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Well, after an 11 hour flight from Sao Paulo, Brazil to Chicago… I left there it was +34 Celcius (with 84% Humidity)…
I arrived here in Chicago to minus 21 Celcius.

Holy Sh*t! Who woulda thunk that Calgary, Canada would be warmer than Chicago! I didn’t it could be possible.

After arriving… It took to get my baggage, customs AND yet another security check another hour. Good thing I had a 4 hour layover here.

I went and had a smoke… nearly fell over from the head rush I got from it then I went in search of a coffee.
Then I have to check my baggage AGAIN after going through yet another security check, then I have to go through security to get to the proverbial ‘other side’.

So I do, and find out almost an hour later that the only smoking allowed is outside the airport!!… So, being a total dumbass, I go downstairs thinking that I smoke and come back up the same way….

Ummmm NOT!

I have to go through the rubber glove treatment yet AGAIN (Sixth time today) just to get to the concourse.

I forgot how damned huge this airport is….

Ir para casa a Canadá hoje!  Ciao!

Hello fellow Loonatiks,

Well I’ve been very busy up until Thursday with work and such.

I have been uploading pics from my trip so far onto the Loonatik Galleries for your viewing pleasure.

Hasn’t really been a sightseeing kinda trip… more of a relationship builder trip for the company… but I have been getting out here and there.

This is the hotel I’m staying at… damned wonderful place this is. Treat you like a f*cking King.

Anyhoo… off to the next jaunt.  Ciao!

Greetings from the Peach capital of the USA…
Anyone that knows me, knows I hate that Southern drawl accent. I’m surrounded by a city of frickin’ Forest Gumps (seriously! That’s what they sound like!)

Observations:
Food Courts - NOBODY loos you in the eye! When you order you have to yell it out even if they ask you “What you want sir?” and immediatley turn their back to you and walk away.

AirPort recorded announcements - Did you know that Homeland Security is presently at Defcon 3 (Orange alert) where increased security and vigilance are constantly needed.
Now… tell me that every 2 minutes… I think I have it memorized now.

Thanks to the Goddess I’m only here for 4 hours…

Off to Sao Paulo, Brazil next. See you on the other side Muchachos

Hola all,

My flights got re-routed and now I’m going to arrive Sun Jan 28th late at night instead of late morning that was booked a month ahead.

I’m currently in Denver (in a bar on the internet…LOL) waiting for my next flight to Atlanta, Georgia… (at 1am) then I fly to Sao Paulo from there…

Joy! I feel a rant coming…

Leaving tomorrow afternoon on business to Sao Paulo, Brazil… for a cuppa Java… Land o’ the mudder of Timmies.

Should be interesting… pity there’s no beaches in Sao Paulo… I DO know however I’m gonna die there (not literally). Average temperature there right now is 29 degrees celcius with an average of 70-80% humidity.

Probably gonna lose 10 lbs just from the airport to the hotel. The bright side, it’s a very posh hotel (25 floors high) along Av Paulista, and I’m thinking this Raven’s gonna fry.

Well, looking forward to the 3-4 hours to Chicago (one hour connection time) and then another 11 hours to Sao Paulo. Hmmm leave Saturday afternoon, arrive in Brazil on Sunday late morning… yeah, the joys of flying.

This is going to be a difficult 7 days. I have fairly good understanding of Spanish… but Brazil is predominately Portueguese… *Sigh*

I’m sure I’ll be ranting next week about something… (Airlines, Security, Customs) you get the picture.

Keep checkin the Galleries… I’ll post pics under Travel photos!

Hasta Luego Muchachos!

I wrote this at the Frankfurt airport when returning to Canada… but I’ve been far too busy with life to post it.  Cheers!

Every comedian that I’ve ever seen on TV, heard on or watched in a club has their own rant about going to the airport. It’s only natural, I guess, since the life of a stand-up comic consists of criss-crossing the country where they spend the majority of their life running to catch airplanes and the other half trying to open those little plastic bags of peanuts while trying to not to get a thumb cramp.

But it gets a little repetitive hearing comics make fun of the stewardess’s little pre-takeoff speech about oxygen masks or why the pillows they give you are so small and consequently, it becomes unfunny. So since airports have gone through such drastic changes in the past months, I figured it was time to write another one.

First off, airport security has mutated where its main goal is to make them support security and totally aggravate everything at the same time. I’ve never seen so many people look so pissed-off and so safe at the same time. They’re standing in these lines at security checkpoints that are longer than Louie Anderson’s shopping list and they all just want to lash out at the subhuman mongoloid running the X-ray machine who never seems to find anything dangerous in them except the few times when he calls for an attendant to open your bag and check it because he thought he saw a porno mag in there that he could confiscate for “security reasons.”

But they all know that this extra inconvenience is for their own good, so they just stand there and pray that they can make their flight on time without setting fire to the person in front of them as a protest because then they’d get shot by the armed military guard that’s standing behind the baggage checkers. In every airport across the country, I kid you not, there are guys (and gals) in military fatigues standing behind the metal detector with automatic rifles as you walk out the baggage check area. It’s almost like they’re teasing the people in the airport who trying to sneak the gun on the plane by sticking it up their ass.

Plus, it’s a psychological tactic against the terrorists as well as a physical one because when you’re holding a gun, it’s really hard to stare down a guy with an automatic weapon and a chest strap filled with grenades. It’s so much easier to overtake a plane when you’re biggest obstacle is a stewardess with a drink tray and a handful of roasted peanuts.

Then before you get on the plane, there’s another security check. I’m not kidding, and what’s scary about this check is that they don’t even check everybody that gets on the plane. They pull random people out of line and check not just their luggage, but also everything on them including their clothes, their pockets and even their shoes. Of course, I know why, ever since Richard Reed hid a bomb in his shoe aboard a Delta airlines flight and everyone is paranoid that some Richard Reed fan club president might try to cop his idea, and they should be. But what happens if someone tries to hide a bomb in their lower intestine aboard an airplane. Does this mean that airport security will now include mandatory appendectomies? Sure they could just use an X-Ray machine, but if it’s the same guy who’s running the X-ray machine who has the ability to spot porno magazines in a single bound, then whip out the sodium pentathol and sharpen up the scalpel.

Then getting on the plane is a whole other story. You would think that just because your bags, your shoes and your lower intestine were given the OK by the crack squad of high school graduates running airport security that everything is okee-dokee terrorist wise, but things only get worse.
Now the stewardesses continue the scare tactics just as you are getting comfortable, including the ones that asked you to stop slapping their ass and saying, “Get me another cold one, sweet thang. What the hell, it’s my mom’s credit card anyway.”

They tell you that there are emergency exits located in the front, middle and rear of the plane. Emergency exits? How are those any good? If a fire breaks out while we’re in the air, how is exiting the plane at thirty thousand feet going to save any lives? Then she says that the seat I’m sitting on can also be used as a floatation device.
Why? Is the pilot going to open the pool in an hour or has my flight been redirected to the bottom of the Pacific Ocean? Then if case of cabin pressurization, a small oxygen mask will fall down from the ceiling…STOP! If I’m suffocating five miles from the nearest lithosphere, the last thing I want to do is play with an oxygen piñata. There’s something rather unfulfilling about having the last few seconds of your life turn into a six-year-old’s birthday party.

Oh geez, I’m starting to sound like Jerry Seinfeld on crack. I’d better quit while I’m ahead. Next thing you know, I’ll start complaining about cold medicines and how there are a million different kinds that only cure runny noses and a million different other kinds that only cure my sinus headache.

Don’t get me started.

Poland- land of badly translated english brochures and signs! My favourite so far is “Please be taking care of your belongings or you may be subject to uncontrolled dematerialisation”

Polish people seem quite law abiding when it comes to crossing the road. Rarely does anyone walk against the red man.

Flowers are important. So many people are carrying bunches of flowers and the single red rose is extremely popular. Even numbers mean funerals, or bad things. Odd numbers are way better… Man_of_Steel tells me, when he woos a woman, sending even numbered amounts of flowers to your intended date… is basically saying you’re giving a kiss of death.

There seems to be more daschunds per head of population than anywhere else I have ever seen in my life.

Polish trains are very slow. The butter is unsalted. An ice cream is a “lody”.

I noticed a lot of Spanish words when listening to people’s conversations… so I started asking pointed questions to guy named Piotr (Peter)….

At one point of the conversation, I told Piotr that I wanted to “go around the curve in the road”… and he hesitated on the word curve…. Thinking I’m a smartypants… I try saying the equivalent of “curve” in Spanish… ”Curva” or phonetically ”Curve ah”….

Piotr’s reaction??  ”Oh no no!!! Never say curva….. bad word… woman, prostitute or female dog”

I say: “You mean “Curva” means Bitch? Whore?”
He says: “Oh yes.. very bad word… ”

I say: “Hehehehh Cool, leave it to me to find a really bad word”

‘Nuff said

OK, so as I sit here at the boarding gate in yet another airport somewhere else entirely from where I was 1/2 a day ago (if you get my drift) I think I have finally discovered the secret to getting through that fucking tedious process of having my shoes, coat, groin, and laptop computer screened, scanned, and skimmed: Have a vodka cooler too many prior to standing in line.
Yes [he stated unabashedly] it is true: I have cast a couple of sheets to the wind, and after peeing for what seemed an eternity, I greatly enjoyed having big black dudes with little paddles that remind me more of hazing rituals than security checks run scans on my (what must be suspicious-looking) armpits, groin, balls of feet, and backside. I resisted the urge to giggle, of course; no need to press my luck in this. They must regularly rue the day that they signed up for this job. All the “pretty chicks” in the world can’t make up for a big white guy like me sticking my otherwise private bits out so that he can run a scanner over them.
Additionally, I precariously stacked my shoes onto my laptop computer into an artistic pyramid sculpture before sending it all through the scanner. It was funny, mind you, even if only I could appreciate the humour. And then don’t get me started on the way I stuffed only my toes into my shoes as I walked away from security trailing USB plug-ends and scraps of paper that are supposed to make it to the accounting department of my company, all the time making a cullump-cullump-cullump sound as my broken sandals slap the marble floors.
Hee hee hee … and the time positively flew by … but there are no more bars on this side of the Atlantic Ocean, and now I’m worried I’m going to come down before I get into my seat on the plane! I should have had two Vodka coolers too many …

I have NEVER seen so many friggin lizards in my life!

Here in Aruba, Lizards are… well, everywhere!… I woke up on Day 2 (Sunday) went out to my balcony to breathe in the extremely moist air, and found “Charlie”. The almost two foot Iguana.

Charlie is my name for him, and he seems to live here, like my bunkmate… If I leave my patio door open he’ll come inside from the heat for a little while, then go back out.

(Check out the Aruba Trip Photos… I’m d/loading there daily)

Well, off to the beach

Well, I’ve been gathering stuff I need to get my Canadian Passport got the photos done this morning.
I go into the photo place, and I’m told Canadians are not to smile for their passport photographs.
Instead, applicants must submit pictures showing their neutral expressions. The Canadian Passport Office says that means no smiling, frowning, glaring or grimacing. For crying out loud they’re applying for a passport to get the hell out of Canada how can they not help but smile over that?

So I’m looking at my photos after they were printed, and I wasn’t allowed to smile, they had to retake the picture after I had a glare off my forehead.
Yup, a sure sign you’re getting older.

I look at the photos and decide; it’s a good thing I am going on this trip, because man, I look old!