Another Sunday finds me in another city. This time, San Antonio.

It’s kind of fun, and I have a good customer here, so it’s usually easier duty than some. However, this week it is also
“Fiesta San Antionio!” which is apparently a week long street party. This means crowds, and apparently it means that the hotels are booked.

The first couple of times I came here, they put me up in the St. Anthony – a historic hotel that also claims to be the most haunted (I never saw a ghost). Very nice rooms and a nice location.

Since then I’ve been in the Adam’s Mark. Not as nice, but since it is located across the street from Rackspace (the client) and I could get there via underground tunnels (useful the one time it actually iced here) it was convenient.

This trip finds me at the Sheraton Four Points. It’s a dump. It would have been excusable had they been able to deliver on the high-speed Internet, but although it is in some rooms, apparently no one knows exactly which rooms they are. I tried three, and ended up here because I am tired and this was the least “dumpy” of the three.

Don’t you wish you were me?

The flight out wasn’t as bad as some, but it did get me to thinking. This morning I woke up in my own bed, got up, did some chores, when in to the office and then to the airport, and a few hours later I was over a thousand miles away. 150 years ago this would have seemed to be downright magical, but for me it has become a nuisance as best. The miracle occurs when I am spared a large person in the middle seat next to me.

The only time I get that magic is on trips overseas to different countries. With America being so generic and so easily accessible, it takes a long trip time and the culture shock for the magic to sink it.

It still doesn’t come close to that experienced by little kids who fly. They will stare out the window watching miles and miles of fluffy white clouds, rarely getting bored. As soon as the clouds roll up, I open my book or shut my eyes for a nap.

I often wonder what I am missing by flying. Not that I want to drive, mind you, but at least in driving you have to expend some effort and the destination seems more valuable for it. Heck, I am within a mile of the Alamo right now, but it seems much more “Disney” than history.

Okay, bad example.

Here’s another one. As we were landing, I closed my book and looked out the window. The lights were still pretty sparse, although we were close enough to the ground to make out objects, even late at night. I saw some tiny red lights flashing amid small circles of white light, and I believe I was looking at either a fire truck or an ambulance (more likely the latter). I did pause for a moment to wonder what small drama was taking place a mile below me, the people whose lives may have changed on this night, for whom April 18th will always be remembered.

I went back to my book.

We landed around 11pm local time. Airports always have a funny vibe late at night, like any busy place taken out of its context (like going into work on the weekend). I think tonight it was a bit busier than most because of the Fiesta.

I got on the SATrans shuttle for the hotel. Only one other person got on besides me, and he was a talker.

Now, believe it or not, there are times that I don’t talk or feel like talking, but there is almost always someone to fill in the gap. He asked me what I did for a living, and the warning bells went off immediately. “I work with computers,” I replied.

“Oh? What do you do with them?” came the eager follow-up question. Jeez, just what I needed. “I help people manage large networks of systems”.

Our man Friday plowed right ahead, unfazed: “Oh. Well my Dad just gave me a laptop, and after about five minutes it shuts down. Do you think it could be the battery? I was thinking I could take out the battery and just plug it in, do you think that would help? Maybe its a virus? It could be a virus, right?”

At that moment I sooooo wanted the
ThinkGeek shirt that said “No, I will no fix your computer” in fluorescent green and glow in the dark letters, but nothing short of a swift kick to the head would have slowed this guy down. I muttered some neutral words, so he tried another tack: “It’s a Pentium II. It came out of his motor home. It’s still pretty good, right? It’s only two years old, and he just gave it to me. It fit in a docking station on the dash, I wonder what would happen if the air bag went off?”

I was saved by our arrival at his hotel, and I spent the remained five minutes to mine in blissful silence. This does not bode well for the rest of my trip, but it’s nothing a couple huge purchase orders couldn’t fix.