing). The seafood enchilada at Full Moon is both ginormous and delicious - I'd actually been looking forward to it since before we went out there and it didn't disappoint.

Labels: Family, Food, Travel

posted by Tony Plutonium @ 9:13 AM 0 comments

KDH Day Five - Tony Tends His Wounds

Way too often I do too much on vacation and end up exhausted. This time there was actually a method to my madness as I intended to front-load the stupid stuff while J was working on her class and use the second half of the vacation to recover. So Thursday I slept in a bit, let my bruises color, and chilled while J got some classwork done. This was the first overcast day and tad cooler and when I walked out on the balcony, the beach was totally different than earlier in the week. Where before during mid-morning you saw shell-seekers, dog-walkers and a few joggers, Thursday the beach was covered as far as the eye could see with large pickups trucks and enormous SUVs with surf casters in front of each one. The condo is right next to a public access point and around 10:30, there was a traffic jam as they started to clear the beach. By 11:15, there were very few of them left, leaving the beach to the walkers again.

Mid-afternoon we took a drive up to Corolla to poke around the shops and walk around a bit (plus I like driving up into Currituck County past the $3M houses and do a little fantasizing). Unfortunately most of the places up there that weren't closed for the season were closing at 5pm, so we didn't get a lot of time since we'd gotten a late start. As we'd kinda skipped lunch, we opted for dinner at North Banks Seafood rather than driving back down to Kitty Hawk or KDH. We'd eaten there once before a year or two ago on a day when their A/C wasn't working and the fact that we'd even consider going back was a good indication that the food was good. This time it was cool and the food was even better - it's a pretty laid back, bar-oriented atmosphere but I like it. The "crab grenades" appetizer rocks. I've seen some poor reviews of the place but I like it.

Little note about the Outer Banks - you could blindfold me, drug me, and drive me around for two days before sitting me down in a restaurant and I'd be able to immediately tell you whether I was on the Outer Banks or not by whether the Weather Channel was on the bar TV. From fairly upscale places like Ocean Boulevard to bar-oriented places like Red Drum and North Banks, unless there is a local-interest sports event and only one TV, you'll see the Weather Channel.

Labels: Family, Travel

posted by Tony Plutonium @ 9:07 AM 1 comments

KDH Day Four - Tony Thinks He Just Turned 24

Labels: Family, Food, Travel

posted by Tony Plutonium @ 10:38 PM 1 comments

KDH Day Three - Tony Turns 48

Managed to sleep in a little later on my birthday. The weather cooled off a bit (it hit 80 on Monday but wouldn't quite reach 70 on Tuesday) and the wind picked up a little bit, although nowhere near as much as it did later in the week. With JennySlash having to spend so much time working, we'd decided not to bring the tandem kayak with us, but I'd been planning to rent a sit-on-top to take out into the surf. Monday I ended up too tired and Tuesday was too cool and a bit choppy, so we opted for a walk out on the beach instead. Afterwards I took the bike out and rode down to Whalebone Junction and back.

Dinner was at Ocean Boulevard in Kitty Hawk and was a memorable experience! The scallops were fantastic and the creme brulee I had as a substitute for birthday cake was out of this world. This was only the second time we'd eaten there and I highly recommend it for a special occasion. Great birthday!

Labels: Family, Food, Travel

posted by Tony Plutonium @ 10:21 PM 0 comments