Eurotrip: The Aftermath

After 3 airports in 3 different countries, more than 5,000 miles and over 48 hours, my luggage finally found its way home. All is right with the world again.

I've put some of the pictures from the trip in Flickr. I didn't get too many in Aberdeen since we didn't get in hardly any sight-seeing and couldn't get a hotel near the City Centre. So here are the Aberdeen and Amsterdam sets. I put comments on a few of the interesting pictures and also upgraded to a Pro account so I could keep uploading. An added benefit is that you can see higher-resolution versions of the photos. (you know--just in case you want to have a picture of Absinthe as your wallpaper at work)

BTW: Since I've started using Flickr a little more, I added a permanent address to my account. Now you can see all my pictures anytime by going to www.flickr.com/photos/greenguru.

BTW 2: It looks like AllOfMP3 is taking credit cards again, so I'm listening to some Morrissey.

Perils of Travel...

Well, I must go get Trogdor out of pet jail and then get some sleep, but I had to get in a small rant. When travel goes wrong, it really goes wrong. Here's what the last 32 hours were like:

1) Leave hotel in Aberdeen for the airport (where there was a f'in sweet Lamborghini parked out front)
2) Have the flight in Aberdeen delayed for 30 minutes and then cancelled outright a bit later
3) Stand in line for literally 1.5 hours to get tickets re-routed through Paris instead of Amsterdam
4) Flight from Aberdeen to Paris gets delayed for 30 minutes again
5) Late to Paris, they had to bus us to the flight back to Houston (they held it at the gate)
6) The gate attendants in Paris couldn't find our eTickets, so we had to wait another 20 minutes on the gate while they called Aberdeen
7) Had to sit on the taxiway in Paris for an hour while a storm passed and were 10th in line for takeoff
8) While trying to takeoff, one of the front tires on the landing gear blew-out and we had to sit on the plane for another 1.5 hours while they literally changed the front gear tires.
9) After landing in Houston 10.5 hours later, we found out our luggage never made it.

Uh, it was a bit of a rough trip back. But, no worries. I'm home and FedEx should show up with my luggage sometime today.

P.S. On the up-side, the Airbus A330 is a pimp little ride and I highly recommend it if you are going to be stuck in a sardine can for extended periods of time.

Aberdeen

Well, it's been a grueling week. It's been all about teaching me what my new group in Aberdeen has been doing for the past couple of years and planning how I need to help guide them for the next year. And in the midst, I had to handle a couple of mini-crises in Houston. All part of the job now...

Anyway, I wanted to share a couple of more pictures. (actually, I'm just putting-off packing and heading to bed before my flight tomorrow morning)


First, I'm going to stop bitching about gas prices. While driving between the hotel and office, I saw this and had to pull-over and take a picture. Let me do the math for you: 1.05 Pounds/liter * 3.785 liters/U.S. gallon * 2 dollars/pound = $7.95 /gallon. Yes, that's right--$8 per gallon.

On the more fun side, we grabbed a couple of drinks at the Soul bar last night. Yep, it's a church that was converted into a bar. And they named it "Soul". Good stuff.

Amsterdam

Well, I'm overseas again. I don't think I've blogged about this, but tomorrow I'm getting a bit of a promotion. My "old" job was supervising the western hemisphere software development group. In about 12 hours, my boss is announcing that I will be adding the eastern hemisphere folks to my group. That means that he wanted me to come over with him to announce it here.

So, in a first for me, we stayed the night as a layover in Amsterdam. What a wild city. We got a hotel right outside of the Red Light District. That was definately a sight. For good taste reasons, I won't go into details here on the blog, but I can see why guys like going there.

And, no, I didn't smoke anything while I was there. I probably would have, but my boss was with me and I didn't want to put him in an uncomfortable position. But I did have to try *something*, so I had a couple of interesting drinks.

Anyway, I'll post more pictures on Flickr sometime later. Right now, the jet lag is catching up with me. I didn't get much sleep last night and although it's only about 8 PM here, I feel like I've been up for 3 days solid. About an hour ago the shakes started. I feel like I've got the DT's...

Berries & Cream

Hot damn, this is funny shit.