Life in airports...

Sign number 27 that you fly way too much: Southwest has switched terminals in the Fort Myers airport. Given that I knew every inch of Concourse D from literally days spent there this is a huge change. Even more important is that this new concourse has a Burger King in it. I have never been so happy to see a Burger King in my life. I don't think anyone has ever been happy to see a Burger King before but finally I have a place to get a decent meal. Ok, not a decent meal but a food based product that is theoretically fit for human consumption.

One of the things that I am going to be writing about over the next few weeks is my drive to become healthier and eating better is obviously one of those portions and I wish I could tell you how to eat helathy at the airport. I really do fly roughly once a week and have been doing so for several years now and that means many meals at airports. The best option that I can usually find is a decent sandwich (Potbelly at Midway is usually a pretty good option) but if I don't have the time or if the smell of fries are too tempting then it is off to McDonalds or whatever other fast food option is available.

It also doesn't help that you can't seemingly buy a regular sized candy bar any more. Everything always seem to be "King Size" or "Share Size" or much bigger than any one person should eat. Since I am usually travelling by myself this means that I end up downing way too much junk food as it is the only thing around. Not good for someone who is trying to keep an eye out on how much he weighs at any point in time.

Here is my best advice about staying healthy in the airport: never take the moving walkway. Think about it, if you are not in a massive hurry where you need every second in order to make your flight the moving walkway does nothing other than annoy you. Walk on it and you are guaranteed to end up behind a group of people who are just standing there like cows on the way to the slaughterhouse. You expect to see a large man swinging a sledgehammer at the end of the line. For people with health problems I completely understand, I just see too many people who are just lazy. So if you just walk alongside it you find that you are going at about the same pace and you are getting a but more exercise. Not a lot but at least it is something. And that is what I am going to talk about tomorrow: the idea of just trying to be a little more active than you were the day before.

The only way to fly

Sorry for the missed posts the past few days. Between the holiday weekend and travel for work I have been away from the computer a bit more than usual. I’m also taking the week off from the random CDs for the week because they mainly exist for my drive back and forth to work and holiday weeks play havoc on my schedule. I end up spending most of my weekend driving around trying to get to the end of a disc I bought in 1997. At some point I need a break from the musical tastes of my early twenties. Sorry for those who missed my view of the world. I’ll try to make it up to you.

This question hit me today as I was travelling. If you spend as much time in airports as I do you will invariably go past dozens of kiosks selling things like Rosetta Stone language tapes or receipt organizers or magic pens. In all of my years of flying I have never bought anything from one of these stands. In fact, I can’t recall anyone ever standing at one of those stands in the process of buying something. All I ever see are bored, downtrodden sales clerks who must spend their entire day looking at people who ignore them as they rush to flights to go on vacation. It must be the cruelest job in the world. I can’t imagine what it must be like if they are on commission. I would hate it if the Magic Pen guy needs to make ten sales a day in order to make his mortgage payment. Maybe we should all buy something from them next time we are at the airport. Let’s brighten up their day.

The other aspect of flying that I want to get into tonight is the fact that today I got to try out my brand new Amazon Kindle. Yes, it took some cajoling and glowing reviews by people who read even more books than I do but I have broken down and purchased a Kindle after spending a decade dismissing the electric book market. Now I love the way a book feels in my hand and I will always be working my way through some “real” books but I have to say that the Kindle kicks all kinds of ass.

First off, the form factor is amazing. Incredibly thin and light with the next page buttons precisely where they should be. It still feels natural in that you think you are holding a book as opposed to a computer screen. The electronic ink is so much nicer than reading a computer screen and because of the storage on it I no longer have to have a backpack filled with books. It is incredibly easy to download new books and I have to admit that it makes reading fun. For some reason I want to read more books on it just because of the interface.

It’s not perfect though but most of my critiques are nitpicky. Worst one is that not all books, especially new releases, are available. That is a matter of price points and the conversion from physical to electronic media that will be worked out eventually. I’m more annoyed by the fact that when footnotes appear you have to scroll through the page and click on the footnote, which sends you to the end of the document to read the footnote with no easy way to get back to where you were. Given that the authors I like use a lot of informative and humorous footnotes this can become very annoying very quickly. I can’t imagine what it would be like reading David Foster Wallace’s “Infinite Jest” on the Kindle. On the plus side you don’t have to lug around a 1,000 page book but managing the 100 pages of footnotes would be a nightmare. Finally, it might just be the book I’m reading but I hate the way the font prints the letter I. Just strikes me as wrong. But when you are complaining about fonts you are basically admitting that you have such high standards that basic human emotions are unobtainable.

So thumbs up on the Kindle and say hi to your local Rosetta Stone salesperson.

4th Best Album of the Decade: Arcade Fire “Funeral” (2004): There is so much one can say about this album. There is the fact that the entire album is about death and loss and grief and ultimately rebirth. There is the fact that the band attacks music from a unique angle: not just the usual art school kids doing music but playing with instrumentation and roles as well. And there is the fact that the band is pure emotion at all times. Watch the video. It is just all out for the entire song. No wonder hockey teams used it as their entrance music.

Departing and arriving

(Ooh, I am so pissed at YouTube for disabling embedding of this one video. I spent all day thinking up a bit about it. I’ll explain later in the week if I can’t figure out how to do it the way I want to.)

So I had to burn something like five hours in an airport on Friday. That wasn’t entirely my plan going into the trip but while Kansas City is conveniently located in the center of the nation almost no one ever flies there directly. Thus I had a choice of getting a convenient flight and being redirected through Atlanta or flying directly and I chose the direct flight since it would take roughly the same amount of time. That still meant I had an afternoon to burn in an airport.

I probably should have asked for advice before the trip as to how to kill that much time at an airport. Now as an experienced traveler I am pretty accustomed to spending a lot of time sitting and waiting. I of course explored the airport bar, which sadly was not nearly as exciting as it should be. First off, I had the worst Miller Lite I think I have ever tasted. This is quite disconcerting given that it was a bottle. It must not have aged well or something because this was just awful. Plus, I had to sit there and watch ESPN coverage of Brett Favre (retire already, jerk) and that wasn’t making things nicer.

Since I figured that I should try something different I did eat at a Chick-Fil-A for the first time ever. My verdict: it is a chicken sandwich. I have yet to understand the great praise that I have heard for the franchise. Yes, it was tasty and surprisingly good for fast food but the lines I’ve seen at the drive thru would seem to indicate that the sandwiches possess some sort of magical qualities. As if the secret of life is hidden in between the buns. Maybe it has something to do with the pickles. I really can’t tell you.

I did finish the book I was reading, “Then We Came to the End”. It is a rather interesting read and I had heard a lot of praise for it, which I understand but that doesn’t mean I enjoyed it. The book is about an advertising office during corporate downsizing, so obviously I was relating very well. It was funny and insightful but what makes the book a critical darling also made it a very challenging read. The book is written in the royal we. Meaning there is no narrator per se, just someone saying we and us all the time. As a result there is no central character and while there is a consistent point of view you can’t really identify with it. In terms of writing craft it is an astounding piece of work. But as a reader I could really have done with a focal point.

With that said I am desperately searching for more books to read. Please send some suggestions my way. Anything and everything is fair game but I am really looking for some new fiction to read. Nothing too deep or heavy but I could really do with a few new authors.

Best of 120 Minutes: It’s Sunday so I might as well post The Sundays. Sigh. I could listen to Harriet Wheeler’s voice all night.