The Trials and Tribulations of a Terrible Travel Blog

When it comes to travel, 2011 started slowly enough for me, but as of mid-September, my schedule called for five trips in a span of of seven weeks. Yeah, I know, five trips hardly qualifies me as a road-warrior. In fact, now that it's all behind me, I still have yet to achieve anything higher than aluminum or tin status with any of the major airlines or hotels. My travel itinerary looked something like this:


1) September 26-29: Napa, California, for a work conference
2) October 5-6: Vineland, New Jersey, (with a flight into Philadelphia) to visit a manufacturing plant for work
3) October 19-21: Irapuato, Mexico, to visit another manufacturing plant for work
4) October 26-28: Chicago, Illinois, for another work conference and a tour of yet another manufacturing plant
5) November 11-13: Tucson, Arizona, to play in a USTA tennis tournament


With all the hours I would be spending in airports, in hotels, and on airplanes, a brilliant idea started to take shape in my mind: I would create a travel blog! Unlike Passionately Apathetic's "A little bit of everything and a whole lot of nothing" approach, the new travel blog would have a specific purpose. I would write about the adventures of my travels all over North America, featuring all of the standard travel blog material: hotel and food reviews, pictures of local attractions, and so on. But as my travels unfolded, I noticed two potential hiccups in my plan: aside from the fact that I'm both boring and lazy, nothing particularly noteworthy was happening on these trips.


The travel schedule kicked off with my first trip to Napa, California. The scenery was great and the weather was spectacular, but work meetings chewed up a sizable chunk of my week. As the days passed, I realized that I had almost nothing to write about Napa, California that anyone would want to read. People scouring travel blogs about Napa are undoubtedly seeking recommendations on wine tasting, local shopping, and vineyard tours. All I had to offer was the ramblings of a guy who doesn't drink, hates shopping, and is about as interested in going on a vineyard tour as he is in spending time with children. Even my attempt to see the Golden Gate Bridge when I flew into San Francisco was a spectacular disappointment. Oh well, I had four more trips on the schedule, and they would surely offer something worth writing.

On an otherwise clear day in San Francisco, views from the Golden Gate Bridge were disappointing...

Next, I flew into Philadelphia in early October for my second trip, a visit to a soup plant in Vineland, New Jersey. But things were looking even more grim than they were in Napa. It was only an overnight trip, which left me with no free time to do anything interesting. The highlight of the trip was dinner with two co-workers in Philadelphia on the night that I arrived. As we ate at a table outside the restaurant, a homeless guy walked by, offered to shine our shoes, then started singing. When that failed to generate a reaction, he attempted one final sales pitch to a female co-worker who was wearing sandals: "Come on, let a black man touch your feet!"

My blogging standards are low, but I do have standards. And what else was there to write about? New Jersey was a wasteland of excitement and creativity. Could I do five-hundred words on the various odors wafting from the armpit of America? Probably...but, again, standards...

Mexico held plenty of promise. I fully expected that I would get robbed or mugged at some point during the trip. I wasn't looking forward to it, but it would certainly make for an exciting story. My greatest fear was that my passport would end up lost or stolen, leaving me trapped in Mexico, wandering aimlessly around the country, mumbling Spanglish and trying to rent a burro to ride safely back across the border. As a result, I kept a close watch on the one bag I brought with me. In fact, I never let that bag out of my sight....so when I left my hotel room, the only sign that the room was occupied was the pair of flip-flips that I assumed wouldn't be worth stealing even if someone broke into the room. Oops.

When I returned to my hotel room the first night, the flip-flops were gone. An exciting break-in?! Sadly, no. The room was so clean and empty when I left that morning, the hotel maid apparently thought that the occupant had checked out and forgotten the flip-flops. Though frustrating, this mistake sparked an interesting thought: if all of the hotel maids in America are Mexican, are the hotel maids working in Mexican hotels from America?

To make the accidental theft even less scandalous, the hotel Fed-Ex'ed the flip-flops back to me after I submitted a strongly-worded complaint on the Holiday Inn corporate website. The most entertaining part of the whole incident was seeing the excruciating amount of paperwork that the hotel manager had to fill out to comply with U.S. shoe import regulations.

The only other noteworthy event on the great Mexico adventure occured in the León International Airport, when a co-worker noticed that my favorite pair of jeans (the only pants I brought with me on the trip), had numerous holes in the crotch area. Although that particular subject falls directly in the bulls-eye of prime blogging topics for Passionately Apathetic, it hardly offers top-notch travel blog material...plus I had already written extensively on the topic. Clearly, the travel blog was shaping up to be an epic failure.

My final work trip of the year, Chicago, was fun enough, but consisted mostly of work meetings. My one last hope for a true travel blog entry--a local food review--managed to escape me when all three days passed without eating a single bite of authentic Chicago deep dish pizza. Before our flight home, two co-workers and I made a last-ditch effort to nab some deep dish at O'Hare, but we were painfully disappointed by Uno's not-so-deep dish miniature pizzas.


The four work trips came and went, and I didn't have a single story worthy of a travel blog. My potential material consisted of a homeless guy with a foot fetish, a pair of temporarily lost flip-flops, some jeans that looked like Swiss cheese between the legs, and an airport's sorry excuse for deep dish pizza. Worse yet, I couldn't even default to complaining about the airlines or hotels. Unfortunately, I'd had an incredibly lucky five weeks of travel: not a single one of my flights had arrived late, there were no missed connections, no lost bags, no over-talkative airplane neighbors, and no signs of bedbugs at any of the hotels (not even in Mexico!).


As I boarded the plane for my final trip to Tucson, I had officially abandoned the travel blog idea and only hoped that my lucky travel streak would remain intact for one more trip. And things were looking up from the start. I was assigned to seat 6B...sure, it was a middle seat, but it was near the front of the plane and would set me up for a quick exit after we landed.


The pilot announced that the flight was full, yet 6A, the window seat to my left, was still empty and there didn't seem to be anyone else walking onto the plane. That is, until one last person lumbered into the aisle...and this wasn't just anyone. The sheer circumference of this man was utterly astounding...if I didn't know better, I'd think that he was in his fourth trimester of pregnancy. I was convinced that his pants could cover the entire state of Rhode Island like a giant circus tent. And there was no doubt in my mind exactly where this man was headed: 6A.

As I watched this guy wedge himself into his seat (and a sizable portion of my seat), it struck me that he could really use some kind of oversize shoehorn to help him cram his 350+ lb frame into such a comparatively tiny space. But I didn't have time to draft any formal blueprints for such a contraption--I now faced the unenviable task of cramming myself into 6B. The other passengers on the plane must have felt like they were watching a group of clowns pile into one of those tiny little cars...


"Ma'am? Ma'am!!" Seconds after sitting down, my newest friend was already flagging down the flight attendant. What could he possibly want right after boarding?! A snack? Apparently not quite yet. "I'm going to need a seat belt extender!" It just kept getting better.

A minute later, the guy had a length of seatbelt sufficient to keep him FAA-compliant for the flight and long enough to turn any normal person into a seatbelt mummy if the need arose. As he struggled to strap himself in, the jokes began. "I swear, these seatbelts get smaller every time I fly...it couldn't be me!"

There are three types of airline passengers whom I utterly despise: children, the overly talkative, and the overweight. This guy already had one of those categories more then covered; I wasn't about to do anything that might encourage further conversation. I stared straight ahead and pretended that I hadn't heard a word. Normally, I might have appreciated his attempt at humor, but I knew what was ahead of me over the next three hours.

I considered lowering the arm rest in attempt to protect at least a portion of the left side of my seat, but that plan had serious safety implications. If, by some miracle, I was able to force the arm rest down, I knew it would only be a matter of minutes before it snapped off and shot through the side of the airplane like a missile, likely killing someone and bringing down the plane in the process. When it came to flying projectiles, I had a similar concern for my eyes--the buttons on my neighbor's shirt appeared to be under serious duress, threatening to go airborne at very high speeds in very short order. With my frightening lack of protective eyewear, all I could do was look away and hope for the best...

As the flight got underway, I realized that things were only going to become more and more uncomfortable as the minutes passed. Every time I shifted in my seat, my amply-proportioned neighbor's fleshy drumstick encroached further and further into my personal space. The enemy line continued advancing into the left side of 6B with every move I made. Forty-five minutes into the flight, I looked like the leaning tower of Pisa, tilting sharply toward 6C and having fully retreated from the left half of 6B.

I felt like the weight of the world was resting on my shoulders...and for all pratical purposes, it was.  On my left shoulder, in particular. By this time, the fat man's right arm and shoulder were entirely overlapping my left side. I only prayed that the air vents continued spewing cold air, otherwise I was going to arrive in Tucson drenched in his sweat. By this time, had the pilot's voice come on the intercom and announced that the plane was going down, my feelings would have been mixed.

By mid-flight, I decided that I would move over no more. It was clear that neither one of us was going to be comfortable on this flight, but I decided I might as well shift as much of my discomfort to him as I possibly could. After all, it wasn't my fault that this guy spent most of his life downing Ho-Hos and avoiding exercise. As he slept, I sat up straighter and straighter and slowly leaned more aggressively into his meaty side until I was seated upright. I couldn't feel my left leg anymore, but I was determined to reclaim as much of 6B as humanly possible.

Not long after, the snack cart approached and, not surprisingly, my neighbor awoke from his deep slumber, somehow sensing that food was approaching. He then said something to me, and the words that left his mouth were absolutely shocking. The only conversation I was willing to entertain involved him offering to reimburse me for half my airfare, since he was using just as much of 6B as I was. But instead he asked, "Could you move over a little?" What?!  Was he serious?! I was absolutely livid, but I controlled myself and angrily mumbled, "I'll try..." I squirmed around in my seat a little but didn't actually give up any ground. Soon enough, my neighbor had his Diet Coke, to which I could only think, "far too little, far too late..."

He quickly fell back to sleep, and I made a fatal mistake with one hour of flight time remaining. If nothing else, this uncomfortable ordeal presented me with a great photo opportunity. Snapping a picture while this guy slept could almost make the whole thing worthwhile. I leaned forward and started fumbling around in my bag in search of my camera. But I quickly realized what I'd done. By leaning forward, I was no longer pinned under my pear-shaped nemesis, but I knew that my left side wouldn't touch the back of my seat for the remainder of the flight. The blob-like mass to my left had immediately expanded into the spot I had just vacated.

Disheartened, I gave up on the camera and leaned back. Sure enough, I experienced a whole new form of discomfort, now sitting with my torso twisted sharply to the right until the plane finally landed in Tucson. That meant, unfortunately, that I was unable to procure a first-hand picture of my rotund rival. For those curious to know what a 350 pound wildebeest looks like when stuffed in a window seat, I can at least paint a mental picture for you: imagine what it would look like if someone parked the Goodyear blimp in a one-stall garage...or if someone inflated a Thanksgiving day float inside a Smartcar.

Once again, stock photos from the internet will have to suffice...

After freeing myself from the death grip of 6B, my imagination ran wild as I stood at the baggage claim, the feeling slowly returning to my extremities. I quickly devised a brilliant strategy to help the struggling industry boost revenues: forget the checked bag fees; airplanes need limo-style dividers between seats. At the precise moment that my gastrointestinally-challenged neighbor asked me to move over, I would have paid just about anything for the option to press a button and watch a solid, sound-proof divider slide up between our seats, restricting every last ounce of his flabby figure to the seat that he paid for. That would teach him to buy only one ticket for a flight...and who knows, the divider might even provide him with a little extra motivation to hit the treadmill before his next trip.

And so five trips came and went, and my travel blog aspirations disappeared like a snack on the tray table of my neighbor. But I didn't return home completely empty-handed: thanks to a whale of a man and an unfortunate seat assignment, I had some prime writing material for Passionately Apathetic. And along the way, I realized that writing this blog has helped me generate all kinds of fantastic ideas for new inventions: oversize bodyhorns for the morbidly obese, peephole covers, gift-concealing Christmas curtains, airline seat dividers...the list goes on and on. It's like I'm Thomas Edison, without the motivation or the knowhow to actually build anything.