Touched down in Vegas for the annual Work Trip last night. Normally I’d fly Jet Blue — the legroom, the TVs, the chipper crew — but opted for American to save my ailing company a few shekels.
American whacked me (well, my company) $15 to check a bag, which means almost no one checks a bag, which makes for zero room in the overhead racks.
Same as I’m physically incapable of sleeping on metro-north, I cant really sleep on planes either. Jim Carrey and his Yes Man film did everything they could to help me sleep (as did a too cold $6 mini bottle of Shiraz), but no luck.
NBC controlled all the inflight entertainment, which meant you were treated to essentially an NBC all star team on the screen before and after the film — Leno showing off his cars, Roker yapping about something, Conan pitching his new Tonight gig. Just when I started to feel like the plane would never actually land (usually around the 3 hr mark), the in-flight entertainment coughed up an episode of The Office we’d somehow never seen — must’ve been one of those times we thought we had the DVR set to go.
It was a fairly old one, where Dwight and Angela break up, Jim and Pam stay at Dwight’s agri-tourism B&B (“Beets Motel”–genius), and Dwight’s kooky mute cousin Mose gets a lot of screen time. It was just enough to get me to the blessed “Ladies and gentlemen, we’re preparing our descent.”
Got my first ride in on the tram last night from the Hilton to the convention center. The train was almost empty — apparently people prefer standing in line for 30 minutes for a cab. A middle aged couple with Liverpool accents got on at the first stop at the Sahara, near the Stratosphere. When we passed the Hilton and the giant picture of Barry Manilow, the woman broke into a few bars of “I Can’t Smile Without You.”
Definitely more entertaining than “Yes Man.”
I’m new at this and trying to figure it out. I am an ex-pat Westchesterite (Harlem Div. and New Haven commuter) and an old rider of the LIRR “Cannonballs” to the Hamptons. Check out the MTA / LIRR site. They are having a contest to name two retired GE 150-hp locomotives. I entered and suggested “Joseph Rutigliano” and “Edward Koerber”, the two humps that had their pictures in the NYT for the Railroad Retirement Act scam. Old Shelberian
Can’t sleep on Metro North? You just don’t drink enough. I would, sometimes of a Saturday morning, wake up in the yard at North White Plains, streched out in a laying-over coach. Would have been embarrasing, if anyone saw me. Would have some breakfast (Miller Lite) at the adjacent diner and go search for my vehicle. The New haven was scary! Could miss Rye and end up in the Nutmeg State. Sure beats flying!
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Hey! Question: can y’all stil smoke on the trains? I have been away too long (an extra thirty years in the army, so I dunno). I always grabbed the “tail-gunner” (engineer’s/motorman’s) seat at the tail end of the MU train. Cool!, especially when we stopped at intermediate stations. The scenery seemed to come at you. Just an optical illusion, but I don’t know why. Never got to ride in the front of the MUs. Dunno why, but I was too timid to ask. I did ride in the baggage car of some 4000-series MUs. I, as a kid, worked in construction and thought I was too dirty to ride with the ‘hoi-palloi’. That was in the late ’50s, and I often sat on a “rough box” of remains, making their final journey. I stopped that practice when a couple of baggage agents got shot, while standing in the door, traveling thru the Bronx.