Tales from the Tube

[Karabiner]

I keep forgetting about this thread which actually turns it into a little treasure trove when I do actually rediscover it again and get two or three helpings of superb pennage to feast upon.

Who says that you can't eat value?

[Dingdell]

Had to use the tube at the weekend and i remembered why I left working in London....half the drivers were on strike because of the firemans strike - as they travelled underground they were worried about the safety of the passengers if a fire started because of the reduced number of fire crew so service was very interrupted. The the trains were coming through with the wrong signage on so i was getting on a train, then they would announce for all to get off, and then we all had to get on again - in the meantime I lost my coveted seat to a 5 year old active, bouncing around child.

Now I know I'm not a grannie yet but when I was a child we got up for adults and stood because we were kids with loads of energy or sat on my mums lap. Is it me?

[Claw75]

Had to use the tube at the weekend and i remembered why I left working in London....half the drivers were on strike because of the firemans strike - as they travelled underground they were worried about the safety of the passengers if a fire started because of the reduced number of fire crew so service was very interrupted. The the trains were coming through with the wrong signage on so i was getting on a train, then they would announce for all to get off, and then we all had to get on again - in the meantime I lost my coveted seat to a 5 year old active, bouncing around child.

Now I know I'm not a grannie yet but when I was a child we got up for adults and stood because we were kids with loads of energy or sat on my mums lap. Is it me?

nope it's not you - hannah's nearly 8 and if the tube gets busy she still has to sit on my lap (whether she's embarrassed or not) or stand up.  seats for parents of children who are too small to properly support themselves standing up but too big to be comfortably carried for any length of time are always appreciated though

[Snatiramas]

Apologies that it has been a while since I have written anything. Just busy with life and planning this my latest foray to America. Travelling on my own which can be lonely or as usually happens can be a world of opportunity to experience new pleasures.

Flew over with Virgin and found myself seated next to a lovely lady who was in the process of moving from New York to London. She works in the insurance industry and I made her laugh when I suggested it could be worse she could be a banker. It made her laugh because that is her husbands job. Well we chatted whilst the plane loaded and I found out that she had passed her citizens exam! Citizens exam when did that happen? So all sorts of questions had to be asked.

Did she have to give fifteen different words for rain?
Did she have to describe the difference between the googly and the chinaman?
Most importantly had she managed to perfect an expression of looking miserable when totally happy?

Unfortunately all of these came with a no. What a waste of a test IMHO. Anyway the doors shut and there is acres of space so I move so that she has more room, cos as we all know nobody wants to be next to the big bloke.

I look round my fellow passengers and there is one bloke who is so in love with himself it is making me and the bloke sitting to my left positively cry with laughter. I know just the thing to get him going. I start to flirt with the air hostess just because this bloke is such an alpha male I know he will not be able to resist trying to outdo me.

So when she comes along with the hot towels, I ask if she would just laugh out loud as I am studying human reaction to situations where beautiful women laugh out loud whilst in the company of fat bald blokes who wear glasses.  So she does, as does the bloke to my left because he heard what I was saying. Alpha male seated to my front and right cranes his head to try and find out what is going on. From that moment on he tries desperately to pull the stewardess. I am crying with laughter. My work here is done.

 So I settle down and start watching movies, Invictus, nice enough but the rugby scenes are truly crap, Karate Kid, I preferred the original overall but this one for the fight scenes, and started to watch Hot Tub, Time Machine, which was supposed to be comedy but was just awful. If you paid money to go and see this film, and didn’t walk out, might I suggest you get the Road to Wellville on DVD as you will obviously sit through anything!

So we land at 7pm local time and I book into my hotel. It is okay. Cleanish and cheap. Only here for one night and what a bad night it was. There is just something about not having my own pillow that nearly always makes me restless. Maybe I should vacuum pack it next time and bring it with me.
Today has dawned and I am getting ready to fly to Columbus, a city I have never been to before. It promises to be a quick visit but hopefully something of note will happen during the day!

[Laxie]

Today has dawned and I am getting ready to fly to Columbus, a city I have never been to before. It promises to be a quick visit but hopefully something of note will happen during the day!

Give a wave to me Mom as yer flying past.  Safe travels.  xx

[boldie]

One of the best threads on blonde, thanks Snatty.

[Snatiramas]

Boldie you are so biased. Bless you.

I was awake frighteningly early. So frighteningly early that I decided not to take a cab from the hotel to La Guardia but took the no money transfer back to Newark and then took a bus transfer from Newark to La Guardia. Aside from saving me $60 it meant driving into New York and changing buses in Times Square.

This was so the right call. It was a grey morning as we left Newark and through the New Jersey docks the outline of Manhattan could be seen in the distance like a modern day Stonehenge. A place of worship for all things capitalist. New York with money is the greatest. Your heart rate just increases as you approach the city. The route the bus takes is a great one, coming onto the Island via the Lincoln tunnel which is very quick if you are on a bus but a nightmare if you are in a car. We get to Times Square and I just can’t help smiling like a kid in the sweetshop.  I catch the connecting bus to LaGuardia and head to the US Airways desk.  Now if you ask any American they would rather fly anything but US Scareways. They obviously haven’t flown Ryanair.

The lady on check in was just so bloody friendly. She goes to London regularly to visit her son so I recommended a trip to the Burberry factory shop and she gave me a tip for buying in A&F.......no I am not going to share it with you. She changes my seat for one with better legroom.

The flight was cheap and cheerful except for the miserable New York lady sitting next to me. I tried to strike up conversation twice and then gave it up as a bad job. She was a native New Yorker and was going to Columbus for a business meeting. I lose myself in a book but notice that she is  reading her presentation. It is all about conflict resolution. Fuck me the poor lady can’t even hold a conversation.

The rest of the flight is uneventful except for me waving like a lunatic at random points just in case I am passing Laxie’s Mum and we come into land in Columbus. What struck me straight away is that it is flat. Not totally flat but you can see a long way in all directions. Also the feeling of space and cleanliness. The initial feeling was positive, I felt like I had arrived at a place that was happy with what it is and didn’t have to try too hard.

I got in a taxi and did a grand tour of a couple of places I wanted to research before my meetings on Thursday and Friday. The quality of what I saw and the people I met was high even in the dry cleaners who are sorting my suit out!!!!

I wish I was here for longer but I am not.......maybe I will return for a longer stint next visit. Anyway time to do some work before heading out for some dinner.

[Laxie]

If you're in Columbus, Ohio - you're in my home state.  I grew up in northern Ohio nearer to Cleveland, but there isn't much difference anywhere in Ohio.  First time I've ever heard it called 'flat'.  Had a good giggle at that description.  Mainly because it IS flat.  Only I never noticed or thought of it that way until now.  Thanks for waving to me Mom.  She was sat out the back with her new wee dog waving back to you.

[Snatiramas]

Thursday dawned grey and a little cold in comparison to the previous day. Started to get ready for my meeting. It was at this point I realised that I didn’t have any cufflinks for my shirt. You know the internet is just soooo useful. I find out that there is a Men’s Warehouse on the way to my meeting.

What can I tell you about Men’s Warehouse. If you lifted the men’s department out of Grace Brothers and plonked it in America with American staff you would have Men’s Warehouse. I switch into immediate Stephen Fry camp English mode to have maximum fun and wish I had longer to banter with the staff.

Two minute stop and $30 later one new pair of cufflinks on freshly pressed shirt. Looking and feeling the business. After my meeting I head to another airport for another US airways flight, or rather two flights. One from Columbus to Wahington and then Washington to Boston. The downside of taking incredibly cheap flights in the states is having to take some pretty tortuous routes.

I am quite the curiosity to anybody sitting next to me on a flight and everybody I meet wants to talk about England. This friendliness is not, as I once believed, false. It is a genuine love of people. All around me on the flight people are just striking up conversations looking for common ground. So much more than Brits do. Being a fairly gregarious chap I do love this aspect of America, particularly as I am travelling alone which can be a bit of a chore.

Flying into Washington the view of the White House in the distance is quite spectacular. A quick change of plane and I am heading to Boston. Now everybody has told me how beautiful Boston is, but unfortunately I am heading straight to a suburb of Boston called Framingham. Because it is 30 miles away and I am here for two nights I have booked a hire car. My first ever driving in America. One of the US’s top 20 cities and I am arriving after 10pm. I know with absolutely certainty this part of the trip fills me with trepidation.

Funny how I have become more cautious with age!!

[Laxie]

If you got from A to B without hassle doing the driving, then fair play to ya.  I can get through all parts of NYC without missing a beat, but will NEVER again drive in Boston!

[Snatiramas]

I am sitting in yet another hotel room as I write this up. It is November the 9th and it is Rachel’s birthday. It is the first time I have missed one of the kids birthdays and to say I am feeling guilty would be one of the world’s greatest understatements. However I promised myself, when I took my current job on, I would give it the full lash and when an opportunity arose to be at a manager’s conference then I had to say yes.

Rachel I love you, happy birthday from me and the readers of this thread. XXX

Okay when I left you last I had landed in Boston. I went out to where the buses take you to the hire car offices. And wait. And wait. Now it is with some annoyance that I am watching bus after bus for other hire car companies slow, look at me, I shake my head and they pull away. Eventually the Alamo bus arrived. The reason it annoyed me so much is that they were all empty. Surely one or two buses could have serviced all of the hire car companies.

Hire cars in the U.S. are a necessity. Cabs are expensive and this is a country with space so rather than going up, buildings go sideways major centres excluded. Dummy back in mouth I approach the counter and surprise, surprise everything goes smoothly. It was great. Now I want to be able to tell you that I didn’t approach the wrong side of the vehicle..... But I can’t. Thank the lord I woke up just before getting inside and wondering where the hell the steering wheel had gone. I have of course done that, only the one time, and it was a very long time ago.

I take my time and familiarise myself with the controls, set up the SatNav, and oh so slowly pull out of the parking space and out onto the service road. Nobody about and the Sat Nav can’t locate the service road and is repeatedly telling me to go to indicated route. Well lady let me tell you, if I could find the indicated route I would go there. 3mph and totally lost 200 yards from the hire company. I now have a monster truck right up my rear bumper and he very kindly starts blowing his horn. It is 11 at night, I am lost, I am tired, I am just a bit nervous and some good ole boy is just giving me a friendly welcome.

He passes and I follow him. It doesn’t really matter where, as I know the satellite will kick in once we get to a major thoroughfare. So I follow him into the staff car park. Brilliant. Genius manoeuvre.  Well I manage to extricate myself from the staff car park with directions to get onto the main drag and start pootling down the freeway. This is more like it. At one point I even unclench my right hand from the steering wheel and turn the radio on. The thin layer of sweat on my top lip starts to cool as the moment of stress evaporates.

Then we reach the first toll booth. Bugger. I forgot to take my wallet out of my coat which is in the boot. So I get out and people start hooting. Great. Pay the toll. Thin layer of sweat returns. Knuckles white, whole body stiff as a board. By the third toll I have mastered the whole thing and by the time I pull into my motel in Framingham I am calm.

The motel is a Red Roof establishment and it is a throwback to the Starsky and Hutch era of motels. I am too tired to care as I dump my bags down and go to sleep. Tomorrow I will start caring again but then tomorrow I will probably stick to the indicated route.

[nirvana]

I've been to Framingham so there - careful doing the leaf peeping and all that

Love the idea you followed the guy into the staff park :-)

[Snatiramas]

I am due to be in Framingham for a couple of days and in the middle a hugely important meeting. The weather is grey but warm and the countryside is honestly staggeringly beautiful. The fall in Massachusetts is a just a riot of colour, a myriad of reds and browns.

Framingham feels like a middle class town that is fully engaged in following the American Dream and doing okay whilst doing it. Lots of nice eateries, smart shops, lovely looking properties, relatively new cars. A bit too sanitized for my taste. Well everything is sanitized apart from The Red Roof motel. To be honest it is a bit dirty. The curtains don’t keep the light out and I am pretty sure that some of the people staying here are long term unemployed or homeless.

I decide to make the most of my time and spend as much time as possible researching electronic and IT retailers. I go to Staples, Best Buy, Office Depot but eventually end up at my favourite no money fun a book store. It is such a pity that this is a dying breed of retail outlet. I can spend hours in a bookstore but limit myself to a quick twenty minutes. I fear that the next generation will not have the feeling of opening a book on the first page. Somehow reading a book starting on the first screen just does not feel as good. The trees are probably happier mind.

Quick as a flash I am loading myself back into my entry level Daewoo, oh sorry Chevrolet, to head back to Logan International. This car is nothing but awful. Small, slow, automatic and when they said entry level they weren’t kidding. Manual winders, key door locks with no central locking. It is as though I have been transported back to a time when the biggest argument was about who is going to get out of their chair to change the channel on the TV.

It is Saturday morning and I am about to spend the whole of the day flying across the USA from Boston to San Francisco using one of life’s more tortuous routes. The key to US Scareways cheap pricing is that every flight seems to have to go through their hub in Charlotte. For this journey it is a bit like driving from London to Leeds via Ipswich. But the pricing was so cheap and I had little else to do so it made perfect sense. Well as luck would have it I start speaking to a local couple from Charlotte who are absolutely lovely and we talk London, England, America, books, flying, politics.  The trips to the US are really teaching me about how being open to a situation and opportunity to meet new people, always leads to a more fascinating time than just sitting and reading a book.

So when you are out and about and have the opportunity to smile at somebody and say hello might I recommend you give it a try.

[Claw75]

great stuff Snat, as always.

visiting New England in the autumn has been on my list for many years, but still remains unticked. 

[trafficjam]

great stuff Snat, as always.

Agree great read