Omaha Trip Report: Monday 2/5/07

Sunday night I checked in online & printed my boarding pass before going to sleep very, very early, so waking up early Monday morning to get ready to leave was pretty easy. The taxi came on time, and off I went. It turns out I'm so close to the airport that the easiest way to get there was via surface streets. I checked one bag at the curb and about a minute later I was stripping down to my t-shirt & socks for the TSA. Yeah, that was fun. I neglected to take my laptop out of its bag (who could possibly read all of those little signs scattered everywhere?), so I was flagged for special treatment. I got pulled to the side and had my laptop thoroughly scanned for explosive materials. Hrmph. At least the plane departed right on time and wasn't too, too cramped.

My first stop was in Salt Lake City, Utah, a moderate 40 degrees F. Unfortunately, I landed at the far end of one terminal, and my connecting flight was to depart from the far end of the opposite terminal. It was about a 7-minute brisk walk, at the end of which I barely had a chance to use the restroom and send a text message to a couple friends before it was time to get on the next flight. Standing in the boarding line, suddenly and violently I was shoved from behind. When I turned around, I saw the first familiar face of the day, followed by another -- two fellow UI designers from my team. Onto the plane we went, and after stuffing my big down jacket into a tiny available crevise in the overhead compartment, I stuffed myself into the tiny available crevise known as my seat. It was a window seat, next to a pretty large guy, on a 2-seat row of a rather small plane (I believe it had about 40-50 seats total). I dozed off reading Design of Everyday Things and woke up about 45 minutes later, but two of my right toes and one of my left toes stayed asleep. It was that cramped. As icing on the cake, my right knee was freezing. Subfreezing outside air had been seeping in through a loose tether cover from the emergency exit one row ahead.

We finally landed in all-white Omaha and I had a chance to unfold & restore circulation to my limbs. I extracted my big jacket and got it on & zipped it up all the way before heading outside. As soon as I exited the plane, even in the covered corridor, every exhaled breath became thick with visible condensation like the clouds we had just descended through. It was cold. Really cold. Just ask her:



After everyone from my group met up from the two flights we took in, we got our car rental paperwork confirmed and headed out for a more thorough taste of the chill while one of my coworkers related seeing ECW wrestler Rob Van Damme in the airport just minutes earlier. The vehicle we got was a Suzuki Grand Vitara, a modest-sized, but comfortable SUV. The drive from the airport to the hotel was interesting in that, well, it took a bit of creative navigation by landmarks to get to our destination, thanks to an unforeseen feature in the main road.

After checking in at the Embassy Suites and dropping off our bags, we headed right back out to cruise around town & find a place to eat. After weaving up & down through the largely uninhabited downtown area, I parked about four blocks from the hotel and we did the last bit of surveying on foot. We settled at The Spaghetti Works, a restaurant with a very nice 20's/30's motif, semi-rugged, semi-swank. I hit the open salad bar (electing to go Cobb-style like I usually do) and ordered a custom-built bowtie pasta dish with hot Italian-style sauce and double hot sausage links. For a drink, I got a blueberry-flavored Italian soda that must have been 20 oz. In addition, we each got a couple pieces of bruschetta, and three of us shared a room-temperature chocolate ganache. The ganache was so thick and rich that we immediately got quite the sugar/chocolate high, and silliness ensued, leading to some memorable quotes that stuck with us for the entire trip and caused an untold number of laughs.

"It's like eating a tire."
- Anna F.

"The tar is better."

- Iram M.

You had to have been there.

Back at the hotel, we got all synched up with email & calendars down in the "Business Center" (four little booths, two with computers & two with empty ethernet plugs). After bitterly debating time zones & time offsets, we settled on a gameplan for Tuesday and retired to our adjacent rooms on the 4th floor. The TV selection was mediocre, but while channel-hopping I was very pleasantly surprised to see a "PayPal is hiring" ad in prime time on ABC. I ended up watching MythBusters, Dirty Jobs, and some kickboxing, then checked the Weather Channel before turning out the lights. It was 81 degrees in Honolulu. I dreamed about Honolulu.