Good morning all you happy people in internet land.  Today I am going to try and catch up on sleep, since I have not really been sleeping well in a foreign bed.  Additionally it would be nice to make some progress on my “How To Rift” series… and since I have nothing but time to kill until we fly out of here Thursday…  it might be the perfect time to do it.  I feel like I just need a chill day to recuperate from the travel, since I have been operating at roughly 5 am on my body’s internal clock.

A Wild Lummy

The highlight of yesterday without a doubt was meeting up with a longtime gaming friend Atonal/Lummy.  I’ve played with him off and on in various games since the original Everquest.  So I have literally known him over a decade, but never thought we would actually meet face to face.  There is sometimes awkwardness when you meet someone for the first time after knowing them for years online.  So I suggested we meet up for lunch, since that in my experience is about the perfect amount of interactivity.

Not knowing the area… I asked him to suggest a place… so we met up at the Park Pub in Troy, NY.  The food was phenomenal.  At his suggestion I had the peanut butter and jelly wings…  which I was slightly skeptical at first but man they were amazing.  They were unbelievably messy… and there is no way to eat something like that without getting copious amounts of sauce in your beard…  but amazing nonetheless.  Additionally I had green bean fries… that I had heard of before but never actually had… or at least not had in this fashion.

We hung out there and talked for awhile.  We shot the shit about games and the like… and various fish out of water experiences I was having here in New York.  Afterwards I roamed around Troy a little bit before making a beeline back to the hotel.  I had to get back so I could pick my wife up from the conference for the day and run around.  He mentioned getting together today to catch a single A ball game, but honestly I am just too dead to do much of anything constructive today.  Would have been enjoyable, but I doubt he wants me falling asleep and snoring in the ballpark.

No Place Like Home

The longer I am here, the more I realize just how lucky I have it in Tulsa, and just how amazing that town is.  I always assumed that the Albany area was a much larger market than Tulsa…  but each time I search Google to see if they have a this or a that…  they lack anything that Tulsa lacks…  and also a lot of the things that Tulsa does have.  Additionally when we have gone into stores… they seem to carry far less than the ones we have near us.  It is just an odd mental shift for me… I went into this little adventure thinking I would be going to a much larger market… and realize now that they are quite a bit behind Tulsa in most aspects.

By my friends assessment, we are essentially staying in the slums of the Albany area… and this has been an odd adjustment as well.  The hotel we are staying in is rather nice, but the area surrounding us is very much not.  Each night we have heard gunshots, and last night there was what sounded like a major firefight concluded by some screams.  This is all definitely not something we are used to… two times now we have seen someone get arrested in the vicinity of where we were.  Last night in Latham we watched a guy behind us get pulled over… 3 cop cars, two cops with guns on him…  as he surrendered a gun on the roof of his car and was handcuffed all while waiting on a traffic light to turn green.

I can’t say I am necessarily frightened by any of this… the reality may not have fully sunken in.  Its like watching some surreal show playing out in front of me.  The only thing I am afraid of however is that I will hit one of the idiots that keeps darting out into the street to cross the major thoroughfares down here.  I have damned near hit 3 men on bikes… and come close to hitting 4 or 5 kids as they darted out into traffic.  This effect is the worst in the area near our hotel… and as we move away from it, the problem lessens.  But we have yet to really find anything I would say is the “good” area of town.

That has been an odd concept for me… we are in this area surrounded on all sides by untamed land essentially.  But I have yet to find any “new” construction… nothing resembling the looming housing editions we are used to, or the shiny and new shopping centers.  Everything seems to be built on top of essentially existing areas.  Last night we roamed from all around the metro area and made a circuit between Albany, Troy, and Schenectady…  and while we found a lot more of the same thing we had been finding before… we have not really found what I would call suburbs, or at least not what we are used to in Oklahoma.

Homesick

Maybe I am just a bit homesick.  Normally when we travel it is to some new and magical place, filled with new sights and interesting new attractions.  This delays the fact that I really don’t like travelling much, and that would rather just be in my comfy home.  It eventually hits… that feeling of “man I just want to be home”, but it usually takes awhile to get there.  Here in the Albany metro… there are not that many new things to experience.  While I am still having fun and enjoying myself… I will definitely be ready to go home to my house and my animals… and my bed.

Downtown Albany was extremely majestic… but the problem we keep running into is that every place we would like to take photos at… is either in a horrible area of town, has copious no trespassing signs… or there is no real good place to park and take a photo.  So while the views downtown were amazing… there was no real place to stop that could even vaguely take in the view.  All these old industry giant era buildings look more like castles than they do civic structures.  I guess that is part of it as well… there are so many remnants of past greatness that it is a bit sad to see the state the town is in now.

Everywhere you go there are signs of just how amazing a place this area used to be.  I took a trip up to Rotterdam and they have this massive factory… bigger than I have ever seen.  But the town surrounding it is this giant sprawling slum.  I guess I am saddened in a way but a lack of civic pride on an epic scale in these areas.  It feels like they have such amazing heritage, but have grossly squandered them.  Maybe this comes from the fact that in Tulsa we have been on a major downtown revitalization program, and every inch of these past structures is being reclaimed and renovated by businesses.  So our cool old stuff is becoming cool new stuff on a nearly monthly basis.

Wrapping Up

Well it is just about time for me to run my wife into the conference.  Going to try and find some breakfast and then come back to the hotel… crash for a bit and maybe work on the “How To Rift” series.  I hope you all are having a great day… and I hope none of the Albany area readers are now pissed at me over my assessment of the town.  I will be thankful to be heading home on Thursday… because I miss my place in the world.

Funny how I am on vacation… but I am still getting up at five thirty in the morning.  In this case it is so that I can take my wife to her conference.  Quite honestly I went to bed pretty early last night, so I am more awake than I would normally be at 5:30.  Additionally I have already finished getting ready for the morning… so I thought I would have enough time to knock out a blog post.

Search for Food

So far Upstate New York is vastly different than anything I would have expected.  Firstly we have found what seems to be a residential wasteland, with housing everywhere you can see…  but no restaurants and very few stores.  We ate breakfast around 4 am yesterday… and had a stick of beef jerky in Chicago O’Hare…  but other than that we had not had anything at all to eat when we got here around 4-5 pm.  As we started to roam around town we were absolutely ravenous.

We expected to drive around through the residential areas and eventually find some newer shopping developments which have familiar food options.  This was the theory… but after about 2 hours of driving around we really found nothing.  Finally we found a shopping center with a Target, Lowes, and various other big box stores…  and in it they had a Ruby Tuesday, Panera, Taco Bell and a Five Guys.  This is quite literally the first places we had found to eat that were recognizable in any fashion.

We opted for Ruby Tuesday… and while grossly overpriced it was tasty and familiar enough.  The way this area is laid out just boggles the mind.  I was expecting what seems to be the ubiquitous development model everywhere else I have been in the united states… of commercial areas along the major roads with residential areas between.  I feel like I need to spend some time looking at Google maps trying to get a lay of the land by air.

Another nuisance we have discovered is that apparently this part of the state does not believe in road signs… or at least not well marked ones.  Additionally the same street will change names numerous times…  so on one side of an intersection it will be one name… but on the other side of the intersection something completely different.  The entire area feels like some giant city planning rube goldberg machine…  and we are the little ball bearing making its way through it.

Why Albany?

Rowan asked the question as a comment on my blog yesterday, but I guess I have never really clearly explained why the heck I am in Upstate New York in the first place.  I usually don’t give a lot of details about my wife on my blog, just as a courtesy because she works in a profession that is always under scrutiny.  This coming school year she will be tag-team teaching a Forensics Science class at her school, whereas she does the mathematics instruction and she teams up with a science teacher.  We are here in Albany for a Forensics Science workshop, and the other teacher was supposed to be attending with her. 

However at the last minute they backed out… and I did not want my wife having to navigate Albany completely by herself.  So I took the time off and we are trying to make a vacation of it.  While this may not be the most touristy destination we have been to… there are definitely some interesting things to look at.  Our hotel is in Schenectady, and just down from it is a really cool downtown area full of interesting buildings.  We are hoping to have a few nice days to wander around down there and take photos.

So far however it has been overcast and rainy.  Apparently New York State rain means serious business.  We were driving around yesterday when the sky opened up on us… and remember…  I am from Oklahoma…  we are used to thunderstorms…  but these were literally some of the largest rain drops I have ever seen.  Everything went from clear to flash flood conditions in moments.  I just kept driving because quite literally I was afraid I would drown the car if I attempted to turn off the road.  Again I am no stranger to flash flooding… but this was pretty crazy… usually the clouds move off quickly but this one just seemed to hang over the top of us for a good thirty minutes.

Chicago O’Hare

I know I bitched about this one yesterday a bit… but I have to bring it up again.  My wife travels a lot during the summer, and as a result she has experienced most of the big airport hubs.  Chicago O’Hare is literally the first airport she has ever been in that did not have free WiFi.  It is complete crap that what gets touted as the nations busiest airport does not have free internet.  Hell even when we landed in Albany… they had free WiFi, and that Airport is hands down the most dysfunctional one I have ever experienced.

When we landed in Albany, the route to the baggage claim was rather contorted winding us through what felt like half the airport just to get to it.  When we arrived there seemed to be only one baggage carousel servicing any of the incoming flights.  This one area was trying to serve up luggage from 8-10 flights… quite honestly they were scrolling past on the monitor too fast for me to get a good count.  We waited and watched as luggage went past…  including bags for the rest of the passengers on the plane we just arrived on.

But we did not see our bag anywhere… and during this time I am going through my mind trying to figure out what we would need to do if we had a lost bag.  Once the crowd cleared… and quite literally it had been shoulder to shoulder as we waited for our bag…  I was able to look around the room.  Across the room I spotted our bag at the unclaimed luggage area.  I am guessing our luggage arrived on an earlier flight and was just sitting there waiting on us.  So the forty five minutes we spent standing around watching for it… were essentially useless… but I could not see across the room.

Wrapping Up

Well it is time for me to run my wife to the conference.  I hope you all have a great day.  I will likely be coming back to the hotel room to do some googling and try and find something to do during the day.  If all else fails I will just boot up Rift or Cube World and entertain myself just fine.  I find it funny that I have a ton of people on twitter and G+ but not a single person in this area so far.

This morning has been a pretty wild ride.  I am sitting in concourse F of the Chicago O’Hare airport with my combination camera/laptop bag on my lap as a table.  So far it is working pretty well.  I am trying to bang out this post before my battery dies.  The negative side effect of a gaming laptop is the fact that they have complete crap for battery life.  So long as I stay out of a game here is hoping that I can type fast enough to make it through… and then hopefully post it with the complimentary 30 minutes of free wifi access.

The Road Warrior

My wife travels all the time… and I did not really realize exactly what that meant until I watched her glide through the check in process of the airport.  For me this was a confusing and often times anxiety ridden experience… but for her she had everything ready at exactly the right moment when it was needed.  I have a brand new respect for her as she is able to navigate this world of cold steel and fluorescent lights.

I guess thought in the grand scheme of things it makes a lot of sense.  For the last six years or so she has been travelling to at least 3 different conferences each summer.  Anyone who feels that educators get the summer off can rightly go to hell.  My wife spends almost every moment from when she gets out in May until when she goes back in August preparing for the next year.  While some educators might rest on their laurels and recycle the same curriculum each year… she essentially rewrites her class work from scratch over the summer months factoring in new things she learns from these various workshops and conferences.

I feel very much out of my element sitting here in an airport.  I have entered someone else’s work.  All airports seem to look the same to me.  They are all the same kind of cold shiny exteriors and remind me in many ways of most hospitals.  The only variable seems to be the size… and jesus christ is O’Hare huge.  We had to cross three concourses to prime ourselves for our connecting flight.  I will admit this is the first time I have used a moving sidewalk…  and they are pretty amazing.  Right now I feel like a caveman experiencing fire for the first time.

The Puddle Jumper

Even thought I have lost roughly fifty pounds… I was not quite ready for the reality that is riding a puddle jumper.  I was able to get an extension belt… which seemed overwhelmingly too large…  but it helped get the extra inch or two needed to make the two connect.  The hardest part about the flight for me at least was trying to cram my 6’4” height legs between the tiny rows.  I really cannot recall the designation for any certainty… but I believe it was a CSL 700.  Whatever it was it was tiny.

I am extremely thankful however for the fact that each row was only two seats wide.  This let my wife and I forcibly cuddle… without the awkwardness that is trying to ride with a stranger in an extremely confined space.  The thing that I found extremely bizarre was just how many people partook of what had to be an even smaller bathroom.  All flight long however there was a constant stream of people going back and forth between the sky-commode and their seats.  It got extremely awkward as this one guy was so insistent that he tried to squeeze past the beverage cart to get there.  

There is literally nothing that you could do to get me to use a bathroom on an airplane.  Even if I was sick beyond reason… I would find a way of mustering the strength to keep holding it in.  I brought a drink on the plane but did not really consume much of it out of abject fear of needing to go.  The bathroom was so small that when the flight attendant at the back of the plane sat down… his chair completely blocked its entrance.  On the positive side… the flight attendant setting between us was a pretty cool guy from St. Louis.

The Rest of the Trip

So far the trip has been thankfully uneventful.  I have to say from the air… Chicago looks just like every other city I have ever seen…  just much much larger.  Somewhere along the flight path… I swear there was a building that looked just like a classic playstation.  I will have to Google maps it to try and figure out what the hell it was.  We have a three hour layover here in Chicago, and hopefully the plane to Albany will not be extremely packed.  We look to be departing from an even smaller terminal… so my fear is that it will mean a smaller plane.  I wish I could just detach my legs… that is probably the only way I will ever fit comfortably between the tiny rows of seats.

When we were waiting at the terminal in Tulsa… I experienced what was probably the worst possible choice of television to be watching.  All morning long it was nothing but nonstop coverage about the plane crash yesterday.  I could tell it was having an extremely negative effect on a few of the passengers.  There was a lady in quiet tears as she sat there obviously physically nervous about getting on a plane.  Her boyfriend took her away on a walk through the concourse to try and calm her down… and she returned about ten minutes later and was no longer crying… so it appeared to have worked.

Additionally I got to see probably the least tasteful display of public affection.  Seated across from me was a couple that was just barely keeping out of each others pants.  I am sure they appreciated the confined spaces of the airplane… because for the 45 minutes or so we sat there she crawled up on the guys lap a few times.  I have to say that is the most interesting thing about the airport…  watching the behaviors of other people. 

As a result I don’t think our three hour layover here in Chicago will be too bad.  They bill themselves as the busiest airport in the United States… and as a result there is a constant stream of humanity flowing past me as I sit here and type.  It is pretty easy to play guessing games… wondering where each person is headed.  Some of them happy… some of them obviously not…  but all of them going somewhere different. 

Wrapping Up

Going to wrap this up and attempt to get on the WiFi and post it.  Here is hoping that the rest of our trip goes relatively un-eventful.  I am looking forward to being done with the trip…  I like going places… but I hate the act of travelling.  As a result I tend to go nowhere.  Hopefully you are having a good Sunday morning… and that you did not have to get up at 3 am like I did.  Looking forward to exploring Albany and finding what nifty things i can discover there.  If you have any suggestions… I would love to hear them.

Addendum

I will rant about this more tomorrow I am certain… but I was not able to get WiFi access at Chicago O’Hare.  So While I typed this up there I am just not able to post it from my hotel room.  We are safe and sound in Schenectady New York, and just about to go exploring.  If you guys know of anything we must see in the area, please let me know!