Your Tax Dollars At Work

Hello all and welcome back. It’s been an interesting couple weeks since my last post. When we last left our intrepid traveler he was awaiting the plane that was going to whisk him away to the land of milk and honey that is Oxnard, Ca. The flight over wasn’t too exciting. Unfortunately since I had just flown Qatar Airlines the week before all the movies were the same so I spent most of the flight reading and trying to sleep.

I commented last time about how great the service on the flights was and how great the seats were since they fold completely flat, and while they were all that I still arrived in Washington DC completely jet lagged. Add to that the 5 hour layover in DC, and I was an absolute mess on the flight to LAX. I remember sitting down in my seat, some dude squawking on the PA, some acceleration and a sudden thump as we touched down in LA, but that is about it. It took me about 45 minutes to get my luggage and rental car. After the hour drive from LAX to Naval Base Ventura County at Port Hueneme it was about 3:30 in the morning on Sunday before I got to bed. All told that was about 26 hours of total travel. You should really try it sometime. Good times. Lots of fun.

Sunday around noon I met the program manager and the Pakistan Navy delegation in the hotel lobby, and for what you might ask; to conduct a driving tour of LA. That’s right; they wanted to drive around LA on the Sunday of the Academy Awards. So we got to spend all day driving down the Pacific Coast Highway and Sunset Boulevard. Actually it was quite pretty; a good day for a drive. The bad part was I was hoping to get together with a friend, Martha J. and do some dinner. That was kind of how the whole week went. I had to play baby sitter for the Pakistan delegation and never had a night to visit friends in the area. It was rather annoying and disappointing.

That’s not to say the whole week was a mess though. I did get to go to Universal Studios during the trip. The Program Manager put in a “culture day” where we took the delegation to see something that is American and let them sample our culture. Personally, I think it’s just an excuse for her to go site seeing, but I’m not going to look a gift horse in the mouth (as an aside, isn’t this expression from the Trojan Horse story, and wouldn’t the Trojans have been better off if they had taken a look inside? I’m just saying).

Universal was a lot of fun though I would have preferred some actual roller coasters. Pretty much all the rides are motion simulators which are fun, but you just can’t properly simulate pulling 3 G’s in a loop and 80 mph worth of wind in your hair. It just isn’t the same. I like the real thing when it comes to amusement parks. Presented now for your enjoyment are a few pictures from the day.

Me at Universal Studios.

He he he... Monkey butt.
That is a big guitar.

The Jurassic Jungle.

Donkey from Shrek. He's funny, but he can be an ass sometimes.

Say hello to my little friend.

Dude, can't you see I'm working over here.

After the Program Review was over on Friday I rolled down to San Diego for a couple days. It was nice to see all the old gang. I hope you all had fun; and for those of you I didn’t get to see, hopefully we can get together next time. Here is a picture from Friday Night.

The San Diego knuckleheads.

The biggest problem with coming down to San Diego was that my flight on Sunday back to Pakistan was out of LAX. This wasn’t really a big deal because it didn’t leave until 10:40 in the morning. The plan was to get up around 6, get on the road about 6:30 and drive back to LA which should take about two hours. With turning in my rental car I figured I would get to the airport about 8:45 which should give me plenty of time to get through the lines at the airport and make my flight with plenty of time. The problem with plans though is, as the book says, they “often go awry.” It is with this in mind then that I will tell you the tale of my trip back to Pakistan.

It started a little after 6. I had just woken up and was trying to get motivated to get in the shower when my cell phone started ringing. It was the nice folks at United who were calling to tell me that my 10:40 flight had been cancelled but they were able to book me on the 9:40 flight if I could get to the airport in time. I figured I could do it, but I had lost pretty much all of my buffer in the process. So I decided to forgo the shower, threw everything I had in my bags and took off for LA. As I was approaching Camp Pendleton traffic can to a stop and I was think oh no because the road to LA can turn into a parking lot sometimes with folks going back after the weekend. Fortunately for me (though not for someone else) there was just an auto accident and I was soon past it. I think I set a land speed record getting back to LA from that point on and thanks to GPS I made it to the rental car agency without getting lost. From there it was off to the airport. As the shuttle bus took us around the airport to the different terminals there were a couple that had security line completely out the door, so I was sweating all the way up to pulling in front of my terminal. Luckily the line was not that bad and I managed to get my boarding pass and make it through security in time. The flight from LA was fine with the exception that I think the lady sitting next to me had a cold and passed it on to me.

After a 5 hour layover in Washington DC where I got to use the Virgin Atlantic Airlines lounge (the first one I had been to in the States; pretty nice) we finally board the plane. Some of you may recall what the weather was like in Washington DC on Sunday March 2nd. For those of you who do not, let me tell you is was snowing like no bodies business. We ended up having to wait one and a half hours for the crews to come with the deice gear and another half hour for them to deice the aircraft. Add to that the slowest taxi evolution I have ever seen and you get our takeoff happening about two and a half hours late. I tried to sleep through most of the flight, but the cold I was catching made that difficult. We finally land in Doha, Qatar about 20 minutes before we are supposed to board my next flight to Islamabad. The whole ride on the bus to the terminal, I was again sweating (and not because of the fever). I ended up walking into the terminal, going through security, going straight to the ticket counter and getting right on the next flight. I barely had a chance to go to the bathroom. The good news is that I did at least make my flight. The funny thing is after chasing the clock all day and barely making it to my flights, the flight to Islamabad actually arrived 30 minutes early. This would have been good except I had to wait for my ride to get there. The one time I didn’t really want to be early was the one time I was.

Ultimately I did finally make even though I arrived with a cold. I am feeling a bit better though. Hopefully I will be better in a couple more days. Aside from that I am just trying to get settled back in to the job. I had over 2oo e-mails waiting for me when I got back and I am only now getting myself dug out from underneath them.

Well that should be enough for this installment. I do not have any trips for a bit so things should calm down some and hopefully settle into a groove. Until next time, remember if you can’t be good, be good at it.