USA

“I LOVE NEWARK AIRPORT!” Those are the first words out of my mouth as I wander into the United Airlines Red Carpet Lounge in Terminal A of Liberty International Airport, also known as EWR, also known as Newark, New Jersey, USA. The words are dripping with sarcasm.

It has not been the best of weeks for me. I am working, literally, in MON, New Jersey. MON is an acronym I just made up this week, which stands for Middle of Nowhere. It is a much more polite way of saying that I am surrounded by farmers’ fields and dense forest than the usual saying I use, which people who are familiar with the type of terrain that the phrase “squeal like a pig” was uttered in during the movie Deliverance will understand.

It’s a very, very strange area I am in. I have talked, I thought, quite lovingly about my time in New Jersey up in Rutherford in previous blog entries. Rutherford is a quiet suburban existence, close to New York City, similar to the place where I grew up outside of Toronto.

My new client in New Jersey, though, is located in space not at all like Rutherford, which isn’t to imply that I am in some rural backwater with nothing but sheep, cows and the occasionally tractor. In fact, Basking Ridge, New Jersey, where I find myself now, is probably as crowded and dense as Rutherford. However, it’s obvious that Basking Ridge used to be a rural area that has grown, rather ineloquently into its role of suburb of New York City.

On my way from my hotel, a nice Marriott off highway 78, to the client site, which is a massive complex beautifully designed by famed architect I.M Pei, I drive along twisty country roads and wide-open highways. The twisty country roads, though, are lined with large suburban houses. There are no sidewalks and no street lamps, as one might expect in the suburbs, just large, expensive houses along two-lane blacktops. The hourses are spaced not even 100 feet apart, and so traffic along these country lanes, built for occasionally tractor and pickup traffic, is bumper to bumper. In my two weeks down in Basking Ridge, I have seen many a dead deer lying by the side of the road, mowed down in a vain attempt to cross the street through the constant stream of traffic.

Once I get on the highway, the traffic is a crawl. There is nothing on either side of the highway but empty forest and farmland, and exits are spaced four to six miles apart. I finally reach the client site, and spend my entire day there, as there is nowhere to go to grab a coffee or a quick lunch other than the cafeteria on site.

I was thinking to myself, as I was driving from the client site to Newark airport on Thursday how much I miss working in a city, where I can pop out for lunch and have a million choices, where I can get by without having a car, where I can find dinner that doesn’t involve a 15 mile drive to a decent restaurant.

My mood does not improve as I arrive at the airport and find that my flight has been delayed 2 hours. Newark airport is one of three airports in the New York City area, which is the busiest air space in the United States. All three airports (JFK and La Guardia being the other two) suffer from chronic delays, even when the weather is good. Today, the weather is bad, and so the delays are even worse. I find myself with a lot of time to kill and Elite status in the Star Alliance network of airlines, which includes both Air Canada (which does not have a lounge at Newark) and United Airlines (which has the Red Carpet Lounge at Newark), so I head into the Red Carpet Lounge for a drink, a comfortable seat and a few slices of cheese.

I sit at the bar and try and work on the Suduko in the USA Today, but kind it hard to concentrate because the TV, tuned to CNN, keeps showing those ads in Australia’s so where the bloody hell are you? campaign. The ones with the beautiful shots of Australia’s coastlines and outback and charming, tanned beauties in bikinis. I look outside at the grey tarmac of Newark Airport, and watch the cold rain splatter on the pavement. Makes me wish I was somewhere else instead.

I finish the Sukudo, and flip through the USA Today’s Life Section. The USA Today and ABC’s Good Morning America are revealing the new 7 wonders of the world. Today’s entry is Chichen Itza in the Yucatan peninsula of Mexico. Chichen Itza was one of the major cities of the Mayan Empire. The Mayan civilization flourished in the area we now know as Central America from about 250 A.D. until a mysterious collapse in the 8th and 9th centuries. Chichen Itza survived as a major centre even after the collapse of the Mayan empire, but by the 13th century, the city was abandoned and left to become overgrown by the jungle.

The Mayan people didn’t disappear. They still exist in Mexico and Central America today. They just gave up on city living and decided to return to farming. The reason for the Mayan civilization collapse is debated, and many possible explanations exist, including warfare, famine, environment collapse and disease.

As I am sitting in Newark Airport, I come up with my own theory, which I call urban exhaustion. The Mayan people, living in big cities like Chichen Itza, sitting around in the cartport, waiting for a cart to take them to Tulum that had been delayed 2 hours, and finally just said, “that’s it, I deserve better than this!” They walked away from the cities, and its traffic jams of llamas and carts, and decided for a more rural existence. I must admit that it’s an attractive suggestion, walking away from this stressful urban life of travel, trading in my laptop for plowshares.

I’ve been to Chichen Itza, back in February of 2000. It was my first trip outside of either Canada or the USA, to an all inclusive resort in Cancun (Cancun, woo-hoo!). The day trip to Chichen Itza was a quick break in what was otherwise an all-inclusive drinkfest. It’s strange to think that only 6 years ago I hadn’t really been anywhere.

I’m not sure if you, dear reader, has been to Chichen Itza, but it probably wouldn’t surprise me if you had. It is very close to the resorts of Cancun, and is a very popular day trip for Cancun tourists. Even if you haven’t been to Chichen Itza, fear not, for I know that one of the new seven wonders of the world you HAVE been to.

One of the other new wonders (the one announced today, Friday, November 17) I’ve been to as well, the Serengeti in Tanzania.

There’s four wonders on the list where I haven’t travelled. Those are:

• Hawaiin Marine Monument
  
• The polar ice caps
  
• the Old city of Jerusalem
  
• Potala Palace and Jokhang Temple: Lhasa, Tibet
  

Now, observant readers or those good at math will notice that I’ve only listed 6 wonders so far. That is because, my friends, I promised that I know you have been to one of the new wonders of the world. The 7th wonder of the world is MY BLOG! Okay, maybe not my blog specifically, but the Internet, which contains my blog. So welcome to one of the 7 wonders of the world.

I must admit, choosing the Internet as a wonder of the world seems a touch of a cop-out to me. It is not a physical place, but rather a concept. It would be like picking agriculture as a wonder of the world. Sure, without agriculture we’d still all be hunting and gathering, eating berries and getting attacked by elephants and squatting in dirty, muddy huts, which means agriculture is important. So perhaps agriculture is one of the world’s greatest concepts. But it’s no hanging gardens of Babylon.

Anyway, I suppose it is ABC’s and USA Today’s game, so they can set the rules.

Sorry for the cranky and whiny entry. I’ve just in a bad mood because of the flight delays and itchy hotel sheets. I shouldn’t complain too much, really, because next week is the USA Thanksgiving holiday, which means I have a 3-day week to look forward to, and because I will be in the area of New York City on the Thursday of Thanksgiving, I have an adventure ahead of me. As a teaser, let me just say, “Balloons. Big, big Balloons.”

This morning at a quarter to nine in the morning Eastern Daylight Time, I was on Air Canada flight 762, just touching down at Newark Airport. Exactly five years previous, American Airlines flight 11 was hitting the north tower of the World Trade Center in New York City, the first of four planes to be hijacked, and eventually leading to the destruction of the two World Trade Center towers, serious damage to the Pentagon and the loss of over 2,500 people in New York, Washington and Shanksville, Pennsylvania.

To commemorate those who lost their lives, New York City has, from time to time, created the Tribute In Light, a stunning art installation, using two beams of light stretching from the ground zero site into the night sky. The beams, if not a recreation, are at least a reflection of the Twin Towers. The beams are visible from quite a distance away, and I have been able to see them from my hotel for the past week.

I went down to the foot of Grand Street in Jersey City this evening to get a better view of the Tribute In Light. Grand Street at the Hudson River also happens to have Jersey City's 9/11 memorial - a twisted beam from the towers, often adorned with flags and messages. A number of people were at the bank of the Hudson, taking pictures or lighting candles or just talking with each other.

As I was wandering around taking my shots, I overheard a conversation of a group of fire fighters. The one fire fighter was speaking of one of their fallen breathen, how he used to tease him, after being shaken by a fire, that he just hadn't smoked enough cigarettes to calm his nerves. The three of them laughed and smiled at the memories.

After taking my shots, I wandered the 4 blocks back to where I had parked my car. It is a beautiful late summer or early fall night tonight, and it was a pleasant walk, cool without being cold, the air feeling and smelling and tasting clean and crisp. It was the kind of day that reminded me of my birthday or Halloween or Thanksgiving. It was the kind of day where you could imagine playing touch football or raking the leaves, the faint smell of smoke from someone's chimney wafting from a block away.

Thanksgiving was, and still is my favorite holiday, even though my mother died on that day. It's a day about family and food - Thanksgiving is Christmas without the pain of having to shop for presents in overcrowded malls. The weather is always nice, not too hot or not too cold, and my birthday is always just on the horizon, which always makes me happy (though perhaps a little less as I get closer to 40).

All that was going through my head as I was thinking about walking away from the Tribute In Light. Not sad thoughts of what was lost, but happy thoughts of hope. How I still love Thanksgiving and not hate it because of my mother's death. How the people of Hiroshima cheer for their baseball team and not think of the horror of the A-bomb. How three fire fighters laugh and smile at the memories of their friend, and not dwell on the way he died. How we all have the power to live through the bad events in our lives, and somehow take something positive from it.

As David Bowie said, "we can be heroes, just for one day..."

I’ve been on a lot of planes. As I have stated in past entries, I never flew as a child. My first flight was at the age of 16, in a four-seater float plane for an hour long site-seeing tour. My first commercial flight was at the age of 25, from Toronto to Moncton for a business trip.

My life in the air really took off in 1997, when I got a new job as a consultant. In those 9 years, I figure that I have flown somewhere around 350,000 miles. I’ve flown on many different types of aircrafts; from the large, like my experience sitting in the upper deck of a 747 from Vancouver to Toronto back when Air Canada flew the big Boeing jets; to the small, like the 4 seater float plane mentioned above, or the 10 seater Air Excel flight that took me past Mount Kilimanjaro on my way to Zanzibar, the CEO of Air Excel at the helm and a passenger sitting in the co-pilot seat (they couldn’t pass up the opportunity for the passenger revenue). I’ve have smooth flights, with landings so soft I haven’t even woken up when we touched down. I’ve had bumpy flights, like the 45 mile hop on Sosa Airlines from La Ceiba to Roatan during a Honduran thunderstorm.

I’ve had a few interesting seat mates during those years. 6 year old Hannah sat beside me in business class from Rio de Janeiro to Toronto. She was on the second of three legs travelling by herself back to her mother’s home in Ottawa, after finishing a visit with her father in Brasilia. The flight attendant, on seeing me sit down, said to me, “thank God you are here. She’s a handful!” and then wandered off to serve Champagne to the rest of the business class passengers and left me to be in charge of the baby-sitting of Hannah. Despite my initial fears, Hannah wasn’t too bad. She was mostly well behaved, playing games or watching movies on the personal video screens, though she did get a little squirrelly during dinner time by refusing to eat, and scared my tired mind by threatening to not sleep at all and keep me awake in the process. But after dinner, she did fall asleep, and I got a good six hours in before Hannah shook me awake to tell me that the movie she was watching last night was on again, and that I should watch it.

I’ve also shared an armrest with:

• a TV host, Mr. Kevin Cullen of Personal Watercraft Television, and no, I’d never heard of him either before flying with him.
  
• two girls on a flight to Detroit, talking the entire time about how, “Jim was, like, totally bummed, and, I, like, was too, like, totally past caring. So Shannon is like, what’s up with Jim, and I was like, totally whatever, and she was like…”
  
• my friend Vay, who after we spent twenty dollars each to get into the VIP lounge at Varadero airport in Cuba, drank himself into a stupor. He was mostly quiet, passed out with his head against the seat in front of him, only stirring occasionally when we’d poke him to make sure he was still alive. It was damn funny to watch.
  
• a guy in a suit, notable because he and I were obviously the only people on a flight from Omaha to Las Vegas on Southwest airlines who wasn’t drunk and heading to Las Vegas for the Professional Bull Riders (PBR) National Championship Rodeo at the New York, New York casino. On landing of the plane, a young cowhand, made mute from too much alcohol, suddenly and silently hugged the flight attendant. She had the most shocked look on her face, but he looked like he was going to cry with happiness at having had a safe flight.
  
• a fat, ugly dude on a small plane flying from Atlanta to Toronto. This is memorable because the flight held 50 people, and there was a group of swimsuit models and a photography crew who were transferring through Atlanta on their way from Mexico to Toronto after a photo shoot on the beaches of the Caribbean. In the waiting area I felt that the ratio between total number of passengers and total number of hot models meant that there was a statistically decent chance that a model had been assigned a seat beside me, and that I may get to take place in some porno worthy “geez, I’ve never had sex on a plane before…” fantasy, but it was not to be.

Mostly, though, my seat mates have been quiet, reading, sleeping, watching the movie or working on their laptops, and letting me do the same. Most of the flights just start blending into one another, the act of boarding a plane with your carry-on luggage feeling like getting on a really crowded bus with your groceries, hoping to find a place for them that won’t crush any of your eggs. It’s becoming harder and harder for me to be impressed when boarding a plane, and while I still get excited sitting in the airport lounge, knowing I’m flying off to someplace new, the walk down the gangway to the plane is starting to become a more and more oppressive experience – especially now because I know that I’ll have to wait 40 minutes on landing to get my luggage, that I’ve been forced to check because I have “liquid and gels” in the form of toothpaste and shaving cream with me.

It was, therefore, a bit of a surprise to me that I reacted with childlike glee at the thought of boarding a plane this weekend. I jumped up and down, giggling and, I believe, even pumping my arms with anticipation. The events are even more surprising considering that this past weekend I crossed from New Jersey to New York City instead of flying home to Toronto, and thus had no expectations of needing a plane to get anywhere.

Brad, a friend of mine that I have known since my flightless childhood, has been working in Connecticut of late, doing the same Monday to Friday flying back and forth between home and work routine that I am quite familiar with. With him in the state just north of New York City, and me in the state just west of New York City, it seemed to make some sense that we planned a meet up in New York City. A date was chosen, hotels were booked and train tickets secured. On Friday, we met up at the Residence Inn Times Square, and set out to see the sites of New York.

In a strange stroke of luck (potentially with some prompting from me), all the suggestions Brad made from things to do were things that I had not done on my previous 5 weekend trips into the city.

Friday night we went to the Top of the Rock – the observation deck of Rockefeller Center for view of the Manhattan skyline at night.

Saturday included a visit to the Museum of Natural History where we wandered around the exhibits of African mammals, Aztec artifacts, sparkly gemstones and scary dinosaurs until they kicked us out at closing.

Sunday we ventured out in the rain to the Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island. Luckily, the rain stopped for the hour or so we wandered around Liberty Island, peeking up the skirt of Lady Liberty, and didn’t start up again until we were safely inside the indoor exhibits at Ellis Island.

The jumping up and down like a child, though, came early on Saturday at the Intrepid Sea, Air and Space Museum. The Intrepid is an Essex class aircraft carrier, which served in the Pacific during World War Two, did 3 tours of duty in Vietnam, served as the recovery vessel for the Mercury and Gemini space programs and hunted Soviet submarines during the cold war. The boat was retired in 1974, and became the primary platform for the Intrepid Sea, Air and Space museum in 1982. There are a number of exhibits on the ship about both life on board the ship during World War II, and information on the space program. The deck of the ship holds a number of aircraft from various air forces around the world, including a Soviet MiG.

It was from the deck of the Intrepid that I saw the sight that had me giddy like a 3 year old at the thought of birthday cake. In the back recesses of my mind, I knew that the plane was at the museum, but it had been years since the news stories announcing her arrival, and it wasn’t until I caught site of the white plane sitting on a barge near the end of a pier that I recalled she was at the museum.

It was the Concorde.

The Concorde, flying at 60,000 feet and powered by four engines, was able to achieve speeds of Mach 2.04, more than 2 times the speed of sound. Scheduled commercial service of the supersonic jets started in 1976. In July of 2000, Air France 4590 crashed immediately after take-off. The supersonic fleet was grounded, and though they came back into service a year later, the drop in passenger levels due to the crash in France and the slow-down in air travel due to the September 11th, 2001 terrorist hijackings led to both Air France and British Airways to decide to retire the planes permanently at the end of 2003.

The plane on display at the Intrepid Sea, Air and Space museum is British Airways G-BOAD, referred to as “Alpha Delta.” Visitors pass underneath the Concorde, allowing good views of the engine housings (the engines have been removed), the landing gear and the underside of the plane. Steps lead up to the entrance at the mid-section of the plane, just forward of the triangle shaped wings. After a view into the aft half of the cabin, visitors walk down the aisle of the forward half of the cabin, separated from the seats by clear Plexiglas. You can get a quick view of the forward service area and into the cockpit, before exiting via the forward door. Visitors then pass under the nose of the plane, which famously tilts downward upon landing to allow the pilots a view of the runway.

I’d seen the Concorde in flight (at the Toronto air show) and on the ground (at various airports while taxiing to and from my gate), but I’d never been in one before. It was small and cramped and dim, and wasn’t all that well appointed compared to today’s trans-continental flights with personal entertainment screens, “lie-flat” beds and telephones. Concorde, of course, was fast enough that one didn’t need these things. Heading from London to New York, you could look out the window and see the sunrise IN THE WEST as the plane overtakes the sun, before finally landing at your destination earlier than when you left. At 60,000 feet, you were high enough up that you could easily make out the curvature of the Earth.

But Concorde was much more than just a really fast plane. It was luxury air travel. I can imagine what it must have been like on board, flying from London to New York, sipping champagne and eating off Wedgwood china. It was a chance to forget about the drudgery of air travel. It was an opportunity, if only for a few precious hours, to forget about overcrowded airports, cranky security people and weather delays, and be part of the adventure and glamour of flying. It was the physical embodiment of what the phrase “jet set” conveys: fashion, wealth and privilege beyond the masses.

Now if I want to see the curvature of the earth, I’ll have fly to the edge of space in an old Soviet MiG. That would suffice as being labeled the coolest flight I ever flew.

…Until Sir Richard Branson gets his space plane running.

Given my recent luck with flights, I suppose it was only a matter of time before it would occur that I couldn’t leave a place before I needed to be back there.

And so it was, on Thursday of last week, that my flight to Toronto was cancelled, and then the flight I was put on later in the day was cancelled as well. I got a flight on Friday, which was cancelled mid-day Friday, and I was put on a flight on Saturday morning at 6:25am.

Around 6pm on Friday night, I got a call from Air Canada. “Hello Mr. Wesson, this is Robert from Air Canada,” said the agent, a touch of trepidation and fear in his voice. I can only imagine that he had to deliver the same line to a number of travellers in the past few minutes, and had probably taken a few amount of abuse for it. “I’m sorry to say that your 6:25 am flight tomorrow has been cancelled.”

“Of course it has,” I said. I had expected no less. Given that every flight on Friday was cancelled, it would be impossible for my flight to leave at 6:25am in the morning. For a flight to take off, you see, they need an airplane, and with no flights coming into Newark, there would be no airplane upon which to put passengers at 6 in the morning.

“We have you rebooked on a flight at 10am on Sunday,” Robert informed me. I, knowing that I had a 7am flight on Monday to take me from Toronto to Newark (where I was standing at the time), did some quick math. I’d land at noon on Sunday, assuming there were no delays, which wasn’t an assumption that I would have put much stake in. From noon Sunday until 7 am Monday is 19 hours. It hardly seemed worth flying home for 19 hours, especially when I would spend 6 of them sleeping, and 3 or 4 of them in the airport in Toronto.

Instead, I told Robert to cancel the Sunday flight and send me a refund. I then spent a couple of hours securing myself a place to stay for the weekend, and changing my flight and car reservations for the Monday morning. By 8pm on Friday, it was confirmed that I would be spending the weekend in Jersey City, New Jersey, just a two stop subway ride from Manhattan.

Jersey City is a nice enough place, at least by the water in the “Newport” area where I stayed. Newport is a recently developed area of high rise condos, trendy cafes and restaurants, high end shopping, a number of high-rise business buildings and a nice little harbour. My hotel, the Courtyard Marriott Newport was right beside the entrance to the NY/NJ Port Authority’s subway system, the PATH. The PATH is a 24 hour train that runs from Newark into Manhattan, one line running to the World Trade Center site, and the other line passing through the Greenwich Village before heading north up 6th street to wind up at 33rd, just a block or so from the Empire State Building.

I didn’t do too much on the weekend. I had to shop for some clothes, as I had nothing but business attire and the weather called for shorts, sandals and a t-shirt. I wandered around Newport and downtown Jersey City, plus spent time in Chinatown, Little Italy and Greenwich Village in New York. I rode the PATH subway back on Saturday night at 2:30am, which was an interesting study in levels of drunkness of the passengers, from the joyously buzzed to the passed out sleeping.

Sunday night I had dinner at Les Halles, a French brasserie on Park Ave in mid-town Manhattan. It was very reminiscent of my time in Paris last year, in both cuisine and atmosphere. I drank Kronenberg 1664, a beer that featured quite largely in my Parisian adventures. I had a starter of the Terrine Du Jour, and a main of the Steak Frites, billed as the signature dish of the restaurant. Steak Frites is very common in Paris, consisting of a thinly sliced steak with French fries and a salad. Les Halles’ version of the steak frites was good, but I made the mistake of ordering medium rare, which spoiled the illusion of my meal in Paris. When I was in Paris, I was never asked how I wanted my steak, and it was always brought bloody red rare.

I was drawn to go to Les Halles for its former executive chef, Anthony Bourdain. Chef Bourdain, in addition to being a cook, is also an author of fiction, non-fiction and cookbooks and host of Food Network TV shows like A Cook’s Tour and No Reservations. I haven’t read any of his fiction (I’ve heard it’s not great) or his cookbooks (I don’t cook much myself), but one of his books has a major place on my reading list. A Cook’s Tour documents his journey’s while filming the Food Network show of the same name, where Tony and a camera crew travelled around the world in search of “the perfect meal.” The chapter on Tokyo and Japan, in fact, was one of the two reasons I choose Tokyo as my last vacation destination – the food just sounded awesome and the experiences alien to North American palates but also familiar and friendly and comforting. I have read and re-read the book, and have not tired of it yet. It is a common travel companion with me, and has been in my backpack or suitcase as I have visited 10 countries across 4 continents.

In the end of the book, Chef Bourdain discovers that the perfect meal is no one set meal, but is rather any time the combination of food and atmosphere and company and timing is right. It can be as upscale as a multiple course meal at Thomas Keller’s French Laundry in Napa Valley, or a casual as bare-footed toes squishing sand at a beach bar in the Caribbean.

I think it is that way for many travellers. People, especially those that go on cruises or to all-inclusive resorts often ask me what was the best thing I’ve ever eaten while travelling. It’s too hard a question to answer, both because there are so many choices and also because it has seldom been the really expensive and classy restaurants. I have had a few really good, expensive meals in my day, from the Palms restaurant in San Antonio where we ran up a $5,000 tab for 14 people to a night at the Senator in Toronto that started with rare steaks and ended with cigars and Remy Martin’s Louis XIII cognacs. But those meals are more impressive for the sheer ostentatious size of the bill than any other reason. The meals and food I remember tend to be much more simple. Fresh fish fried for breakfast by my uncle, special because I, as a 10 year old, caught it on a misty lake at 6:30 in the morning. Eating Thanksgiving dinner off a picnic table dragged inside my uncle’s cottage, as their weren’t enough indoor tables to hold my extended family. Hot dogs and beer at Chicago’s Wrigley Field, connecting my Canadian hockey loving heart with the American passion for baseball, and driving a desire to see more baseball games in person. Deep fried Turkey and football at an American Thanksgiving celebration. Slipping the waiter a twenty dollar bill at a beach restaurant in a resort in Cuba, which brought the table all-you-can-eat Steak and Lobster. A 1/2 bottle of wine, a sausage appetizer, a 10 oz filet (that was the small one!) and a side salad at El Boliche de Alberto in Bariloche, Argentina, for only $16. Trying durian fruit in Tanzania, which made my pee smell like rotting flesh for the next two days. Sharing freshly grilled skewers of seafood with a mangy looking cat at the Forodhani market in Stone Town in Zanzibar. And, most recently, sitting at a Yakatori bar underneath the train tracks in Tokyo, feeling like Deckard from Blade Runner.

Eating at Les Halles put me in mind of Anthony Bourdain’s book, and I spent the evening thinking of all those great meals (and many more), including a meal at a Brassiere with a similar look to Les Halles last September in Paris. I was sitting outside, at one of the dorky little tables all the cafes in Paris have, facing the street (as all the seats face the street). I had finished off a stringy piece of steak with soggy salad, and was now enjoying a cool night reading and drinking pints of Kronenberg 1664. The book was short travel stories, and I was reading about a hiking trip into the wilds of Patagonia in Argentina. It reminded me of my own trip to Patagonia, and I was suddenly struck by the fact that I was reading about an amazing place I had been (Argentina) while sitting in another amazing place (Paris), and knowing that I would soon be travelling on another amazing trip (trans-Mongolian to Russia, Mongolia and China), and I was so happy that I actually almost cried. Sitting on a busy street in Paris, eating and drinking and enjoying life, it was the perfect meal, at least at that moment.

I couldn’t help but compare my Les Halles experience with that Parisian meal, and while the food was much better at Les Halles, it lacked the atmosphere and timing of that meal in Paris. Les Halles was good, and I would recommend it to someone looking for a good meal in mid-town, but it probably won’t go down on my list of memorable meals above.

Now, if Anthony Bourdain had been at the restaurant, and he’d sat down at my table and we spent the night drinking beers and swapping travel stories, I bet that would have made the list.

When I worked in California back in 2002, there was a small town just outside of San Francisco called Lodi. Whenever I saw the highway sign for it, I always thought of the song by by Credence Clearwater Revival called Lodi. I thought to myself, back in 2002, that the small town in California must be the place that John Fogerty was singing about. Recently, when driving in New Jersey, I came across another town that shares the name with the CCR classic. I don’t know which Lodi CCR got stuck in, but I like to think it’s whatever Lodi I happen to be closest too at the time.

The song contains the line, “Oh Lord, stuck in Lodi again,” which popped into my head as I arrived at Newark Liberty International Airport yesterday. It had been stormy all week, and driving in I could see streaks of lightning hitting all along the waterfront of Newark’s industrial port. I was assuming that my flight, at best, would be delayed. I arrived at the airport to find all the flights to Toronto cancelled. Toronto was getting thunderstorms, just like Newark, and no planes were going to be landing there tonight.

(An aside, as every good blog entry deserves some pictures, but I didn’t have my camera with me, I have replicated my adventure in stick figures).

”How am I getting home now?” I think, looking at the big board with the cancellations.

As the Air Canada agent told me that I had been rebooked to fly out 2 days later on Saturday morning, that is when the line from Lodi jumped into my head. Partial the reason was because I was stuck in New Jersey, and there is a Lodi in New Jersey, so it’s fitting that way. But mainly the song popped into my head because of the last word, “again.”

The previous Thursday, I spent 2 1/2 hours sitting on the tarmac of Newark Liberty Airport waiting for my hour long flight between Newark and Toronto to take off. We were delayed because of thunderstorms in between Toronto and Newark. Due to the weather, greater spacing was required between planes, and so all the planes scheduled between the New York area and places to the north-west were delayed.

I was speaking with an ex-Air Canada pilot last weekend, and he said that the system, especially in the north-east USA and Ontario/Quebec area was basically close to it's limit. There was no more space to add planes into. More airports can alleviate gate crowding and takeoff slots on the ground, but can't help getting more planes in the limited air corridors that exist today. There is talk of a more flexible situation to move away from the current "air highway" system to open up more routes, but there's limits to that to.

Eventually my flight from Newark to Toronto was cancelled, and I had to wait until Friday morning to get out. That week, Air Canada was nice enough to put me up in a hotel (something they didn’t do yesterday, as they said the cancellation was weather related and therefore not their fault). We returned to the gate, deplaned and I spent the night in beautiful downtown Newark at the 5-star luxury resort Robert Treat Hotel, complete with luke-warm running water, lumpy pillows and a view of the park in which the homeless sleep.

Beautiful downtown Newark provides multiple types of sleeping arrangements. For the business traveller, the Robert Treat Hotel. For the homeless, the sidewalk outside the Robert Treat Hotel.

In fairness, the Robert Treat hotel wasn’t actually that bad. Truth be told, I’ve certainly stayed at places that were a lot worse when backpacking. But I find that I hold my travel accommodations to a different standard when I travel for business. I want comfortable beds, free high speed internet access and a hot buffet breakfast. Strange how I demand so much more when it’s not my money.

One of the things that kept going through my head during both these events was the fact that flying from New York to Toronto with no delays is only 1 hour in the air, but takes 4 hours when you consider the time it takes from downtown New York to the airport, time to clear security, plane loading time, taxiing, the flight, and all same the stuff on the other end in Toronto. A high speed train, averaging 250 km/h from New York to Toronto via Albany and Buffalo would take a little under 4 hours. Which means it's a very viable option, if someone would build the infrastructure. It’s a hang over from my European adventures on the TGV (train à grande vitesse, French for "high-speed train").

Of course, to prove to me that even trains get delays due to weather, the same thunderstorms that have caused the delays over the past couple weeks flooded out train tracks in Pennsylvania, causing many of the Amtrak trains running in the Boston-New York-Washington corridor to be delayed. So I suppose no form of travel is perfect.

So, flipping back to yesterday and my second cancelled flight to Toronto in just a week, Air Canada didn’t offer up a hotel, so instead I called my travel agent and discussed options. I ended up getting the same hotel I usually stay in down here, the Renaissance Meadowlands in Rutherford, New Jersey.

Upon arrival to the hotel that I had just checked out of 10 hours earlier, I am given the keys to room 519, which turns out to be the Premier Fitness exercise suite. Walking in the door, I am faced with a bed, a desk, a TV and 3 pieces of exercise equipment. “In room exercise,” promises a placard that comes with the room.

Is this an exercise room, S&M bondage chamber or my hotel room?

Of late, I’ve not been keeping up with my appearance or fitness, and have put on a few pounds and rounded out around the belly. It comes from driving to and from work every day (instead of walking) and eating out at T.G.I. Friday’s and Wendy’s for dinner every night. Alternating my gaze from my expanding belly to the elliptical walker and free weights, I couldn’t help but think that Marriott’s demographic profiling really failed this time. Of all the people to put into the Premier Fitness suite, I was probably not the best choice.

To further the irony, I went out and got 10 White Castle burgers for dinner, eating them in the shadow of the weight bench. At least I was drinking a Diet Coke.

Oh, I don’t feel so good now.

So, here I am, stuck in Newark again. Driving into the office in Nutley this morning, I was flipping around the radio stations and happened upon the song “You and I” by Celine Dion on 106.7 Lite FM. The song, which contains the line, “you and I were meant to fly,” is used by Air Canada as the jingle in their commercials.

“You and I were meant to fly…”

…as long as it’s not out of Newark, New Jersey.

Oh Lord.