Traveling for Work

I left my house at about 6:20 this morning.  There was just the tiniest bit of light in the eastern horizon.  Up in the sky, above the Cascade Mountains, and the sliver of sunrise was a very thin crescent moon.  That reminded me of a similar early morning crescent moon on one of those horrible trips to Texass when I worked for the mermaid.  I was off to San Antonio, or Austin, or someplace even more horrible like Dallas.

Boy, I used to fly a lot for work.  And boy did I hate sitting in coach.  Boston, New York, Washington, D.C., Atlanta, Miami, Denver, Austin, San Antonio, San Diego, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Portland, Vancouver, even Spokane!  I sat in coach going to all these places many, many times.  Wait, I never flew to Vancouver or Portland – I drove.  But I did fly in coach to all those other places, too many times.

Not today, my friend.  I am bopping down to Oakland, via SFO, on what will probably be my last flight on Virgin America before Alaska pulls the plug on the best airline ever. I am so not sitting in the back.  Seat 1A, baby. Seat 1A.

At Sea-Tac I step into the First Class line at Virgin America, cutting off dozens of coach passengers who have been patiently waiting for a while.  I laugh.  Then I breeze through the TSA Pre-Check line in 11 seconds and am off to Anthony’s to eat salmon hash with poached eggs and drink a Bloody Mary without judgement since Mark is not with me.  There is a media crisis on CNN.  Seems like there usually is a media crisis when I am traveling.  Actually there is always a media crisis on CNN.  There is breaking news about breaking news while there is breaking news!

After breakfast I wander into a bookstore to get all my standard airline magazines: Shiny-sexy-Wallpaper, Dwell, Architectural Digest, Elle Decor.  I love them all so much, but something else catches my eye.  Mindy Kaling’s book is out in paperback.  Maybe it was always in paperback…anyway, I buy it. Mark says this is a really funny book.  I feel threatened and challenged.

I go to the gate and reminisce more about traveling for work….

After Starbucks, I mean the mermaid, and all those places I went to in coach, I got several trips to London with Amazon, I mean the bookstore, in coach.

When I was at Boeing, I mean the airplane factory, I got one shitty trip to the Republican hell hole of Phoenix, Arizona. In coach.

At the Foundation, I mean the foundation, I got the life changing trip to India, in business class(!) and several trips to San Francisco, in coach.  But it was on Virgin America, so it was better.

At that stupid cookbook store, I mean Allrecipes, I got nothing. Nothing. I was supposed to go to New York to oversee the transition of Martha Stewart Living to the cookbook store’s online platform, but that really meant going there and firing people who had worked there for 20 years.  No thank you.

Now, at my new job, I am heading back to the Bay Area.  In First Class.  For work.  Well, to be clear, they reimbursed me for the cost of a coach ticket and I paid for the rest, because I am, after all, me.

Hey, this is my fourth trip to California on Virgin America this year.  Los Angeles for The Broad, Palm Springs for Palm Springs, San Francisco for the reopening of SFMOMA, and now Oakland for work.  I am so racking up those Virgin America points just in time for them to become shitty Alaska miles. Does Alaska still slip a creepy Christian prayer on a piece of paper under your food like they used to? I never want to be a part of it.

Part of my ritual in seat 1A is of course to raise my glass of champagne as I make eye contact with the poor as they make that long, long walk of shame to the back of the airplane.  But another is to slowly and presentationally open and put on my very expensive Bose Noise Reduction Headphones.  It’s an intrinsic part of the seat 1A experience.   But on my last flight I noticed lots of small black things had fallen on my shirt.  Horrified that they were insects, I screamed and tried to brush them off only to figure out that they were very small particles of some kind of fabric or something.  Finally I realized that my very expensive Bose Noise Reduction Headphones were shedding tiny pieces of leather from the ear cuffs (is that a thing, ear cuffs, ear muffs, ear things?).  I had to order new ear things.  They did not quite fit in so I had to superglue them on last night.  This ensured a proper Joseph Campbell moment on the plane: Seat 1A, champagne, Bose Noise Reduction headphones, the poor.

OK – I think that is enough pre-flight blather.  Let’s hope I do not break the bulkhead on this flight.  I am sure VA has me on their list of bulkhead breakers.

 

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So, my flight was delayed by 2 hours.  Fog. In San Francisco?  It’s OK.  I got a shit load of work done and finally got a VP to say yes to a contract renewal that was only a $3000 increase, but took probably $5000 of my time arguing with him just to approve the fricking contact.

Finally the jet shows up.  They call for First Class passengers to board.  One of the things I love about Virgin America is that they don’t let stupid “families with children” or people who need “a little more time getting down the jet way” get on first. They make them get on last, like they should.  I stand up and walk through the gate.  Just me.  No one else.  Am I the only one in First Class?  Yes. Yes I am the only one in First Class! This is like Christmas and Easter and my birthday all rolled into one!

Flight attendant and I share a smile.  A gay smile.  He keeps refilling my champagne as the parade of uneducated, unwashed, Trump supporters in overly colorful tennis shoes walk by.  Actually I doubt that many Trump supporters fly Virgin America. 

After the hordes go by, Flight Attendant puts up a red rope to keep them out of the First Class Area. He sits down next to me with his own glass of champagne.  We talk about the biz -- how much we hate Alaska Airlines, how nice the Club World Lounge is at Heathrow, how messed up the design of Charles de Gaulle Airport is, and what a pleasant surprise the Barcelona airport is.

I enjoy a lovely shakshuka with poached eggs and Swiss chard and then try to watch breaking news about breaking news about breaking news on CNN.   I just can’t do it.  I try to read more of my Mindy Kaling book but after three glasses of champagne, I am three sheets to the wind so I decide I am funnier than her and I just type up this stuff instead.

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SFO was remarkably devoid of fog when we landed.  I must have left my phone on because I when I tried to order an Uber for the very first time I discovered I had less than 1% battery left. Ordering an Uber was out of the question so I got a cab like an old person.

Taxi driver is chatty.  He goes on and on about housing prices and how a new 58 story condo tower is tilting and sinking. I suggest we avoid the street that building in on. He does, and we make it to Oakland in record time.

 $100 later I arrive at this Gilligan’s Island-themed hotel on the water near downtown Oakland.  It’s all done in a nautical theme – even the wallpaper.  Somehow I ended up with two queen beds instead of one king bed, but that is fine.  The room is huge.

Off to do some work now.

 

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After a while I go walk around outside.  The area is called Jack London Square.  It’s kind of sad.  It seems to be some kind of urban redevelopment attempt from the 1980’s.  There are a number of restaurants and unrented retail space.  Oakland fronts on the water, but then Alameda Island sits in front of it and blocks the view of San Francisco. The hotel view is mostly of containers at the port.

Oh well, dinner is at Camino tonight, which I heard about from Evan Kleiman on KCRW.  I’m sure it will be good.

…..

The Uber ride to the restaurant was terrifying.  This woman named Candy shows up in a big red minivan and tries to drive us to the restaurant.  En route she drove 90 miles an hour on the freeway, tail gated police cars, and nearly killed pedestrians in a crosswalk. 

Our little $500 dinner was quite amazing, however. I had black cod with homemade sauerkraut to start, then duck consommé with chunks of duck confit, then trumpet mushrooms grilled over the fire.  This was quite awesome cooking.  I would come back to Oakland just to eat at this place. 

Taking three straight young techno geeks out to dinner proved to be a bit of a surprise.  I assumed they would be against the food, but to my shock they were total foodies and each ordered 3 courses and dessert.  The challenge was to get them to talk about anything other than technology.  I was able to get them to talk about traveling a bit, then food in the places they had traveled to, but their comfort level with conversation was really only in technology.  I just drank -- really good minerally dry French wine.  But the dudes loved the place.  One even bought a cookbook.

Uber ride home was another tale of terror.  This driver, Akhil, also drove 90 miles an hour on the freeway and nearly tipped over the car.  Real cab drivers are actual trained drivers I realize.

Back at the hotel, dozens of older German tourists are wandering around because they have jet lag.  I want to insert a joke here about soulless Germans, but because I do not have a soul myself I will not go there, for now.

I try to sleep, but I am being tortured by the new TV series The Exorcist and the new season of American Horror Story so I decide that my nautical hotel room is haunted and I do not sleep at all.

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The morning Uber ride to work is another stupid experience.  Driver Jose has the heat turned up full blast like it’s 17 degrees outside.  It is 70 degrees outside. I appreciate the Mexican polka music, but I would not mind some NPR.

Downtown Oakland is interesting, kind of like a much larger Tacoma. There are some gorgeous old building from the 1920s and 1930s, then a mix of bad high-rises from the 1970s and 1980s.  A few newer high-rises.  There is a nice lake right downtown. From the 23^rd floor of the office building I am in I can see much of the Bay Area, from Sausalito to San Francisco to Berkeley and then way down south.  The south part looks like Los Angeles from here – flat suburban sprawl.  There are so many sailboats in the water near Sausalito. Retired tech people I assume. I always wanted to live here when I was a kid.  I still see the appeal.  But now I would move to LA, not here.

My day at work is really productive.  Everyone I meet with is nice, but it’s clear my predecessor was a fuckwit. I have so much work to do.  One of the executives comes over and says instead of meeting at 3:30 why don’t we go out for lunch?  I get an hour of invaluable feedback on what they need from a business perspective, a quick tour of downtown Oakland, and some truly amazing tacos. 

Finally it’s time to go.  For the first time ever, and against my better judgment, I order my own Uber.  Driver is named Muzzammal.  He is 62 years old, was born in Egypt, has lived in the Bay Area for 50 years, put all 6 of his kids through grad school as a cab driver, sold his cab license for $140,000, paid off his house, and now drives for Uber part time because he has a heart condition and cannot eat any vegetables that contain iron.  I learn all this in the first 39 seconds.  But he has an anti-Trump bumper sticker on his car, so what the hell, let’s see what happens.

Even though we leave Oakland at 4:00, traffic is fine and we make good time to SFO. During the drive I hear more about his life: how his Coptic Christian mother married his Muslim father and how the grandparents were murdered and how the whole family had to move to San Francisco.  I learn everything about his political views and the other two jobs he has to keep himself occupied while he is retired. And he’s telling me all this while he has the baseball game on the radio, turned up really loud.

I am never taking Uber ever again.

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So now, I am at SFO in my regular bar, drinking champagne while I write all this crap down.  I just realized that I put my Bose Noise Reduction Headphones and my Mindy Kaling book in my luggage so that my computer bag would be less bulky.  And of course I forgot to take them out before I checked my bag.  Quell horror!  I try to download some TV shows to my iPad to watch on the plane, but TiVO says I am not authorized to do this. 

Sigh. 

Just kidding.  I love traveling for work.  I am off to seat 1A soon.

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So back to Mindy Kaling.  Almost all the jokes in this story I stole from other people or have used dozens of times before – just like a real comedian.  See Mindy, I am funny too.

 

 

 

 

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