travelogue 20

March 14, 2007

I’ve got twitchy leg stuck up british middle class paranoid delusional brain hammers going on. which means we’re only over Greenland and I already need to walk up and down the aisle of this cantankerous 747, bashing people’s nasty open-plan headsets into their chicken or beef, just to get the blood clot to move down to my foot where I can stamp around on it a bit to make it less apocalyptic. but I don’t want to disturb the plebs in the aisle or center seats next to me. british. so I’ll have to wait until they have a bladder moment and haul themselves like cattle to the folding door in the sky, at which point I’ll climb over their piles of tangled useless electronica and blankets, snagging my walkman around the throat of the person in front of me who has reclined their seat into my pelvis and accidentally ripping their head off in my haste. I can’t even keep me seat upright, but I’m tensing up my whole body for 10 hours so that it doesn’t move backwards unnecessarily. you, person in front, however, took a mere 17 minutes to push the button marked “Push here to be extremely annoying. Please ensure that you push back real hard on the seat back, so that the person behind you who is bending over his tray table, filling out his visa waiver dilligently, will lose a couple of layers of skin from his forehead. Anyway you can’t really see anything on these seat back videos, so let’s get that their viewing angle down to about 45 degrees. How annoying would you like to be today? BA can help”. after I’ve extracted myself from the window seat – which I demanded, of course, notwithstanding the pain I now cause myself but I’m british that’s what being british is all about – I’ll stand by the toilets, stretching out my legs like I know what stretches will make a difference and then wait 5 minutes each time a person comes up to use the toilet before I tell them that I’m not actually in the queue. I love that game.

I’ll go back to my seat in a minute and prepare for the next 5 hours by shaking the seat in front of me really hard as I try to manoevere into my seat and then wonder why someone sitting next to their 5 year old would nonchalently watch The Departed, not really looking, while their child is wondering why the man that looks like the devil is smashing the other mans arm with a hammer or something and mummy, is he dead eeuw, what’s that brains guts high calibre firearms graphic and prolonged violent scenes I’m not sure sweetie are you hungry THE VIEWING ANGLE IS JUST FINE IF YOU’RE SITTING IN THE SEAT RIGHT NEXT TO YOU, YOU CAN SEE ALL THAT STUFF PERFECTLY, THAT’S YOUR CHILD RIGHT? AND PUT THE BLOODY SEAT UP.

I’m not compelled to watch anything this trip. I can’t really be bothered to get the julian clary book out of my bag. I’ll just listen to the bloc party album 8 times and take pictures of ice until I dissolve.

travelogue 19

March 13, 2007

not to bore you with the details of the previous day and night’s travel but suffice to say that the 727 did what it does and dumped me at heathrow central bus station whereupon you search for a hotel hoppa to take you to the radisson only to find the stop, but to step on the H7 which takes you to the sheraton so nah mate, you want the H2 innit that’s the other one. that’s not embarrassing. anyway, arrival at the edwardian means being greeted at the desk with “yis, we’re having a wedding tonight so you are on six floor no smoking good” and dispatched to the lifts where you have to stick your room keycard in the wall before it goes anywhere. bing! 4th floor. 72 indian party goers and a pachyderm pile in “on their way to wedding. floor 6 please”. that’s not good. as I wheel myself into 607 I hear what sounds like the birdy song in urdu or something so I lock the door sharpish behind me and watch match of the day until I start dribbling on myself and then I have to work out where the extra 17 cushions go before I can get into bed.

it wasn’t that bad really. hoppa man clutched me from reception at 8am and expelled me at terminal 2. or 1. I dunno. everything looks the same at Heathrow. hang on. I need BA check in desks. I mean, I’ve already checked in online of course, but I need to go and join the longest queue in the entire airport – the one marked “fast bag drop”. oh, I should be in terminal 1. I expect there’s a handy elevator or something to take me there. or maybe a shuttle. what? whaddayoumean I have to WALK? VIA TERMINAL 3? I remember why I hate this horrible place. it’s then I remember that I’m not flying to Denver on a nice clean plane. I’m flying to San Francisco, so we get the rickety old 747 from 1997 with the seat that never stays upright. arse. gloom.

“29K sir. you have a window seat today sir”. “I know”

someone is in my seat. they’re there on purpose. there’s 2 of them and they’re leaving the seat in the middle empty to try and get 3 seats to themselves. “hi. 29K, er, I think that’s me, by the window”. “Oh, really? I though HJK went the other way round”. “No. K is by the window, definitely”. humph. much consternation at having to relocate 1 sat to the left. I smile a smile that says I’M PAYING HUNDREDS OF POUNDS FOR THAT SPECIFIC SEAT WHICH IS TWICE AS MUCH IN DOLLARS AND IF YOU THINK I’M NOT GOING TO ACTUALLY SIT IN THE WINDOW SEAT THAT I HAVE EMBEDDED IN MY TRAVEL PROFILE AT ROSENBLUTH THEN YOU MUST THINK I CAN’T EVEN COUNT TO K and prepare not to move any limbs for 10 hours by just kind of stretching a bit. oh. my seat doesn’t stay up. that’ll be nice.

it’s a morning flight so we’ll be in daylight for the whole journey, meaning I’ve got my camera strapped to me like some appendage in case I snap a near miss or a volcano or something but will probably end up just taking 37 pictures of a wing that you can’t really see because the windows are 17 years old and covered in ice and scratches.

ooh! a glacier!

jonathan schwartz salad stalker

February 26, 2007

if I stay here for another couple of hours the curtains will open themselves and small angels singing gretchen peters albums backwards will flutter among us tipping tofu over the duvet and delicately turning the pages on the ski magazine I will of course never read while cate blanchett wafts through the walls with USA today on a stick and all you can eat in the poolside grille. after that I’ll have a shower and stuff. ok, I’ll do that now. hey, where’s my angels? I’m paying a hundred bucks for this. well, no, of course I’m not paying personally, but like Neal says, we’re all paying really.

4 hours later and I’ve spent a good 10 minutes in the rental chevy cobalt LT which stands for Like Treacle just waiting for the rain to stop because I’ve not transported a nice wool jacket all this way just to end up smelling like a dead sheep by the time I get to the lobby so it’ll have to stop before I move from here. right. good. I’m at MPK 14 because I can count that far but I’m meeting at the iwork cafe in 10 minutes so let’s take bets on how many times I walk around the entire campus looking for it before I actually go into a lobby and tell somebody I’m english and so they take pity on me and ask me if I know the queen and how many oscars I’ve got before they tell me I’ve just walked past the place I’m supposed to be in and they were watching me all the time because I look like I have no idea what I’m doing which I don’t even though I’ve been here about 20 times before but still apparently can not orient myself after I walk through a security door and a small campus becomes a mysterious labyrinth full of strange mortal creatures with huge cups of water with permanent straws and the only way I can escape it is to find the keeper of the key which will obviously mean at least a couple of hours in a badly lit warehouse crawling through pipes and stuff until I meet a talking marsupial who dictates the meaning of life to a peasant dressed like oliver twist and upon seeing me scarpers into the night talking the key with him which isn’t a key at all, you see, it’s just an alegory. the key is me. I am the meaning of life and if I just stop and discover myself I’ll also find Neal in the cafe. oh, there he is.

as I’d had the ‘healthy option’ breakfast which is pretty much just 3 gallons of coffee with cream, a strawberry, and then 17 croissants with an extra bagel, I was only interested in a ‘light option’ for lunch, which I figured might be something like chicken pasta, but with 3 pounds of cheese and a gallon of cream and a bit of brocolli, so having been shown the salad bar I took a plastic bowl and started shovelling leaves like it was the middle of october. ooh, a bit of that green stuff. and another. ooh that looks nice. this bowl isn’t bit enough. hmm, what are those?

it’s at this point that jonathan appears from some secret trap door or something and he’s right in front of me with his own plastic bowl, tongs at the ready. I mean, he’s pushed in, which is a huge affront to an uptight middle class englishman, but I’ll let him off. as he goes around with the tongs, he’s talking to somebody who’s kind of over my shoulder somewhere about really important stuff, but all I’m really interested in is seeing what pulses he scoops up and whether balsamic caesar is the dressing du jour. I want my own jonathan schwartz salad and so I’m going around the salad bar picking off everything he’s picked off and trying not to look like a weird food stalker but failing but he’s so fast he’s already in a meeting in santa clara by the time I’ve picked up an apple from the fruit stand so I’ll never really know if I got it right. I look at my bowl and I don’t even know what half the things in there are, but I’ve got mental picture – I considered a real picture but I would have weirded even myself out doing that – and so when I get back home next week I’ll try and recreate it and then sell it on ebay. I was also saying hello to Martin and Sean as I was putting the salade de schwartz together, so I probably got a couple of things wrong. I don’t think he used french and balsamic together. eeuw.

fake tales of manitou springs

November 15, 2006

pikes peak 6 — pikes peak 1 by Tim Caynes

I walked. no I didn’t. I got on that cog railway and sat next to Bob from Canada who was in Colorado visiting his half brother JD who he only realized was alive because he came across him on the internet via his wife who was related to him via his other mother or something. I said it’s a small world, and I’m from the other side of it. we were full to the brim as the red boxes cogged up the incline and even though I spent the first 30 minutes bemoaning the fact that I ended up on the 2-seat side which sticks to the side of the mountain, eventually I chilled out. literally. we slid the windows up as we approached the halfway point, but not before I’d done my obligatory sticking my upper torso out the window when you’re not supposed to thing and taken a couple of pictures of a place where you can sometimes see goats but they’re at home today fixing up their shed.

when we got to the summit we were allowed 40 minutes to stumble around in the snow, waiting for a gap in the cloud, before we had to head back down again because fat people at 14000 feet have a tendency to drop dead after about 45 minutes. I spent most of that time stumbling around in the snow, waiting for a gap in the cloud, but also managed to slip down a bank next to the railway while taking a picture of a red truck and plaster a thick layer of frozen clay over my backside which I spent the next 10 minutes trying to wipe off without bringing attention to myself even though it was like trying to push wet flour across a tablecloth and so in the end I just went to the toilet block to wash caked mud from my frozen hands and the water felt like it was boiling my skin and I ended up leaving a trail of clay all the way back down anyway and my coat is still brown at the bottom.

I’d recommend it to anyone.

shark of three fives

October 27, 2006

burn and turn man, burn and turn. I don’t know what that means but I did it anyway and apparently beating a pair of aces with three fives three times in one night is just not cricket. Jennifer repeatedly says I’m a shark but honestly man, I just stepped of the plane from the old empire and all I know about is gin rummy and triangle sandwiches. I can’t help fleecing the web design team, even it Chris does eventually win after buying back in, which I think is a moral victory for me, but I can’t be sure. I personally blame Martin for having a gaming table with extra strong people magnets hidden inside so that every time you go to his house you get sucked unwittingly into the basement to start flipping around with his chips and fingering the edge of your cards like you’re on one of those programmes on the telly where the cameras are underneath the table spying on your cards.

I think it was a straight that did it in the end. that’s better than three fives, right? what about four? five?

damien hurst pringle selection

October 19, 2006

ah, right. that would be, well, it’s not so bad in real money. I am rather peckish. I don’t know what that is, or that, or that. that looks like some kind of evil granny biscuit. 2 quid for a snickers. I don’t even think I could bring myself to claim that back. hang on, what’s this key for? ooh. I see. nicely hidden under the tv like it usually is except it’s locked like it usually isn’t so it must have something really special in there. it’s got a nice little window at the top. never seen a window on a fridge before. ooh, look. they’ve put the very thing in that window that you’re likely to have an uncontrollable urge for after 18 hours of travelling having missed dinner and feeling like you have a mouthful of gravel and a brainful of lint. that’s right. sour cream and chives pringles. only a small tube mind. it’s hardly a tube at all, more like a tub. or maybe a tu. but it’s got pringles in and they is the sweet nectar of the gods of corporate hospitality, divine in their scallopness and at the same bewitching in their potatoiness. you can literally trip over the delicate crunchiness of those 32 holy cheesy wafers and immerse yourself in their soft duvet of saltiness. without doubt, you can expire and elevate to the paradise beyond this life after popping the last one.

but I’m not paying 4 dollars for them. you can swivel. I’ve still got a fruit bar I stole from British Airways.

design this

October 11, 2006

its iterative you see that means I change little bits all the time no I’m not going to tell you which is which I put numbers on them so you can work it out but in case you think you have I’ve neglected to tell you whether they are finished or not because I don’t know whether they are except the one for mexico which isn’t so don’t start there but think about pulling a left at wal-mart and slipping some fructis and a couple of travel soaps into your lap while henrietta offloads the kansas city fire department into the disabled spot that’s rumbled by the fat bloke.

in 17 minutes it’ll be just as difficult to poke a stick at a melon so why don’t you check into the residence inn and stock up on doritos and sour cheese and I’ll bring over 3 litres of belch and we can sit laughing at pedestrians on el camino like what we were doing that time before but really you were on your own working out the time delay on being charged for videos and wondering where your fob was until the dixie chicks started mangling your banjo and the bottom fell out. the all seeing I.

behind the line

October 10, 2006

good evening sir, what’s the purpose of your visit to the united states today? er, I’m working. oh, you’re working sir? do you have a visa? er, no I don’t. but you said you were working in the united states, so you must have a visa. um, but I don’t need one. what do you do when you are working? I’m not sure I understand what you mean. I mean sir, what does working mean to you? oh, er, I work in marketing and stuff, for a network computing company. yes, so what’s the purpose of your trip today sir? I, um, I’m just, er, visiting my work. just visiting? is that all, you’re not doing any work for your company while you’re here? well, yes, I… so what do you mean when you tell me you are working on this trip? what? what company do you work for mr caynes? sun microsystems. and how long have you worked for sun microsystems? 11 years. and what is the purpose of your visit to sun microsystems this time? er. it’s, um, business. so it’s a business trip? yes, no, I think so. for which you don’t need a visa? oh, yes. I see. yes, it’s a business trip, for which I don’t need a visa. and how long are you staying in the united states for this business trip for which you don’t require a visa? 5 days, no, dammit, 6 days. 6. and when was the last time you came to the united states on a business trip to sun microsystems? what? er, about 6 months ago. I think.

<pause>

that’s fine sir have a nice stay. next!

another travelogue 9

September 7, 2006

it was 11 years ago yeah we missed 10 so here we are its just like I remember it except that bit which I don’t really remember and we never actually went to that bit last time but I remember sitting there I think it was no there that was it wasn’t it and its even hotter if that’s possible but it feels like that to me so if we go up there we get to the belvedere right but I don’t remember this bit we must have just come straight up the main street before well we wouldn’t have been playing on the adventure playground then and looking for the toilets would we hahahahahahaha.

well look at that that’s nice where have you gone? no we’re not going to go in the caves because they’re rubbish even though you come out in the side of the sheer drop and get in a glass lift like charlie bucket although you don’t fly because if it flies there’s something very wrong and anyway we’re not doing that but I want to have a quick look at the sqaure and look at that view it goes on for miles its a bit like the view from down there but you see the difference you can see all the river from here, well, all the bits in the bit of the river that cingle isn’t the biggest but look you can see it all. I want a drink. there? here? let’s just go here. ok

chips and omlette. hmm. got any sandwiches? sondweech? jamon et fromage. oui, c’est bon merci. aah, come on everyone, drink it in. do you know, 11 years ago…oh, we have told you that. anyway, yes you can go and look at friendship bracelets but don’t upset that huge woman/man thing again or she’ll set the dog on you anyway what’s her/his problem we’re gonna buy something. she doesn’t know about the airport leaflet incident does she? how could she possibly know he’s such a fiddle and break risk. I just think she/he doesn’t like people. good job then, working in a shop. moan moan.

another travelogue 8

September 6, 2006

can I have some of that bread. that’s aireated that is. have we got any croissants? what’s that? what’s gruyere? can I have cheese? eeuw, that’s all red, look, it’s got red stuff coming out of it. is it? do you like that? what’s for tea? can I go swimming? but what if the alarm goes off. can you come with me. well, can daddy come with me? how long is it? oh, can I have one? what’s that? is that for us? I don’t like that. I have had it before, honest, and I know I don’t like it I had it at Bella’s house I did when I went there remember. honest. I did. when’s tea?

notwithstanding the fact that we didn’t get anything and now its like 1 pm so the whole country is asleep and we didn’t get anything yesterday because we were asleep and now its today and that chocolate bun doesn’t go 5 ways we’ll have to think about doing something tonight instead yes that’s right maybe we can go out that place looks nice maybe we could walk there but only if we don’t get as far as the observatory and daddy chooses that time to tell us that he’s only brought out 20 euros because he didn’t think they’d actually want to be buying anything so he had to run back in the 38 degrees back up the road back up the hill to the farm to get a new tshirt and more money and then, sod it, drive back down and park in town where everything’s closed anyway so we don’t even need 20 euros but this time we might so have you got any money. good. I know its hot we’re nearly there so who wants to go and see that funny metal person in that cafe where they give you tartazine for lemonade and you gag all the way through your baguette which was probably made by that fat bloke behind the bar who’s pointing his gun at the dog who’s snarling by the toilet which you’ll have to use because it’s the only one open I’m afraid so come on, let’s go.

ham cheese pasta melon apples grapes prunes danone red white lemonde vittel

Things what I writ