The Falkirk Wheel

In case you haven't figured this out already, I post links to YouTube when I can't think of anything about which to write. Sorry, but I really do lead a dull life.

Anyway, the Scottish football season ended last week and my team, Falkirk FC managed to avoid relegation from the Scottish Premier League by the skin of their teeth. You might think I'm setting my goals rather low if that's something to celebrate but if you'd seen their position in the league table just a few weeks ago, it's nothing short of miraculous. Even better, in the last game of the year, they played the league champions off the field in the Scottish Cup Final before valiantly, albeit predictably, getting beaten.

So, in honor of Falkirk Football Club, here's a video of Falkirk's most famous (OK, pretty much only) local landmark, The Falkirk Wheel.

The what? Well, it's the world's largest boat lift and it allows boats to be hoisted from a canal to another 24 metres (79 ft) above it. This is roughly equivalent to the height of an eight story building. Wikipedia explains it better than I can.

The Falkirk Wheel

So here's the thing in action. It's a very, very cool piece of engineering.

The Colorado Trail ~ Day 6

Kenosha Pass to Jefferson Creek Road
Distance: 6 miles
Elevation Gain: ? ft


Just realized, I never came back to add the update. Once again, I was struck by the the Colorado Trail jinx and I'm not much further along the trail than I was before.

This is my 4th attempt at this stretch, but the first time I've actually made it onto the trail. As it's 33 miles, I figure 3 days, so previously, I've taken a Friday off with the intention of knocking it out over a weekend. Each time I did this, a storm would blow in and either during or right before the planned hike. I'm not an experienced enough winter hiker to even want to attempt that (it isn't simple wimpy-ness, it's dangerous) so I've ended up given it a miss.

For the last 2 months though, other than some wet, cold weekends the winter has been glorious and I figured any remaining snow would be above tree line and easily navigable. I didn't want to wait 'too' long or we'd end up with the brain-baking temperatures I experienced last time. So, as I had a whole week off, I figured I could fool Ma Nature into thinking I was at work and she'd send us some decent weather. I decided to make a 4 day trip out of it, with a shorter first day so that I could camp part way up the biggest hill of the hike, rather than attempting to get over it one go. After a picnic lunch at the trail head, away I went.

And you know what? I felt darn good. I haven't done any long hikes since The World's Most Irritating Dog™ hurt her foot and I was a bit worried about my conditioning but no problems at all. Sure, my pack felt heavy but there was none of that screaming agony ohmydoGIcan'ttakeanotherstep pain of 2007 and I was averaging almost 3 miles an hour which will do me fine. Took a break at around 3:30pm and began the climb up Georgia Pass (2,000 feet of altitude gain over 6 miles taking me almost to 12.000 feet above sea level), which I had been dreading but at this point was feeling so good that I was even wondering if I could pass my day's goal of 9 total miles and continue over the top after all. The only thing that was really holding me back was the late start (this was going to be a short day, remember?).

But then I hit the snow. While still in the trees. Completely covering the trail to the point where I couldn't see where it went. I floundered around for about an hour, often sinking up to me crotch (quite an experience in shorts, even on a hot day) before finally conceding defeat and heading back down. There were plenty of awesome places to camp for the night and the next day, I'd be able to hike back to the highway (about 6 miles away by dirt road) and call for a ride home. But then I figured I could make other plans for my week off and it might be easier if I got home sooner rather than later. So, I ended up at home late that night.

Altogether, about 14 miles hiked, although without too much altitude gain and the following morning my shoulders, legs and feet were a little tender. But not bad really. If I were still on the trail, I think I could have hiked a fair bit again. Looks like the winter hikes, and the irregular trips to the gym have done some good after all. I'm confident I can knock off the remainder of this segment in 2 days, especially if say, I do the 3 miles to my planned camp on a Friday evening after work. I just need to find the convenient window of weather and do it then.

It's going to be a piece of cake.

The Colorado Trail ~ The Next Bit

So in June 2007, I set out on the first leg of The Colorado Trail, a 480 mile long distance footpath winding from Denver to Durango. I covered the first 5 days, starting in Denver and finishing at Kenosha Pass, not all that far from where I live. And if you read The Gunsmoke Files at the time, you'll recall I didn't really enjoy it all that much.

The scenery was awesome of course - this is Colorado after all. But the temperatures hovered around the high 90's (high 30's for those of you reading in Centipede) all week, which sucked a lot of the fun out of it. And, in case you didn't know this, the ground between Denver and Kenosha Pass slopes up. Sometimes quite dramatically. And my pack was too bloody heavy and my muscles weren't there and my back was giving me problems and...OK, you get the picture. I was glad when it was over.

But kind of like how no woman would go through childbirth a second time, if nature didn't make them forget how bad the first one was, I've had almost 2 years for those bad memories to fade. So tomorrow, I'm setting out on the next leg. Just 3 and a bit days this time, from Kenosha to Breckenridge. Only 33 miles which sounds easy enough. Just as long as I ignore all those contours, and the words "Georgia Pass", and those tiny numbers that look suspiciously like "12,000". Feet, that is. Above sea level.

Ah, how hard can it be? This is going to be a piece of cake.

Hummingbird

The first hummingbirds of the year have shown up, looking hungry. So, I spent my lunch hour filling and hanging feeders. Hope the little buggers are grateful.

Sometimes I get impatient
but she cools me without words
and she comes so sweet and so plain
my hummingbird and have you heard
that I thought my life had ended
but I find that it’s just begun
cause she gets me where I live
I’ll give all I have to give
I’m talking about that hummingbird
oh she’s little and she loves me
too much for words to say
when I see her in the morning sleeping
she’s little and she loves me
to my lucky day
hummingbird don’t fly away

When I’m feeling wild and lonesome
she knows the words to say
and she gives me a little understanding
in her special way
and I just have to say
in my life I loved a woman
because she’s more than I deserve
and she gets me where I live
I’ll give all I have to give
I’m talking about that hummingbird
oh she’s little and she loves me
too much for words to say
when I see her in the morning sleeping
she’s little and she loves me
to my lucky day
hummingbird don’t fly away

Cruelty Free Fishing

We've been enjoying a run of beautiful weather here in Colorado. Not on the weekends obviously, that's when it snows but whenever I've been shackled to my desk, it's been gorgeous. So, when the quitting time whistle went today, I loaded up my fishing gear, set off down to the lake and slung a line in the water for the first time this year. As usual, I didn't catch anything - the fish were just laughing at me, but as I've done chuff all else of interest this week, I figured that's a good excuse to re-hash an old Gunsmoke File from the archives.

~ Cruelty Free Fishing
Raven is competent at most things and does have some genuine experience as a fisherwoman under her belt so when she offered to get me started with my angling career, I accepted with grace.

I’ve had all the gear for some months now; since the beginning of last winter in fact. However as I’ve explained, standing up to me goolies in ice water doesn’t appeal and I’ve been depressingly busy for the last few weekends so here we are at the end of May and I’ve yet to get the stuff wet. The traditional holiday weekend rain didn’t appear to be materializing and the lake was still open despite a brief-but-nasty local wildfire so after a quick lunch, I loaded rod, reel, tackle box, fishing vest, cooler and Wiley the dog into the car and set off for Raven’s house.

The first step was to load line onto reel and as I don’t recall experiencing any challenges loading line onto reel the last time I owned a fishing rod, some (clears throat) years ago; I suspect it was already on when I bought it. I assumed this would be easy but experienced my first pang of concern when Raven’s SO, ‘storm took one look and said.

"Oh, you’ve bought one of those reels."

By "one of those reels" I learned he meant "open faced reels" whereby the line is wound onto the spindle with the aid of a wee hinged bar called a bail. A manly reel, as opposed to a "closed faced reel" where everything is enclosed – the type favored by amateurs and 7-year old girls.

One of those reels or not, we pushed on, emboldened by the assistance of the instruction book.

"Attach line to reel" it said. Well there you go – can’t get much more straightforward than that. So, attach line to reel we did and in no time Raven was winding furiously while I unrolled yard after yard of nylon thread from the spool. Everything was going swimmingly until we made the mistake of stopping to check our progress and for no reason at all, the line decided to spring back off the reel at a speed much greater than it had gone on. In less time than it takes to type, Raven was holding an armful of tangled twine and looking bewildered.

No matter, this gave me the chance to try out another piece of new equipment; a rather nifty pair of folding scissors and before long we had the snarl trimmed off.

"Before you unwind the remaining line and start over, this might be a good time to practice casting." Suggested ‘storm helpfully.

Good idea that, so after fastening a weight to the business end, we all made our way down off the deck to the open driveway.

"Watch me get it stuck in a tree now." I said; joking of course. The nearest tree was 50 feet away and obviously out of range. So, it was with some surprise I saw the line soar into its highest branches and secure itself there forever. Or at least, until the tree falls over for no amount of pulling, yanking or twisting would free the damn thing. I suspect some squirrel is still massaging the back of its head and wondering "What the hell was that?"

The day was slipping away but eventually we had a good length of line on the reel, along with a new weight and a hook and were bowling up the road to the lake. Quite sensibly, ‘storm decided to avoid any further involvement so it was just me, Wiley, Raven and of course, the fish. And most of the population of Colorado. Not only was most of the shoreline occupied, these people looked like they knew what they were doing. Anxious to find a spot where we could screw up without anyone noticing, we selected a place between the family with toddlers (no competition there) and the group of old folks with tons of gear and professional looking hats (maybe they would take pity and show us how to get started).

My first cast was a beaut. Way, way out over the lake almost beaning a duck in the process. You would think after a cast like that the fish would have been climbing over themselves to jump on the hook, but no, reeling in the line revealed that all I had caught was some straggly looking weed, which I suspect stuck just near the shore. Not to worry, I drew back and cast again. And again. And again. No fish.

As it turned out, that was the least of our worries. This darn line was making it clear it had no intention of remaining on the reel any longer than it had to and whenever the bail was open, it would spiral off into a ball of confusion. I eventually learned the art of snapping the bail closed as soon as the cast was complete, but not before several yards of line had sprung off and made friends with the nearby bushes. What a royal pain in the patoot that turned out to be and I was grateful to have Raven there to help me untangle things. I was less grateful to have Wiley there because the moment she saw us distracted, she would jump up and hop into the lake. She doesn’t smell too good at the best of times and wet she’s insufferable so we spent a lot of time yelling and causing chaos while the other anglers attempted to ignore us.

After a while you begin to wonder if you really want to catch a fish anyway. Let’s face it; fish are rather ugly creatures. It’s one thing if you're scuba diving on some tropical reef where they’re all psychedelically colored and cool looking, but their cold water cousins tend to have expressions that are invariably sour or grumpy looking. That or just plain angry. Maybe somebody should check why that is.

So we cast, and reeled in, cast and reeled in, untangled, cursed at the dog, tripped over and dropped things for the rest of the afternoon in blissful contentment. Remember the toddlers and the old folks? They spent their time reeling in fish after fish, with the youngters holding the lead until the end. Us? Well, we caught a lot of weeds, lost a lot of bait, accidentally threw the rod in the water on one cast and snarled somebody else’s line on another. Not the most successful fishing trip ever.

But who cares. There was leftover shepherd’s pie for tea.

On the Wrong End of a Dog Attack

It’s been almost two weeks now, and I’m still angry. Still angry that my sweet, docile and loving, albeit sometimes annoying dog got attacked by not one, but two Rottweilers and that I could do nothing to protect her. And I’m still absolutely bloody furious that the Rottweilers’ owner knew they were dangerous, but still let them run loose.

But you don’t know the story, so let’s go back to the beginning.

Sasha the dog and I went for a run at lunchtime a couple of weeks ago. It's a game I play every now and then, where I go wheezing round the neighborhood and convince myself that in just a few short weeks I'll be back to the full marathon-running peak of my youth. Then after 3 or 4 goes, I hurt myself, or my allergies kick in, or I have a hangover or something and it all gets put on hold for a while longer. However, this time things were progressing well, I was following a beginners plan from the Runners World web site and we’d been out a few times with no problems.

Until this fateful day when we were grunting our way up a short hill and were set upon by 2 Rottweilers. I'm not just talking snarling and growling, the fucking things were out for blood. They made no attempt to harm me, but they were both savagely attacking Sasha, biting her repeatedly on the neck, head and hindquarters, one going for her throat, the other for her tail.

And of course, because I was just out running, I wasn’t carrying a walking stick, or a gun or a machete with which to beat them off. It’s many years since I played football, but I can still pack a kick. However, running shoes don’t carry much of an impact and my pounding wasn’t even registering. A month or so earlier, I would have been walking in my steel toes, and I guarantee they would have felt that, but no such luck this time. Now as a reminder, I'm an animal lover, dogs in particular but I'm not kidding, if I'd been able to find a stick or a decent sized rock I would happily have beaten these bastards into piles of mush.

The attack seemed to go on for hours, although of course, it was only a few minutes. Finally, they broke away and I realized that was only because their owner was calling. So, I stomped over and confronted him in his driveway. He was all apologies, and seemed genuinely horrified. Among other things, he promised he would "have them put down today". I wasn't really expecting that but we talked for a few more minutes and I asked him if he didn't have a fenced dog run for them.

It turns out he does but get this...lets them out for a few minutes a day “so they can run around the yard”. When I asked if this meant the dogs had escaped from their fenced run today, he explained that no, he let them out in the open. Uhm yeah, run around the yard and 200 yards up the road where they can attack a dog that just happened to be passing by on a lead.

At the time, Sasha didn’t appear to be badly hurt, but as she was bleeding from the ear, I told him I'd take her to the vet to be checked and he said he'd pay the bill. OK, fair enough, we swapped names, shook hands and I set off home. Except on the way, I was met by a lady who had seen the attack from her deck and had come out in her car to look for me. She explained that to her knowledge, this had happened twice before. In both cases he'd been very apologetic and had promised to euthanize the dogs. She told me she was afraid to walk her own dog in case the two of them came after her.

So, back home and on the blower to Animal Control. Sure enough, they'd had 2 complaints before but in one of them, the complainant hadn't wanted to sign an official statement, so there was nothing they could do. The neighbor lady had already called them however, and had told them she'd be happy to do so this time. Which means that between us, we might be able to make sure something gets done. The story is he's facing a day in court, a big fine, whatever the definition of 'big' is, and will have a restraining order put on his dogs. So, if he doesn't euthanize them (and there's no reason to think he will), but they get out again, they're toast whether they attack anyone or not. He'll also be legally required to compensate me for the vet's bill.

And onto that. The ear puncture was through to the cartilage, and required stitches. Not only that, the vet found numerous other puncture wounds and bruising on her flanks and body. Oh and one eye's bloodshot where they must have nailed her in the face. She ended up being shaved in so many placed she looks like she has the mange, and for a day or two, she did nothing but lie around, looking very sorry for herself. Fortunately, she has long hair, particularly around the neck and that saved things from being much, much worse. Without that, I really think they would have killed her.

Naturally, when Animal Control visited the owner, he refused to let them on his property and is claiming that he has no money and can’t pay the vet bill after all. I suppose it must be tough to get by in a $3/4 million house with 4 cars in the drive.

But we’re not done yet. The Animal Control lady called at the house a couple of days ago to pick up my signed statement, and told me that since Sasha, the Rottweilers have attacked yet another dog. And still this clown lets them run loose. But such is the law, there’s little Animal Control can actually do prior to his court date. Which isn’t until July. Do you wonder how many more dogs they’ll attack before then?

The good news is, Sasha appears to have bounced back quite nicely, and once the stitches come out in a couple of days, she should be none the worse for wear. Which is good, because while I may refer to her as The World’s Most Irritating Dog™, I do love her.

School Dinners

Bad memories of school dinners still affect the eating habits of many adults, a survey suggests.

Many still refuse to eat certain foods or even look at them after being force-fed at school, according to the poll of over 2,000 BBC Good Food magazine readers and users of the website Friends Reunited.

Half of those questioned who cited school meat as a problem had become vegetarian as a result of their canteen nightmares.

BBC: School dinners haunt adults

I can’t say I’ve ever had nightmares about school dinners, but it’s certainly true that I don’t remember them with any great fondness. While most of the lunch time trauma I experienced tended to be at the hands of vindictive older children and sadistic teachers, it has to be said, the food didn’t help. Me and gristle have never got on and even today, a careless forkful of meat can bring on a quite spectacular gag reflex (oh sorry, were you eating?). Our daily servings of alleged meat tended to be riddled with the stuff, and as in those days we were expected to eat what we were given, gag reflex or not, the lunch hour often seemed a lot longer than 60 minutes. It’s possible that this mystery food product may have once been belonged to an animal, but I’d want to see some proof before going out on a limb.

No, the first course was just something through which we suffered before getting to the real reason for attending school in the first place...pudding. It’s worth clarifying for Murkan readers that just as “dinner” in this context means lunch rather than the evening meal; “pudding” refers to whatever you were served after the first course. Not dessert, not sweet...pudding.

Other than an addiction to Cadbury’s chocolate (the kind made in Britain, not the stuff churned out here under license by Hershey’s – ick, yuck, ptooey), I don’t really have much of a sweet tooth. When I shovel junk into my pie-hole it tends to be salty or spicy and on the rare occasions we eat out, I usually skip dessert in favor of another beer. However, like many people, my fondness for sweet things was greater as a child, and as my school didn’t serve alcohol, pudding was the highlight of the day.

And oh, what puddings we got. Not every day of course. Most of the time pudding was nothing more than some kind of sponge cake smothered in a lumpy yellow goo euphemistically known as “custard”. But sometimes, every now and then, when the planets were in alignment or if the school inspectors were paying a visit, the Dinner Ladies served up a crowd pleaser.

Jam roly poly was my personal favorite. What is jam roly poly? Well, it’s is a flat suet pudding, which is then spread with jam (preferably raspberry) rolled up and baked. Lumpy custard only enhanced this nectar of the doGs. A serving generally weighed about the same as a cinder block and it kept your tum warm and happy on the coldest winter day. Spotted Dick was a similar repast. (By all means, go ahead and insert the joke of your choice at this point – generations of school children have done so before you.) Another suet special, this one had raisins or currants rather than jam. It too, required custard.

In fact, custard was pretty much a standard coating for all our puddings, although it wasn’t always yellow. Chocolate pudding came with brown custard for example, and sometimes we got pink custard (pink?). No matter the color however, the custard always tasted the same and it was always lumpy.

Not everything was smothered in custard though. Lemon meringue pie for example, tended to be topped with a layer of shaving foam which took your mind off the filling, which was so yellow the school had to install Geiger counters by the serving hatch. Prunes showed up fairly often, to keep us regular I suppose, but the best part of getting those was counting off the stones at the end in order to determine your future. “Tinker, tailor, soldier, sailor, rich man, poor man, beggar man, thief”...ah, who needed career counselors back then, eh?

Tapioca was another favorite, although of course, nobody called it that. Frogspawn it looked like and frogspawn it was, with a wee dod of rosehip syrup in the middle. Why, I have no idea. Rosehip syrup was also slathered into semolina, or smelly llama as it was known back then. This was a benefit because you could stir it up and make the whole thing pink, which didn’t make it taste any better but gave you something to do while postponing the inevitable. I could never figure out why grown-ups spent good money on expensive wallpaper paste when they could just have used leftover smelly llama. I suppose they wanted to be sure they could get the wallpaper back off again some day.

But in the world of school dinner puddings, the big one, the holy grail, the best pudding ever, rumor of which would send frissons of excitement through the whole school, had to be...chocolate floorboards. Chocolate floorboards? Yep, cornflakes in baking chocolate; cooked in big trays and cut into slabs. Food only a kid could love. The dinner ladies always made about 18 times as much as necessary because they knew what greedy little piglets we were. Chocolate floorboards weren’t served in the slop line like normal food; that would have been too inefficient. Instead the dinner ladies carried around plate after plate of them.

“Take the one closest to you, not the biggest!” they would admonish and of course, we ignored them. It was all about the quantity. “I had nine chocolate floorboards!” we would brag later “That’s nowt, I had eleven” came the retort. Ah, memories. But the best part of chocolate floorboard day was guessing which kid would be the one to bring them all back up an hour or two later.

Trust me, if you haven’t seen a 9-year old barfing half-digested mystery meat, boiled cabbage, cooking chocolate and cornflakes onto a classroom floor, then you really didn’t get much of an education.

The Greatest Game Ever Played

Last week’s Gunsmoke File about my new favorite pub, “The British Bulldog” took me back to my childhood. No smartypants, I don’t mean because I was hanging out in pubs as a child...I couldn’t afford it back then. No, it got me thinking about a game we played at primary school, the greatest game ever played. Which coinkidinkally, also happened to be called “British Bulldogs”.

“Huh?” I hear you ask (my hearing’s still good), “what kind of game is that?” No, I didn’t expect you to know. You see the funny thing is; I’ve never met anyone who played British Bulldogs, or has even heard of it. And by that, I don’t just mean Americans, even other Brits, even other Brits who grew up in the same town as me, and who were at school at the same time as me, never played it. I can’t believe it was unique to my primary school, but unless someone can set me straight, it certainly seems that way.

“So tell us Andrew,” you ask “how does one play British Bulldogs?”

Well, I’m glad you asked. First off you need a reasonable sized playing area. No indoor game this; you want a big field, yard or playground. 50 yards or so long, 25 or so wide should about do it. Next, you’re going to need a bucket load of kids. I’m not kidding; I’m talking about a lot of kids. At least 40, more is even better. If you can rustle up 60 plus, you’ve got the makings of a classic. You have all that? Alright, we’re ready to get started.

Pick a kid, any kid. His (Note: British Bulldogs was a boys game. The girls were in the other playground skipping and doing handstands and all those other weird things that girls do) his job is to stand in the middle of the playing area. Every other kid stands at one end. Now, at the given signal (a roar of “BRITISH BUUUUULLLLLDOGGGGS!!!!”) all the kids except the one in the middle run like the clappers from one end of the yard to the other. The one in the middle has to catch as many as he can. By ‘catch’ I do of course mean tackle, trip, block, drop-kick, head-butt, or otherwise arrest the progress of. If he’s good, he might catch one; if he’s really good, he might catch more. Any kids he does manage to catch now remain with him in the middle, while the others reassemble at the opposite end of the yard to which they started.

On to round 2. The remaining 98 or so repeat the battle cry and once more, charge from one end to the other, back to where they originally started. Except now there’s 2, or maybe 3 kids attempting to catch them. Between them, they might snag another 5 or 6. Which means that for round 3, there are 8 or 9 kids in the middle. By round 4, there could be 15 to 20. It’s getting much easier to catch the runners now. A couple more rounds and you’ve got more kids doing the catching than you have doing the running. This is where it gets really fun.

Before too long, you’ve only got 2 or 3 kids still running, and they have to jink their way through several dozen other kids, all with the sole intent of making sure they don’t make it. Eventually, there can be only one. By definition, one kid is the last to be caught.

So that one stands in the middle, while every other kid stands at one end. And the game begins all over again. And that’s it until the bell rings and with bloody noses, fat lips, torn sweaters and old scores settled, you make your way back to class.

As I said, other than people who went to my primary school, I’ve never met anyone who has ever played British Bulldogs. I can’t see it catching on today, what with our litigious society and cotton-wool parenting. (What if a child got hurt?) The horror, the horror.

Plus, it’s an unfashionable game. No uniforms, schedules, referees, or league tables. No Dads on the side lines yelling abuse at the coach because Junior didn’t get enough playing time. Instead, it was just a whole bunch of kids blowing off steam and having a helluva good time in the process.

The way games should be.

Down the Pub

So I’ve had to find a new favorite pub. That’s no easy task here in the colonies where “pub” generally means “restaurant with a drinks license” and if you aren’t ordering food, the wait staff make it clear you’re taking up valuable real estate and it would be nice if you would bugger off.

While Irish themed bars (“theme” bars of any sort, really) generally have me looking around for a vomit bucket, I thought I’d struck it lucky with my regular haunt for the last few years; a cool, dark, rabbit warren of a place where the cares of the day could be soaked away with a pint or 4 of slow-poured Guinness. Yes, it served food but the place was a pub in the purest sense of the word. A long bar, rickety furniture, friendly staff, and a marked lack of yuppies. When I was in town and thirsting for a bevy, this was where I went.

So you can imagine my distress when I drove past it (on St. Patrick’s Day, of all days) and saw that the recent ‘renovations’ were not simply a lick of paint and a vacuum round (which was all it needed) but a full on transformation into something new and horrid. My favorite pub is now a “Bar and Café”, serving “Breakfast, Lunch and Dinner”. It was bright orange, utterly charmless and I hated it on sight. The fact that the parking lot was full of SUVs simply added to my anguish.

What to do, what to do, what to do? It’s not that I hit Denver’s bars all that often; I don’t drink and drive and 50 miles back up into the mountains is one heckuva walk. However, I do occasionally take my bike into town and one of life’s simple pleasures is a long ride with a pint at the end to wash the dust off. Clearly, I needed to find a new watering hole, and soon.

I usually avoid ‘British’ pubs for the same reason I do their ‘Irish’ counterparts. Man Utd scarves tacked to the ceiling, a mug shot of the Queen on the wall and The Clash on the jukebox, do not a pub make. That said; Denver has one with pretty good ale, made on site. Problem is; the service is sketchy. The last time I was in there, I had to track down the waitress to explain that when I gave her a $20 bill for a $12 tab, I didn’t intend her to keep the change. She seemed genuinely surprised and was more than a little graceless about it. Being British, I’m still not used to the idea that I have to pay (certain) people extra to do their jobs and I really don’t like it when they assume I’m tipping 67%.

But as none of the ‘American’ bars I’ve been in (so far) have the ambience I’m seeking, I decided last weekend to check out another ‘British’ place. Although I knew of its existence, I’ve avoided it up to now, partly from my aversion to the concept, but mostly because it’s in an area of town I don’t often find myself.

However, a warm, sunny Saturday saw me engaged in one of my favorite pursuits, on my bike, getting deliberately lost in a neighborhood I hadn’t explored before. I wasn’t paying attention to street names so when I popped out into recognizable territory; I was pleasantly surprised to find myself right beside the aforementioned pub.

I’d ridden a long way and a pint was in order so after chaining my bike to the railing, I stepped inside and was utterly charmed. Dark wood, booths, a homely atmosphere and friendly staff. It was like going home. And better yet, the (British) beer was served just the way it should be. No, I don’t mean warm, I mean cellar temperature rather than with the flavor chilled out of it. And as if that wasn’t enough, happy hour had just started so the prices were reasonable too.

OK, it had some World War 1 propaganda posters as artwork, as well as a Nike advert showing a face-painted football yahoo, and the music was a tad loud for my taste (oh dear, when did I turn into my Dad?). Plus the name, “The British Bulldog” is straying dangerously into cliché territory. However, there was a distinct absence of Union Jacks, no Man Utd memorabilia and not a mug shot of Queen Liz in sight. This was my kind of place.

It’s a long way from home (my actual home, here in Colorado), and not really on the way from or to anywhere I normally go, and I’m not sure how often I’ll ride my bike up that way. But it’s good to know that once more, I have a favorite pub.

So if anyone’s looking for me...that’s where I’ll be.

Blue Monday

~ Fats Domino

Blue Monday how I hate Blue Monday
Got to work like a slave all day
Here come Tuesday, oh hard Tuesday
I'm so tired got no time to play

Here come Wednesday, I'm beat to my socks
My gal calls, got to tell her that I'm out
'Cause Thursday is a hard workin' day
And Friday I get my pay

Saturday mornin', oh Saturday mornin'
All my tiredness has gone away
Got my money and my honey
And I'm out on the stand to play

Sunday mornin' my head is bad
But it's worth it for the time that I had
But I've got to get my rest
'Cause Monday is a mess

Do you ever have weeks...

Where you just can't think of a darn thing about which to write? I'm having one of those weeks.

Sorry.

25 Things About Me

So I don't generally respond to "answer questions about yourself" type memes. The whole "Tag X number of people including the person who tagged you" thing is just a little too close to chain mail and threats of dire consequences if you don't pass it on for my liking. Normally I just hit the delete key or let them slide on by.

However, there's a "Post 25 things about yourself" thing doing the rounds on Facebook right now that seems to have taken on a life of its own and has apparently, even been mentioned in USA Today. So after spending a couple of weeks intending to ignore it if anyone tagged me, then another few days wondering if anyone was going to tag me, I received 3 requests over the weekend.

So what the heck, this time I decided to join in. And if you're interested, here are 25 things about me. (For the record, it was supposed to be "25 things you don't know about me", but if you've been reading The Gunsmoke Files for any length of time, you already know more about me than most people.)

Here we go then.

1. I've walked from one coast of England to the other, and cycled from one end of Britain to the other (Land’s End to John O’Groats). I’ve also hiked the Grand Canyon from rim-to-rim in one day, but despite having been in Colorado for 7 years, have yet to manage a 14’er. This year.

2. Quit my job at age 28, sold everything I owned and set off traveling around the world to seek my fame and fortune. I’m still looking.

3. Have a passion for spicy food. Put the toilet paper in the fridge the night before, and I’m set.

4. I’m a published author

5. Love movies, but rarely like what’s popular. If I had my way, it would be against the law for ex Saturday Night Live cast members to appear in front of a camera.

6. The only time I feel completely calm is when I’m on my bike.

7. I’m always writing. It may not make it onto a page, but it’s always going on in my head.

8. I bungee jumped at Skipper Canyon in New Zealand, at the time, the highest commercial bungee site in the world.

9. I’m getting back into photography and am learning to process my own film. Yes, film.

10. Once drank warm whisky and coke out of a can with a group of Australian aborigines on a beach at sunrise while we wondered how to get their truck out of the sand.

11. I’m a cop magnet while driving and have been pulled over literally dozens of times, only occasionally for a legitimate reason. When I was younger, my friends simply accepted the fact that when I was driving, we would get stopped by the police on some pretext or another. My most recent encounter was when a cop followed me for 3 1/2 miles, before pulling me over. I pointed out that I was perfectly aware she was behind me and had been doing 2mph below the speed limit the whole time. She gave me a ticket and said if my speedometer was faulty, that was my problem. My speedometer is fine.

12. Once played in goal for a soccer team that lost a game 26-0.

13. Completed 6 marathons

14. I suspect I’m the world’s worst gambler. I lose every...single...time.

15. Have hitchhiked or cycled around most of Western Europe.

16. Strongly believe the world would be a better place without mosquitoes, clowns or country music.

17. I’m an incredibly messy eater, particularly when wearing clean clothes. I don’t need a bib, so much as a drop cloth.

18. No two people in my immediate family have the same accent. Mine is an odd hybrid of Anglo-American.

19. I have a passionate love for the outdoors. Being forced to stay inside on a sunny day is the worst kind of torture.

20. I’m only a little over halfway through the items on my lifetime “to do” list. Need to get a move on.

21. I once lost about 50c during an evening playing Connect 4 with a Thai hooker

22. I’m a prolific reader. Having to wait somewhere without a book to pass the time is almost panic-inducing. As a last resort, I’ll even read the newspaper.

23. I’m trying to remove the word “hate” from my vocabulary as I believe it to be self-destructive. However, there are a very small number of public figures whom I despise with a passion.

24. I once spent 5 hours in an Emergency Room while 3 nurses tweezed gravel out of my skin following a bicycle accident. The head nurse said it was the worst injuries she’d seen on someone who hadn’t broken a bone. 20 years on, my spine is still jacked up.

25. Coming up with this list was harder than I expected. There are a number of things I’m just not prepared to share with anyone.

It was 30 years ago today

Actually it was thirty years ago last Thursday but seeing as how you probably aren’t reading this on the day I wrote it, it doesn’t really matter. Anyway, it was thirty years ago last Thursday that a young, fresh-faced and not especially ambitious young lad (me), set out to make his way in the world, beginning his very first day at work.
OK, that’s not entirely true either. I’d already seen service as a newspaper boy, a stockroom gofer and a milk deliveree but those were just part-time jobs, on the weekend and before school. No, on January 29, 1979 I set out into the big wide world to make my mark in the glamorous and adrenaline-filled field of...banking!

Yep, I thought you’d be impressed.

Ah, thirty years. Where have they gone? I of course, haven’t changed a bit, although the world seems to have moved on considerably. In those days, if you wanted to withdraw money from your bank account, you had to find time to visit the branch office during opening hours (which bore no resemblance to anybody’s work hours, including those of the bank staff), stand in line and wait while a cashier actually counted out the money and handed it to you. Imagine! I can’t remember the last time I set foot inside my bank and I doubt I’ve been in there more than half a dozen times since opening the account. But back in 1979, nobody gave a thought to ATM’s and how they would change our lives.

Or email, come to that. Way back then, if a customer wanted to communicate with us, they either came in to the branch, or they wrote a letter. The boss then hand wrote replies to all the letters we received; a dozen or two a day, before giving them to the secretary who typed them up, put them in envelopes and stuck stamps on them. At around 4:30, the office junior (me again) carried them down to the post office for mailing. If a client received a response in 3 or 4 days they were happy.
But then we started hearing about this wonderful invention called email. Get this…you could type a letter on a computer, hit a button and a few seconds later, the recipient would be able to read it on their computer. How cool is that?

Leisure time.

That’s how they sold it to us. With the implementation of email, we would all have a whole heap of leisure time, to travel, to further our education, to interact with our families. Yeah, how’s that working out for everyone? Nowadays I process 100-200 emails every day and have clients who complain if they don’t hear back from me within 30 minutes. The fact that I might have been in a meeting, or working with somebody else, or lying dead in a ditch somewhere apparently never enters their heads.

But in 1979, email was still just a futuristic fantasy. Who would be able to afford a computer of their own anyway? Actually, the bank for which I worked was quite technologically advanced in that we did have computers, and not just up on the second floor like most of our competitors. No, ours were right there by the tills. Not laptops obviously, or even desk tops – monitors were still some time away. No, these were big, noisy and somewhat scary appliances, about 4 feet high with a keyboard the size of a coffee table and levers, arms and spindles which clattered and banged away incessantly. It was hard enough hearing what the customers were saying through the layers of bullet proof glass which separated us from them without these darn things clanking away. Oh, how we hated them.

Fortunately, they broke down fairly regularly and for a few days at a time, peace reigned until Albert the Mechanic came to work his magic. For a mechanic Albert was, equipped not only with screwdrivers, but with wrenches, rags and oil cans. He also had toxic B.O. and a face like a pizza, but he was a nice guy and we all liked him. As with everything else, computers have moved on since 1979 and I often wonder if Albert the Mechanic was able to make the transition to writing code or if he simply went on to fixing traction engines or steam locomotives or something.

That other labor saving device, the cell-phone, hadn’t been inflicted on us either which meant that when you walked out the office door, you were incommunicado until you walked back in. “He isn’t here right now, can I take a message?” was a perfectly acceptable response to a caller. The idea of having to eat lunch while listening to a conference call was unheard of. No beepers, Blackberries or any other type of electronic leash. Nobody sat in hotel rooms sending messages to customers at 11:30 at night back then and if they had done, the customer certainly wouldn’t respond 5 minutes later as one of mine did a couple of weeks ago. Oh, those were the days. But here’s a funny thing. It’s possible time has fogged my memory, but I seem to remember I had more leisure time in 1979, not less. Go figure.

What will the workplace be like 30 years from now, I wonder. I’ll be 76 by then, and given the state of my savings account and a pension plan which is performing so badly I think I owe it money, there’s a fairly good chance I’ll be wearing a paper hat and interacting with my clients by asking them if they would like fries with that.

Or maybe not. Maybe one of these labor-saving appliances will actually save labor instead of simply adding to it. Perhaps right now Bill Gates is working on a device which really will give us more leisure time and less on the hamster wheel.

I mean, that would be nice, wouldn’t it? Wouldn’t it?

The Pittsburgh Steelers and...who?

There are certain things in life which can be considered constants. The first cup of coffee in the morning always tastes better than any subsequent ones, the weather is always beautiful while I’m at work, and the Arizona Cardinals always blow big hairy chunks. It has forever been so and I assumed it would always continue to be so. Except this year, the Arizona Cardinals somehow managed to make it to the Super Bowl.

Now back in my day; that simply wouldn’t have happened. When I lived in Phoenix (and for many years before that), the Arizona Cardinals / Phoenix Cardinals / St. Louis Cardinals / Chicago Cardinals / Racine Cardinals / Normals (Normals?) and the Morgan Athletic Club have historically been the worst, or close to the worst team in the National Football League. While other teams cycled through boom and bust years, going through successful decades followed by unsuccessful decades and back again, the Cardinals managed to retain their distinguished status as the league’s most irrelevant team. Year, after year, decade after decade, forever and ever, Amen.

They did win a playoff game once. And it was against the hated Dallas Cowboys too! But one playoff win in 60 years is hardly the stuff of which dreams are made and few people living in Phoenix gave them much of a thought. In fact, such is Phoenix’s demographics, with a high proportion of residents originating somewhere else; there were frequently more fans in the stadium supporting the visiting team than the home side.

That single factor was the reason behind my sporadic attendance at Cardinals games. Playing in their own stadium with the majority of the crowd cheering for the other team? I just felt sorry for them. So, I went to 1 or 2 games a year but the one I never missed, was when the Cowboys came to town. Given that most of the population of Dallas now lives in Phoenix, and given that they’re among the league’s most obnoxious fans, well it just stuck in my craw. I didn’t own any Cardinals clothing (my sympathy for them didn’t extend that far) but I would dig out a red t-shirt and wear that so as the TV cameras swept around the stadium showing a sea of blue shirts, I would stand out as the lone Cardinals fan way up there in the cheap seats.

Another big advantage of being a football fan in Phoenix during the 90’s, was that the local indifference meant the Cardinals never managed to sell out the stadium. So it was easy to drive over on the spur of the moment and purchase a seat in the nosebleeds, wait until the game was underway, then head down to the more expensive section to enjoy the rest of the contest like a rich person.

And I saw some good games too. With me in attendance, the Cardinals beat several defending Super Bowl champions and a good number of other teams that on paper and over the course of the season, were far superior. In fact, of the 15 or so games that I attended, I saw the Cardinals get beat precisely zero times. That’s right; the world’s worst football team won every game they played with me in the stands. Looking back, it’s a mystery why I didn’t think to write to the organization and suggest they give me a free ticket to every home game. That would be 8 wins guaranteed each season, which is 4 or 5 more than they usually managed.

But I didn’t and sometime around 1999, I decided that enough was enough. The NFL’s revenue sharing policy meant that even perennial losers like the Cardinals received a healthy income and apparently this was perfectly satisfactory to the Cardinals’ ownership. While most other franchises were passionate about putting a winning product on the field, they were happy to save money by paying the lowest salaries in the league and putting up losing seasons, year after year after year. Having seen yet another crop of promising young players traded away in exchange for yet another batch of washed up has-beens and never-weres; I decided I was done giving even a few dollars a year to this joke of a team and Phoenix resident or not, I looked around for another team more deserving of my respect.

At that time I had no idea I would soon move to Colorado so perhaps it was kismet that led me to choose the Denver Broncos. Or maybe it was the fact that they were coming off two consecutive Super Bowl wins but either way, this was a team worthy of my support. A team who knew how to win.

Of course, you know where this story’s going. In the 9 years since I awarded them my allegiance, the Broncos have won precisely one playoff game, prior to getting their heads kicked in during the NFC Championship game. A game for which I was in attendance. My lucky-charm winning-when-I’m-in-the-stadium streak apparently didn’t transfer along with my loyalty. This year the Broncos managed to blow a 3-game divisional lead with 3 games to go; the first team in history to do so. Hence, they missed out on a playoff berth again and once more, they’ll be watching the Super Bowl on television.

But amazingly, the Cardinals will not. The world’s worst franchise, perennial bottom-dwellers and league running joke have finally got their act together and put out a team that has not only performed admirably throughout the season, but has chugged (comparatively comfortably) through the playoffs. For the first time in their history, the Arizona Cardinals will take the field next Sunday, to participate in Super Bowl XLIII (that’s 43 in case you weren’t sure). I still can’t say I feel any particular fondness for the team but they’ll be playing the Pittsburgh Steelers; the team that administered the Bronco’s above mentioned head-kicking-in. So I can’t support them.

I wonder if I still own that red t-shirt.

Mad Max and Me

I couldn’t understand why the booking clerk was laughing.
“No, I want to stay for 2 or 3 nights.” I told him, “So I can take a look around.”
“Trust me,” he replied, handing me my bus ticket. “One night will be plenty long enough for Cooper Pedy.”

I wasn’t totally convinced but admittedly, I didn’t know too much about the place. I knew it had opal mines, and that Mel Gibson had pranced around the area as Mad Max in “Beyond the Thunderdome” , and that the locals lived underground to escape the scorching heat. But other than that, I wasn’t too sure what to expect.

And stumbling off the bus, tired and creaky after the overnight run from Adelaide, I have to say I wasn’t overly impressed. As was usually the way, the touts were there to meet us, in the hopes that we would agree to stay at their particular hostel. However, these ones were uncharacteristically pushy and aggressive, which didn’t give a great first impression of the place. The second impression wasn’t much better. And as for the third…

But I’m getting ahead of myself. There were only 4 of us disembarking - Barbara (a German), Jenny (a Swede) and Dee (a Brit), so following the least obnoxious of the touts, we booked ourselves in to one of Cooper Pedy’s more upscale boarding houses. In keeping with the underground tradition, it was basically just a long corridor dug out of the hillside, with 8’x4’ “rooms” at intervals along each side. A curtain served duty as a door and a narrow cast iron bed completed the furnishings.

I felt a lot better after a short nap and 3 hours later, set out on an explore. The girls had signed up for a ½ day tour of the opal mines, but I was going freelance. The Stuart Highway, which runs from Adelaide on the south coast, to Darwin on the north, had only been paved some 4 years before my visit and people tell me that Cooper Pedy had gone up in the world during that time. I can only imagine how desperate it must have been prior to that because it appeared to be little more than a wasteland as far as the eye can see.

Which admittedly, wasn’t very far, being as we were, in the throes of a dust storm, filling the air, as well as my eyes, nose and throat with gritty sand. Time to follow the locals, I think, and head underground. First port of call was a mine, right off the main street and outfitted with a hard hat, I was soon following a line of middle-aged folk into the bowels of the earth. The hard hat proved to be my best friend because I couldn’t take more than a few steps without smacking my head on the roof. The whole thing was interesting enough, but didn’t take too long, so after a quick hike up one of the few hills to check out what passes for a view, I headed to one of the show homes.

Three ladies dug this one by hand, over the course of 5 years, taking the time to smooth the walls to a marble like finish. They were still working on it but the place already had 3 bedrooms, 2 bathrooms and all modern conveniences including that essential of Aussie suburban life, a swimming pool. It didn’t have any windows, but it had a swimming pool.

By the time I made it back above ground, the dust storm had abated so I took a quick hike up another hill to check out the town’s only visible attraction, “The Big Winch”. The what? Well, it’s a big bucket, the type of which is used in mining. And it’s perched on top of a hill. And uh, you walk up the hill and look at the bucket.

So that was pretty much it; I’d done the place. Interesting enough, such as it was but I could certainly see why the guy who sold me my bus ticket laughed when I said I wanted to spend a few days here. But, as I was here until the next morning I decided to pass the rest of the time sitting in the shade by the hostel, drinking beer and chatting to the girls, now home from their tour. I would have been quite happy spending the rest of my time doing just that, Barbara was fun and Jenny was nice to look at but no, Dee wanted to go to the bar.

I use the term ‘bar’ loosely because it was basically just a big barn that happened to sell beer. Cooper Pedy’s tourist industry was still in its infancy back then and the overwhelming majority of the residents were miners. Men for whom life held little pleasure other than drinking and fighting and uh…that’s about it. They certainly enjoyed little contact with the female of the species so when I walked in with three of them, every nut-job in the place (and there were a lot of nut-jobs in the place) looked me over, decided I was no competition, and set about trying to take them off me.

If I’ve learned nothing else during my time on this planet, it’s that there is no more dangerous situation for a young man to find himself than in a bar with three good looking females. OK, Dee was nothing to write home about but Barbara was kinda cute and Jenny was drop-dead gorgeous. There wasn’t a guy in there who wasn’t filled with thoughts of romance and if taking me out back and snapping me like a twig would smooth the path of true love, well then I didn’t think any of them would be overly concerned.

The thing is, by cracking jokes, buying an occasional round and keeping my back to the wall, I was managing to do a passable job of keeping things on the level. Nobody was swinging punches and if I could hold it together for another ½ hour or so, we could leave with honor intact and nobody (OK, me) would get hurt. But then one guy got a bit overly familiar with Dee and she decided that the best way to handle that was to scream abuse at the lot of them. And they screamed back. Not at her of course, but at me. Oh, the things they were going to do; it would make your hair curl.

But, I declined their kind offers to see how far a pool cue would fit up my arse and decided an early night was in order. Hustling my harem out the door with my bowels dissolving I almost dragged the three of them down the street as the natives bombarded us with beer cans while serenading us with oaths and epithets.

6am the next morning found us standing bleary eyed and shivering on Main Street as we waited for the bus to rescue us, and for once, I was happy to be up that early. I haven’t been back to Cooper Pedy, and I’m OK with that. I haven’t been back to Adelaide either, but if I ever get there, I hope I meet that booking clerk again so I can shake him by the hand.

If it weren’t for him, I’d have been stuck there for two more bloody days.

Traveling on Business is never a "Trip"

I’ve written before about the uh…challenges I’ve experienced while visiting Dallas; my least favorite city in the U.S. I’m not going to go over them again, suffice to say that I seem to experience problems every time I visit. And this time was exactly the same, only more so.

The first problem was that my flight was at the undoGly hour of 6:00am. Living as I do, some distance from the airport, this would have required me to get out of bed at 3:30am, obviously a ridiculous proposition. Instead, I booked myself a bed in a hotel just a few minutes from the terminal, thus gaining an extra hour of sleep. Even so, that’s no time to be getting up. Like most normal people, I don’t function well in the mornings so I took care to unpack nothing. My clothes for the day were on a hanger and all I had to do was get up, shower, dress and tootle over to the airport. With luck, I would be aboard the plane before I’d woken up.

Except I forgot that two things I should have unpacked, were my toothbrush and razor. The few minutes it took me to run down to the car to fetch it from my made me a little late. Not enough to be a problem – that didn’t happen until I locked the car keys in the room and had to get the night clerk to let me back in. Still not drastically late, but enough to give that little stressful feeling that if anything else went wrong, I could be in trouble. No worries though; I found a parking space close to the terminal, there was no line at check in and security looked to be a breeze.

Until they ran my bag through the x-ray and discovered my Swiss Army Knife. I was momentarily thrilled because I’d lost it a while ago but then it dawned on me that while they may have found it; they weren’t going to give it back. It would only have taken 20 minutes or so to run back to the car with it, but that was 20 minutes more than I had to spare and with sadness, I watched it go into the bin.

The flight was just boarding as I huffed up to the gate and in no time, I was parked in my seat and sipping pseudo-coffee. The pilots seemed to know what they were doing and before I was much further along in my book, we were touching down at Dallas-Fort Worth. It looked as though the glitches were over for this mission. Once on the ground I gave Dear Wife a quick call to get her out of bed (it was still very early in Denver) then hopped in a cab to head over to meet a client. Yes, I had an extra meeting to squeeze in before going to my own company’s office to start the 3-day conference there.

The clients’ office is based in a hotel, albeit far more upscale than the one in which I’d spent the previous night, so as we pulled up, bell-hops scurried forward in the hopes of being allowed to touch my bag and thus earn a tip. Shaking them off, I was soon through the revolving doors and heading for the escalators out the back. At this point I thought of another call I needed to make and started patting my pockets to find my cell phone. And I patted, and I patted and I stopped walking and rummaged, then I put down my bags and searched in earnest. But to no avail.

The taxi firm couldn’t have been less helpful but after calling my phone a few times, the cab driver eventually answered and reluctantly agreed to bring it back. Despite my priming the hotel staff and giving them a number at which I could be reached, the poor guy still sat in the lobby for 15 minutes before some got around to letting me know he was there. He ‘did’ get a tip – a big one.

He would also be able to tell his friends the story of how I then got myself stuck in the revolving doors with a member of the L.A. Clippers basketball team. I was going through the doors, he was in the segment behind me and must have pushed a bit too hard and the thing jammed, trapping me inside for what seemed like days, although it was probably only a minute or two before the security guard came and released me. I’m no basketball fan and have no idea who this guy was but he thought the whole thing was funnier than I did. And he didn’t even offer me free tickets, or a wad of cash, or anything.

Anyway, back to the client meeting, which overran by about an hour. This was OK because we were covering some good material but it meant had now missed the start of my own company’s meeting and as I still had another long cab ride to get there, my hopes of squeezing in lunch beforehand, went out the window. Especially because the cab ride took longer than planned because we couldn’t find the bloody office.
My company’s corporate office employs literally thousands of people, housed in multiple buildings across a large campus. I’d been before, more than once and knew that our meeting wasn’t in the first building off the highway, but another, some 3/4 of a mile away.

Except I got it into my head that I was supposed to be in the other direction and had the driver take me to a different set of buildings altogether. We cruised for several minutes before asking a passing office worker for directions. That would have been a good plan had she not sent us off even further in the wrong direction. The second office worker we asked cheerfully pointed to a large building in the middle distance and as that had my company’s name emblazoned on the outside, I paid off the driver and raced up to the door. To find it locked. Because my company hasn’t used this building in some time and it’s currently sitting empty. And now my cab was gone.

So, here I was, stuck in a faceless office complex, miles from anywhere and with no way of knowing how to get to my own office. My newly found cell-phone was of little use because all my co-workers had their own phones switched off. I know, because I tried calling every number I had. I ended up walking into the reception area of a completely different company to see if they could call me a cab and wondering how long that would take to arrive. One thing was sure, I was verrrrrrrrrry late, sweaty and only a short step away from hyper-ventilating.

Fortunately, I struck gold with two employees who bent over backwards to calm me down. They summoned their own security guard who bundled me into an SUV and in moments, had me where I needed to be. It took another 10 minutes to find the right conference room, a few more to track down a chair (and I dropped that, with a clatter that woke the cubicle dwellers!) But eventually I was ensconced in the meeting room, scarfing down the candy and peanuts and wondering what I’d missed.

Dallas and a 4:30am start all on one trip. I should have known better.